Lifts: capacity, wear and repairs
How much a lift carries, what it costs to run, and keeping it in shape.
Lifts decide how many skiers your resort can actually serve. Skiers who can't get on a lift stay away, however good your slopes are.
Capacity
Lifts run about 6 hours a day and a skier rides around 10 times, so each 1,000 skiers an hour of capacity serves about 600 skiers a day.
| Lift | Skiers/hour (full seats) | Running cost per km/day |
|---|---|---|
| Button / drag lift | 1,000 | 400 € |
| Fixed chair | 2,400 | 600 € |
| Detachable chair | 3,400 | 950 € |
| Gondola | 3,500 | 1,450 € |
| Cable car | 4,000 | 2,050 € |
A closed lift still costs a fifth of its running cost. Close lifts you don't need on quiet days.
Wear and repairs
Open lifts wear up to 2% a day. At 0% a lift breaks and closes. Repair it from the resort page: a full repair costs up to 30% of what the lift cost to build, less the better its condition, and a broken lift reopens straight away.
A lift mechanic assigned to a lift cuts that lift's wear by 1% a day. One mechanic looks after one lift, so a mechanic on each of your busiest lifts saves the most repair money.