Snowsure: 3.9
- Occasionally gets enough snow for skiing
- Is often closed due to a lack of snow
- Occasionally suffers from a lack of snow
- Rarely suffers from a lack of snow
- Bansko is snowsure even in the poorest seasons
Visitor reviews for Bansko Ski Resort
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(NOTE: Reviews may be edited by our content team for the purposes of ensuring accurate and relevant information)
(NOTE: Reviews may be edited by our content team for the purposes of ensuring accurate and relevant information)
Latest
March 20, 2009
Vicki from
United Kingdom
Vicki from
United Kingdom
I am the English girl and I work outside the Lions Pub and in Diamonds Pub (08/09).
I would just like to say that the difference in attitude of the people who enjoyed their holiday at Bansko and those who hated it stands out. It's not France of Switzerland so don't expect it. It's also not the same price either. Choosing a holiday in Bulgaria needs to be understood before you book and I'm pretty sure the price difference is a factor here. Bansko is a very new resort still up and coming and yes, the country is not long out of some very poor times and may not have the same standards as Western Europe.
Prices: I know a lot of people mistakenly quote prices in Bulgaria lower than you find in Bansko. There are a few reasons for this. It is normally quoted in this way by the holiday companies that are trying to sell you the holiday. Also they are not exactly lying. They do quote normal Bulgarian prices. Bansko is not a local village it is a modern ski resort with high quality hotels, bars, restaurants etc (for Bulgaria). If you want to get those prices I will happily recommend places you can get them although I guarantee most of you would not want to eat or drink there. Unfortunatly, nice clean places with friendly English speaking helpful staff, football, English food, English beer etc that you want comes at a price. I hear a lot of people complain it's cheaper at home. Well, well. I'm sure you have seen the price of petrol nowadays. At home it comes from 20 miles down the road. If you want to get that all the way over here you can imagine the extra cost. You know how it works..when in Rome. Eat and drink local stuff; it's cheap but you probably won't like it. It's common sense.
Money: Bulgaria may be part of the EU but, like us in the UK, does not use Euros. It is wrong to expect them to accept them. If the staff are asked nicely most places will change them for you. We wouldn't. Credit cards are not widley accepted yet but that is changing. As explained, it is still catching up.
Attitude: most Bulgarians are pretty sound and you will get a good response from them if you treat them decently. The amount of times I have witnessed and cringed at the shocking way the Brits treat the local staff (talking to them like servants, being damn rude about them in front of them with their friends and assuming they don't understand). Actually, most do speak quite good English if you speak clearly. Especially the younger generation and resort staff. They have to speak English to get a job here and they learn it in school like we learn French or German so be careful what you say. They are also sick of this attitude of everyone complaining about the prices and being really tight and cheap and asking for discounts for absolutly no good reason at all, just assuming that we are so desperate for their lovely foreign money that we will just throw everything at them for free. You wouldn't do this at home. A pint of draught Guiness or Carling is not 30p a pint.
'Mafia' and 'Heavies': this one cracks me up every time. You lot think you know it all. Paying in cash has absolutly nothing to do with having to pay a protection racket. Frankly that is quite rediculous. You just want to believe it. They are winding you up. This does happen occasionally with some of the younger more fun loving staff. They know you would love to hear it and spin a few lines for a laugh. I have had many people tell me they were drinking with the Mafia. Trust me, they weren't. Sometimes it may look like it but actually nowadays it is not evident in the town and certainly not in the places were the tourists would be at all. You would not get in the door. Some guys will tease you just for fun or to scare you a bit because they know you will believe it. There are a lot of very nice cars around and gold. Since Bulgaria (particulaly Bansko) took off big time a few years back a few people who got in early made a lot of money. They are mostly just normal business men who got lucky. Bulgaians still have an old school attitude to being rich. i.e. if you've got it, flaunt it. They display it with gold and cars and expensive drinks and beautiful women.
General: ok, Bansko is a bit of a mess at the moment but it will get cleaned up. Sofia is also a bit of a shock on the way out of the airport but do give it a chance. A 3 hour transfer is not bad for a ski resort. The transfer for Tignes/Val is 5 hours plus with a change of bus and a stop to put snow chains on. Andorra is also about 4-5 hours. Ski resorts are in the mountains. It's not easy to build an airport very close to them. You could always opt for a parachute arrival instead.
To sum up: come with an open mind and a friendly attitude. Do not expect western ski resort standards for Bulgarian prices. It's never going to happen. Be realistic. If you don't want to lower your standards at all, don't come. Please don't come and then moan afterwards. All the information is provdided. If you ask people for advice on what, where, how, when you will normally get a genuine and helpful response. I always help anyone who asks and respond with no bias. We are not all out to get your money and rip you off. Trust people don't treat them like criminals who are going to steal from you and you will get a good reaction back. Bulgarians may speak a different language but they are normal humans beings like the rest of us. Same thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams. Don't insult them by treating them like they are stupid and desperate for money.
Come, have fun, make friends and we hope you will come back to Bansko.
March 20, 2009
Paul Saunders from
United Kingdom
Paul Saunders from
United Kingdom
A group of us went to Bansko for the first week in March 2009 and had a very enjoyable week.
We stayed at the Chalet Jora which we would recommend to anyone heading to Bansko. It's a really nice place with a great combination of traditional log fires and modern amenities (DVD, Nintedo Wii etc.). There is excellent food and has a good location near Bansko's bars, restaurants and of course the gondola.
The skiing itself was good, we were lucky with the snow and weather and as intermediate skiers we found enough to keep us challenged for the week. My wife and I had a couple of 2 hour private lessons which were excellent and very cheap compared to what we paid in France earlier in the season.
All in all, I'd recommend Bansko for a cheaper alternative to the Alps, and highly recommend Chalet Jora for a place to rest your weary bones and enjoy some great food (and lots of free wine with dinner).
March 20, 2009
Damo from
France
Damo from
France
March 16, 2009
Jay from
United Kingdom
Jay from
United Kingdom
Just returned from Bansko after a weeks snowboarding with 6 other friends. The pistes and quality of them for such a small area is superb. Most are tree-lined runs and therefore very pretty with lots of natural hits and kickers. The road back into town is notoriously heavy going for boarders as much of it is flat, but you can always do half of it and catch the middle gondola back into town. The food in the mountain cafe's and restaurants is expensive. A hot-chocolate from a Nescafé machine will put you back £3, and a plate of luke-warm chips is around £4-£5, much more akin to prices in Alpine resorts, which to be fair, when looking around the rest of the country, is taking the mick. Most of the staff at Bansko are very miserable, and this I found the hardest thing to deal with. Bansko resort is completely devoid of any sort of humour, and the staff are abrupt and as a consequence they are rude in terms of what we are used to in the UK. In fact, for me, although the resort is great, the natives skirted with spoiling my holiday at one point. We stayed in the Hotel Emerald, and as it was brand new it was very clean and the rooms were huge compared to UK standards. The dining room was situated in the basement, and the food was bearable, but as a whole, Bulgarian food is the dreariest I have ever had to deal with. If you want to spend a whole week on chips and pizza, you will have a great time. Fruit and fresh vegetables seem to be a rarity.
The resort of Bansko is a building site. Some roads around our hotel were not finished and there were open holes to the sewerage systems which stank. There is an obvious Russian presence of money, and you can expect to see Hummers driving down the main street while two blocks away people are living like peasants. The transfer is long and tiresome (around 3 hours) and if you land in the day you can see what a grey concrete monolith Sofia, the capital, really is. If you land at night, you can see the street girls touting for business. It's a harsh reality which isn't apparent up the mountain when you are riding the pistes, but for me the country as a whole gave a sense of dark oppression that seems to come across in the way people treated us a tourists. The staff in our hotel bar were great, well two of them smiled and were polite, but out of a country of 7.5 million that's not a great statistic. To sum up for me, great pistes, not as cheap as they would like you to believe, unfinished resort and miserable locals. Will not be going back.
March 10, 2009
Dave from
United Kingdom
Dave from
United Kingdom
Having just returned from Bansko from my first skiing trip I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Having read various reviews before I went I was a bit worried and that was not helped on the first day (that was a public holiday ) when queues at the gondola were 1 hr 10 minutes.
However, on each of the following days we arrived at the gondola at about 0845 hrs and there were no queues whatsoever. The various lifts and chairs on the mountain at Bansko also had queues of no more than a couple of minutes.
I had an excellent ski instructor in the beginners class who was great fun and spoke good English, although my wife in the intermediate class had a poor instructor who missed lessons and did not teach them anything.
Snow conditions were excellent and it snowed most nights. Food and drink on the mountain was reasonably priced i.e. pizza £3 and beer £2,50 though the staff tend to be fairly rude and abrupt.
Bansko itself is a building site and 160 hotels have been built in the past 3 years. It is very much an under developed country with poor roads and footpaths.
We stayed in the Hotel Bansko which is about 15 mins walk to the gondolas though a very reliable mini bus made a half hourly trip that took only a few minutes. The hotel itself was very clean and modern and the rooms and facilities were very good. A word of warning though - the food was awful.
For apres-ski the Happy End bar at the gondola sells lager for £2.50 but watch out for the waitresses who tend to add a few extra beers to the bill. They stopped when challenged.
You can get beer for about 75 p a pint at other Bulgarian bars nearer to the old village and I would recommend that you eat out at some of these as the food is cheap and really nice and you can find some friendly Bulgarians.
Overall, I would say that if you are a first time skier you should enjoy the holiday and Bansko, I did.
March 10, 2009
sarah mansell from
United Kingdom
sarah mansell from
United Kingdom
We went to Bansko for a weeks skiing and were not dissapointed in any way. Our group was a mixture of adults and children at differant levels of skiing and snowboarding but we all found Bansko a brilliant resort. We stayed at the Chalet Elena. Our hosts were Matt and Jenny and it was a half board catered chalet. We had everything there to make our week complete. Nothing is too much trouble for Matt and Jenny. They collected us every morning and afternoon at arranged times so that we had an enjoyable day on the slopes. Our transfers to and from airport were included in the price. We returned every day to fresh baked cakes and a meal prepared which had instructions of how to warm through.
We all had a very enjoyable week at Bansko and, if you have the energy, the apres-ski is there with spas, pools, bars and nightclubs and loads of places to eat too. Prices are far cheaper at Bansko than other ski resorts for hire, lift passes etc, and even eating and drinking as long as you stay clear of the gondola area.
At the top of the gondola at Bansko was expensive to eat and drink but a hot chocolate was well worth it to warm yourself through after a few hours skiing.
March 09, 2009
Graham Wareham from
United Kingdom
Graham Wareham from
United Kingdom
We will definitely be coming back to Bansko. There are problems, I agree (such as the roads/unfinished buildings) but if you approach the place with an open mind you can find it friendly, fun and above all, cheap, We were a group of 12 people and stopped in a fantastic chalet - airport/piste transfers, food, wine/beer all inclusive for less than 200 quid each. People who say that Bansko isn't cheap need to spend a week skiing in the Alps (my mate said he couldn't get a beer in Les Arcs under 7 Euros).
Snow at Bansko was OK, lifts were great and we had a free minibus ride up the mountain each day to a lovely little area with no queues at all. Food on the pistes was quite expensive though and the run back down the mountain took a while. Great views from the top.
Stayed with Bansko Chalets in Chalet Isabella; went the extra mile.
March 08, 2009
Antonis from
United Kingdom
Antonis from
United Kingdom
Bansko is a resort that has recently (before 3-4 years) received a huge facelift. An investment of around 300m Euros has totally changed the previously small and uninteresting resort to a modern resort of European standards. It now has a modern and well designed lift system, snow making facilities, piste groomers and mountain restaurants. However, that is true as soon as you manage to get onto the gondola. The main issue with it is that it is the sole lift that gets up to the mountain so it can get really, really, really busy. During my last visit there (it wasn’t half-term, nor any sort of local holiday, not even a weekend) on the first day I had to wait only 20 minutes to get on. The second day the gondola wasn’t working so we had to wait for the 6 minibuses that where going up and down the mountain to transfer us. We were at the base of the gondola at 9am and started skiing at 13.30. The third day we thought that we would avoid the queues if we arrived early, so we did. We were there at 8am - 30 min before the gondola opens. Guess what, half of the village had the same idea so again we waited for >30 mi,; hopeless. We eventually found that the queues ease off after 11am so the next day we had a lay-in and indeed we waited for <10 min to get to the gondola, brilliant. Suggestion, if you have a car drive up to the resort and avoid the gondola, there you can enjoy an 8/10 service. If you wait for the gondola service ranges from 1/10 to 4/10 at most.
As far as skiing is concerned Bansko definitely gets the thumbs up. The beginners area, even though it is small in size, is well thought of and I’m quite sure even the slowest learner will find a spot to fall over and get back up. However, there seems to be a small gap in the progression scale as those who have just been able to link some turns will struggle to find a slope easy and long enough to practice their skills; unless they go for the very long (and equally uninteresting) road that leads back to the resort. Still, that is merely a compromise.
So for complete beginners it gets a 7/10 due to the dedicated yet small learning area. But for 2nd timers it gets a 3/10 due to the lack of any easy blue runs that one could practice on.
Intermediates are probably what the people who made this resort had in mind. It has got a variety of slopes that will help them improve their skills. Several of them have the odd easy and brief off-piste experience nearby and some small bumps and jumps to put the fun back into riding. Not much to say other than a generous 9/10 for intermediates. It looses a point simply because there is no alternative route, other than the boring road, to get an intermediate back to the village.
Advanced and experts. There are two faces of the mountain for such skiers/riders. The first is that of the groomed slopes. The much advertised Tomba piste (No. 9) is indeed a black slope but is it nowhere near the challenging blacks you get in the Alps. It is a very good introduction to black slope skiing for an intermediate but it is no challenge for an expert. The other black slope of the resort (No. 16) is similar to Tomba but a lot shorter so even less interesting. And I’m afraid that’s where blacks stop. So, due to limited number and quality of the blacks, on-piste skiing for experts gets a 4/10.
However, experts do not despair. There is still a lot of fun to be had in Bansko. The following routes are not to be done without expert knowledge of the mountain and a local guide because you will be entering backcountry territory and challenging the mountain. For that reason I will not give too much detail. Several very interesting routes off the back of Todorka peak (to your right as you go up on the chair to the top) lead to the valley between the mountain where the resort is and the Vihren peak (the highest peak of the area). These are simply brilliant but do hire a guide. However, if you want a proper off-piste experience go up Vihren peak and ski from there to the same valley as before. You will get a >10km long ride on very good quality untracked snow with a vertical drop of ~2000m. That is the only bit of the mountain that is comparable to an Alpine resort. For backcountry Bansko gets an 10/10, oh yes. But be warned, this is simply because it is proper backcountry; no lifts, no safety, no nothing. Just you and the mountain, so you really need to want it to get there.
Now, coming back down to the village is not as pleasant as being up in the resort. The village is, simply put, ugly. During the past few years it has seen huge development but without out any sort of planning. Hundreds of residential properties, hotels, tavernas etc have been built and the aesthetic result is awful. The stream that runs through the village looks like a scrap-yard and the road that lead to all these newly built hotels are suited for off-roaders. Be careful of uncovered sewage lines, it is deep and dirty. Some consolation is to be found in the old city. A few nice and well maintained houses have been converted to tavernas (maxanas as they are called locally) with good food and very reasonable prices. Unfortunately, the old city is about half an hours walk from the gondola so unless you have a car or your hotel offers a minibus service there is no way you will stay there. The village gets an overall 1/10. The point is awarded for the cheap and good quality food in the old city, but every thing else is bad, very bad.
Conclusions then. Well, let’s start from the reason one would want to come over here. Let’s not hide behind our finger people, the sole reason is money. Bansko is cheaper that most Alpine resorts, or is it? My experience says that over a four day mid-week trip at low season it costed £30 less than a similar trip to Flaine, France. If you want cheap try Flumserberg or Bad Ragaz in Switzerland, Vars in France and most Italian resorts. You see, the problem is that we compare Bansko to Verbier, Chamonix and 2 Alpes and we say that it is cheaper. Well no, Bansko isn’t cheaper compared to resorts of similar size in the Alps. If anything, with the very long transport, it is more expensive. So, would I go to Bansko again? Not a chance, unless I move to Greece.
March 08, 2009
Dragan
Dragan
As we are from near by Serbia we went by car to Bansko. Six hours driving to spend a weekend of four days skiing; good slopes. Problem is that we can't get information about the slopes. First day only 2 ski lifts were working, second day saw the best ski runs on the top closed. You can't got information from staff selling ski-passes. Slopes were very badly prepared. On the third day we reterned home. We have very bad skiing at Bansko. It is because of the weather partly as it was raining. But having no possibility to get information of working slopes is absolutely not allowed. After returning from skiing, when you ask staff selling ski passes at Bansko, about this they are very surprised.
March 04, 2009
Tina Borer from
United Kingdom
Tina Borer from
United Kingdom
I love Bankso in both winter and summer. It has a real charm about it. Very busy in the winter but quiet in the summer but still just as nice if you want a quiet getaway with plenty of walking; much easier to get into the bars - no crowds. I own an apartment at Aspen Golf so I have the best of both worlds: skiing and golf.
Enjoy Bankso; the building site will go one day.
Nearest