Whistler Trip

Has anyone here had any experience with booking a trip to Whistler Bike Park on a fairly reasonable budget?

I dont expect it to be cheap by any means but was wondering if it was possible for 5 – 7 days including bike hire, flights, accomadation, park entry, lift passes, etc. for less than £2000?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Amazing place
Was there in 2005
Hired stuff from Garbanzo? shop
There was a race face deal on where you got cheap deal on lift pass if you bought raceface stuff so i bought the cheapest rf tshirt i could find and saved more than the tshirt cost
We were only there for a few days and stayed in a campsite as we were travelling around in a campervan.
we gt very cheap flights through http://www.canadianaffair.com/
Not sure what your plans are but we thought it was 1 of our best ever holidays, we were also in vancouver, banff and jasper and it wasn’t a purely mtb holiday.
http://www.ziptrek.com/ and the white water rafting were really good as well, if I were travelling all that way I’d advise doing a few other things than mtb

I can’t help but I will keep an interested eye on thsi thread, whistler is somewhere me and Mr MC have talked about heading for many years but never got around to!

havent been to whistler, but when mrs mm and i went to ottawa in february we paid £2000 for flights and hotel (10 nights)
we enjoyed it immensely and intend to go again.
im not sure id want to do it on a budget tbh, we spent a fair bit when we were there.
takeaway food is cheapish, portions are massively bigger than uk, we made the mistake of ordering a large pizza, between the 2 of us we only managed half of it.
remember also that sales tax will be added to the price of virtually everything, in ontario it was 13%, bc will be similar.

Get in touch if you want to do whistler, affordably and with getting the most out of your riding.

A week with us is currently between £400 and £590 per person per week depending on the time of year and if its 2 or 3 sharing a room.

We include, airport transfers, accommodation, daily breakfast, 5 evening meals and guiding on 5 days of the week.

Bike rental 6 days riding
XC – £185 approx
DH – incl armor £360 approx

Bike park pass DH only – £190 approx

Lunches and 2 evening meals £180 approx (depends how classy you are and how much you drink)

So, for a DH trip that leaves £680 for flights if you choose our highest season dates. Tough, but shift dates into low season and our price goes down and so will flights.
E.g. 9-16 Aug on Canadian Affair is £808.
7-14 June on Canadian Affair is £608

For an XC trip, even in high season, you’ve still a little over £1000 left for fights.

Whilst there are undoubtedly cheaper ways to do Whistler, I’m 100% confident that we offer the simplest, most organised and easiest way to maximize time on the bike giving you the best value experience of Whistlers riding.

As above, canadian affair and air transat offer budget no frills flights.. heading towards easyjet in terms of service (not price)
Virgin now fly into YVR in the summer along with Air Canada, BA, Also KLM (via amsterdam), Lufthansa (via frankfurt) etc for indirect.

If you have dates in mind, I’d be happy to show you what we offer.

Kind regards

Jonny

Bear Back biking

Big fat +1 for bear back. I did 2 weeks with them a couple of years ago, with jamie t guiding. Even if you don’t touch the bike park, it’ll be more DH than anything you’ve ridden in the UK. You’ve just gotta ride up it too……oh, and the facilities/chalet/food, awesome! (you’ll use that word a lot)

Anyone planning on booking flights via Canadian Affair before 4 Nov 2012 can use the promo code Explore Canada for an extra 10% off flight prices for travel from 1 Nov 2012 to 31 Oct 2013. That said, doesn’t seem to work for me as I’ve been pricing return flights for my son to come home for Christmas and the prices seem to be the same with and without the promo code 😕 .

Air Transat/Canadian Affair are good enough and cheap but take a book/some kind of in flight entertainment for yourself.. on my flight out I was sat next to 2 kids for 9 hours with no book and a broken in flight entertainment console 🙁 On the way back mine did work but the quality was so awful that it was hard to enjoy the films.

Don’t bother hiring bikes out there it was only ~£20 each way to take your own, we took our DH and 6″ AM bikes for a total of £78 which won’t pay for 2 days hire of a DH bike!!

Also check out http://www.ticket2ridebc.com

Also if you’re not particularly tied to dates, Can Affair/Air Transat, (which are the same company), do cheap fixed date deals, I got a return for £289 last year with the T2R discount code. As mentioned above the planes entertainment is random, we had seat back screens with multiple choice going and bugger all coming back this year, so be prepared just in case.

Cheapest way to get a bike park pass for just 1 week is firstly buy a Pink Bike Road Trip card, (need to do this a couple of months before you go), which will give you an extra day in the park for ‘free’ when you buy a Triple Play card. (It’s not actually free as you paid for the PB card, but’s it will end up 50% cheaper for the day). You use the 4 days on your card and then all further days are automatically deducted from your CC from the 5th day onwards at the cheapest rate and certainly cheaper than buying day passes.

Your triple play and PB cards will also then give you various discounts around the village to get 10% – 20% off food and goods.

TBH you need to get out of the PB for a couple of days as there is plenty of better ‘natural’ riding in Pemberton and Squamish, depends if your budget can stretch to some shuttle days, but well worth it.

puts on list of toDo’s

I’m off for my 2nd tour of duty next year :-), have you thought about hiring a RV / Camper?

Your not tied only to Whistler then, and if you take your own bike BC is your oyster!!! 😀

It works out relatively inexpensive compared to local bike hire, hotel, etc, plus the campers are very spacious and comfy with most RV parks having great facilties at arund 15 – 20 bucks a night. There are plenty of free RV road side parks too.

RV Hire is around £350 for the 7 days (4 Berth)

You could do all in easy for £1500 and probably have enough cash left over for some prezzies!

Thanks for the helpful feedback guys, it’s certainly made things very clear on what to expect.

My trip would all depend on whether or not the other guys in my riding group were able to make it but Bear Back Biking sounds like the way to go.

I’m determined to make it out there one of these days but for now, I’m going to start planning and saving!