Review - Aurora Ski Retreat
Update - The Aurora has now closed for the Spring
The Aurora Ski Retreat is a Canadian style winter resort, run by the same team behind the beach themed Oasis. Muti and myself visited on consecutive weekends.
It’s a closed sim, you get a group tag when you check-in, which then gives you access to the resort.
The Aurora itself consists of a reception building, a hill on which you will find the suites as well as the ski slope, and then various attractions and features at ground level.
In that sense, it’s an almost identical set-up to the Poconos Resort, which is part of the whole Winter in New York experience. In fact, if you are after a Winter and ski vacation, I would visit the Poconos (see Muti’s post on it). In this review I’ll explain why.
Overall look and feel - it’s still Christmas at the Aurora
The Aurora claims to be ‘Vancouver’, which is of course a large, modern city in British Columbia. It’s not really, but I guess it could make more of a claim to be like Whistler, which is a small Canadian ski resort two hours away.
As mentioned all the elements of a ski resort are there. Chalets and suites on the hill, a ski slope, an ice rink and lots of snow. There is also a village, with a few shops.
Overall it’s well built and designed, and it gave me a good first impression. The sky has a Northern Lights look, which is beautiful (see Muti’s Flickr shot for an idea).
Unfortunately my opinion started to change when I found the twerking Santa in front of the reception building.
Now bear in mind that we went to visit a month after Christmas and more than two weeks after almost everyone had taken down their Christmas stuff.
It’s still Christmas at the Aurora though. There are Christmas carols playing at reception and Christmas trees and decorations are up throughout the resort. The owners simply haven’t bothered to take them down.
Maybe you are someone who loves Christmas so much that you wish it never ends. If so, then this place is for you. I myself found it an odd, almost unsettling, experience.
My point is this: The Aurora is not cheap, villas start at 2500L a night. Just imagine that you arrived at some high end ski resort in RL and in late January all the Christmas things were still up. What would you think?
Overall - 2 / 5
The features and amenities
The list of features and amenities includes ice skating, a sleigh ride, a cafe and lounge, ice cold polar swimming, and a brewery (pay extra for the brewery tour). Then there’s of course skiing and snowboarding on the slope.
Two highlights for us were the horses that you use to get around the resort, and the polar swimming with the polar bears.
What seemed a little amiss was the ‘zoo’, where you find polar bears in enclosures. Muti found the experience quite sad. I also wondered what the point was when you have polar bears roaming free on the other side of the sim.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that to TP to the different attractions, you have to click a board and accept an experience (one of those that allows it to automate your AV). I clicked ‘no’ by accident. That meant I could no longer access the board after that, and Muti had to TP me into various places.
Another couple staying there said they never got the notification, so they also couldn’t use it. Some of the attractions you can get to anyway, as you can just walk or ride to them. A few are on sky platforms though, so if the activities board doesn’t work, you are out of luck.
Overall - 2 / 5
The rooms
The different ski chalets range from 2600L to 6500L. Note that the cheapest cabin, at 2600L has two single beds. As a result, we stayed in a Pinecrest Cabin at 3000L.
Leaving aside the Christmas decorations, which I’ve already mentioned, the cabin was spacious and high quality with a bedroom, living and dining area, and an outdoor sauna. Again, it has almost exactly the same set-up as the Poconos Winter in New York cabins.
Overall - 4 / 5
The animations
Like the Oasis Resort, and like most Second Life hotels, the Aurora has Ruckus beds. Most of the animations throughout the resort are PG, except in the hot springs pool. By and large they all worked.
Overall - 4 / 5
Other things to consider
Check-in at the Aurora is at 5pm SLT, or 2am in most of continental Europe. I’ve discussed this point in my review of the Aurora’s sister resort, the Oasis. In mitigation, check out at the Aurora (3pm SLT) is better than at the Oasis (Noon).
However, there is no flexibility regarding arrival times, and overall we encountered a few customer services issues with both resorts.
For example, we had actually booked at the Aurora before Christmas, and I got a confirmation email.
The day before we were meant to arrive, I had heard nothing about payment and so I contacted them via Facebook. Turns out they’d cancelled the reservation as they’d not been able to find me in-world.
Like many SL residents, my display and legacy name are not the same, but I’m reasonably sure I entered my legacy name in the comments box of the booking form. Even if I made a mistake though, they had my email address. Before cancelling, why not email me?
Then when booking (second time around), I was told I had booked the cabin with the two single beds. This should be an opportunity to upsell (‘have you considered X, you will love it!’). Here, when I asked the owner for an alternative suggestion, the overall tone back was almost one of inconvenience, same when my horse wouldn’t work at check-in.
I mention all this as when you charge 3000L a night or more, you are no longer in the realms of loose change, and I think it’s reasonable to have certain expectations.
Also, if you want to RP a high end luxury resort, then part of it is surely to recognise that your RL equivalents pride themselves on stellar levels of customer service. Here, we felt the owners didn’t really care one way or another.
Overall
I want to support the many fantastic hotels and resorts in Second Life, but at the same time, I have to give readers an accurate and honest picture of what I experienced.
As a result, my conclusion is this:
The Aurora looks good, the owners know how to build and design. But given all the other issues we encountered, I recommend you take your SL ski vacation at the Poconos instead. Not only will you have a much better experience, you get access to the full Winter in New York sim as well.