 Poster: A snowHead
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This was a first family skiing holiday outside of the support of Esprit - although we went DIY when our eldest was little that was with other family members and sharing looking her. The girls are now 9 & 6 and this was a bit of an experiment, and we knew it was going to be a different type of holiday. Mae were staying in my parents apartment in Razlog.
By going Monday to Monday we were able to book cheap flights with Bulgarian Air (£640 approx for all 4 of us inc bags). The only downside was the number of times our flight times were adjusted since we booked them meaning we landed in Sofia almost 2hrs later than planned meaning it was nearly midnight local time.
We booked a private transfers, childrens lessons, childrens ski and boot hire and lift passes through Bansko Blog. We found Lance (the guy behind Bansko Blog) very helpful especially once we decided that due to how late we were getting in and the infamous lift queues we were going to struggle to get the girls skis and boots sorted and up the mountain by the 11am meet time. He was able to adjust the start day for us.
The private transfers were very smooth and nicely driven. The lessons and ski hire was with Ski Mania. Ski Mania allow you to book lessons for mornings, afternoons, both and allow any days. This really helps with non-standard travel days. The down side was it was a little bit confusing as to who the girls lessons were with from day to day but to give you the flexibility that is quite forgivable. They had some trouble getting our youngest into appropriate groups. She was above beginners, but still very young so emotionally found the more challenging runs intimidating and was with older children who were doing lessons all day progressed at a greater rate. They seemed worried to be moving her down groups, we kept saying no please do we just want her to have fun.
The two main issues we had were that quite simply there were far more people trying to ski there the area just can't cope both lift queues (over 2hrs) for gondola and the pistes themselves and how mild it was.
There is a ski bus which operates from by the gondola which takes you to the gondola top station. The sign said this ran from 9am - 12am. However when we looked at 8:15 it had already started operating and judging by the number of non-official mini-buses doing the route, they were drafting in extra vehicles to increase the number they were getting up. This was the quickest way to get up and the least pushy. Due to the scrum trying to get to the gondola and the stairs, the girls were getting shuffled about a lot on there  . The other route we took up was when we were looking at the options one morning, we had a bloke offering to take us up by taxi, originally asking 40lev then dropped to 30 (5 each for the girls). He lead us over to a nearly full mini bus (only 3 seats free so girls had to share one seat!) but that got us up there in time. We had to do that as we took the 8:45 mini bus from our hotel / apartment meaning we "only" had 2hrs to make it to the top of the gondola.
The restaurants and drinks are all cheap. It was a cheap family holiday mainly in half term.... We had a nice holiday overall, some lovely aspects but some very frustrating ones. We certainly won't be rushing back though. There are ski areas which stand up much better to half term.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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One thing that was rather nice which I haven't seen else where, was the amount of photographs being taken on slopes. They have photo points on many different slope locations, and guys going round dressed up in characters doing static photo's. They take very nice quality shits and a 10lev a photo (£4) a photo they are very reasonable.
The only challenge is finding the photos. Me and Keira had out photo taken on the first day coming down the ski road and I couldn't find it as I didn't take a note of the time.
For static photos though they print these ready and even recognized hubby and my daughter coming down the stairs from the gondola, and showed them to him.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| NickyJ wrote: |
They take very nice quality shits and a 10lev a photo (£4)
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That's quite an unusual service they provide and I think there is a video of it in here somewhere too. 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Wow great typo! Obviously that should have been "shots"
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Thanks for the TR. It's great to read about others areas- might give bankso a miss. 2 hour queue! That's totally not OK. You sound like you did amazingly well to remain positive.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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@nem, we got to ski how can that not be a good thing 
When it is not too busy then as an area it would be lovely.... Trick is when is it NOT too busy.
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| NickyJ wrote: |
@nem, we got to ski how can that not be a good thing
When it is not too busy then as an area it would be lovely.... Trick is when is it NOT too busy. |
quite agree would never go there at half term!!
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@NickyJ, top TR. As others have said, sounds like a reasonable place to go when it's not too busy.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Now that I can easily add images, here are a couple of photos I took of the lift queues. Bear in mind that this is just of the outside of the gondola station, the queue goes into the building and up the stairs. The queues are also from both sides of the building. Here is the first (you can't see the back of it as the truck monster truck blocks the view.
Then this is the start of the queue going off in the other direction and into the other entrance of the building, again I couldn't get a shot which showed the full length of the queues as it went on back up the slope.
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