The weights
Family Score is seven sub-scores, 1–10, multiplied by fixed weights, rounded to one decimal. The same function renders on the resort page, the index, the finder, and this sentence.
| Axis | Weight |
|---|---|
| Ski school | 25% |
| Beginner terrain | 20% |
| Childcare & kids programs | 15% |
| Affordability | 15% |
| On-mountain | 10% |
| Non-ski | 10% |
| Travel | 5% |
Ski school is 25% — more than any other factor — because for most first trips, that is the trip. A legendary mountain that terrifies a first-timer is a bad mountain this year. Terrain, dining, and nightlife are someone else's score. Ours starts at the carpet and the 3:15 pickup. If that bothers you, you want a powder blog. We are not that.
The published weights are 25/20/15/15/10/10/5. If a page shows something else, the page is wrong.
What each 1–10 means
Ski school (25%)
A 5: A real school exists. Ages or prices are thin. It will teach a kid who already turns. It will not catch a nervous first-timer.
An 8: Purpose-built kids' campus or published small ratios, full-day with lunch, a learning area that is not an afterthought. Steamboat, Okemo, Deer Valley live here.
Beginner terrain (20%)
A 5: A handful of greens that don't connect, or 'easy' routes that still involve a traverse a 5-year-old will hate. Alta.
An 8: Long greens that actually connect. A kid can ski top to bottom without a nasty surprise. Morse, Dollar, Jackson Gore, Kidtopia.
Childcare & kids programs (15%)
A 5: Something exists for ski-school ages, or capacity is tiny, or visitors can't actually book it. Northstar's closed camp lives below this.
An 8: Licensed, visitor-bookable, infants or young toddlers, published hours. Smugglers' Treasures, Bachelor, Stratton's nursery.
Affordability (15%)
A 5: A family of four burns $800–$1,200 a day before lodging gets interesting. The program can still be worth it. The number is the number.
An 8: Day-trip math, a free child pass, or packages that beat mega-resort weeks. Brighton, Purgatory, Holiday Valley.
On-mountain (10%)
A 5: You will find the lodge. Regrouping takes a radio. The beginner area is a hike from where you wanted to eat.
An 8: Easy to find each other, food that isn't a punishment, no death-march to the carpet.
Non-ski (10%)
A 5: A lodge TV. The canyon is the outing. Fine for a day trip.
An 8: A town you can walk after 3pm, a pool, a waterpark, a national park. The rest-day is not a loss.
Travel (5%)
A 5: A thin airport, a four-hour winter drive, or a canyon that closes. Doable. Not SLC-to-Park-City.
An 8: A real airport under an hour, a highway not a pass, or a drive-to that families actually do on a Friday.
What the score does not measure
Snow reliability. Acreage as a flex. Terrain for expert parents who want to disappear. Nightlife. Whether the town has a decent espresso. Those things matter to someone. They are not why a 4-year-old had a good morning. Naming the exclusions is what makes the inclusions credible. Alta at 4.9 is not an insult to the snow. It is a family score.
Personal ★ vs Researched
Personal pages are mountains we have skied with our kids, mostly in the Wasatch, plus a few we paid for in Colorado and Tahoe. Researched pages are built from official resort pages, 2026 reporting, and the same scoring model. A personal review is not scored more generously. Park City does not get a bump because we have a timeshare. If anything, we are harder on the mountains we actually stand in. The badge tells you the sourcing, not the grade.
What “not paid” means
Partnerships never affect the score. No resort has previewed its number. No placement on the index, the finder, or a destination guide is for sale. If we ever take an affiliate commission on a lodging or lesson link, the link is labeled and the score does not move. Family Score is not a badge you can buy. See the affiliate disclosure.
When we don't know, we say so
Plenty of resorts don't publish lesson prices, class sizes, or childcare hours. Some hide it behind a booking widget, some just never updated the page. When we can't confirm something on a resort's own site, the field says Unverified and stays that way.
We could fill those gaps with an estimate and the page would look more finished. We're not going to. A made-up class size is worse than a blank one, because a parent can't tell the difference. If a number is on this site, we found it somewhere we can point at — and if we got it from the resort directly, we say that too.
A page with any Unverified field cannot show “Resort-confirmed.” That badge is what outreach is for. Until a resort replies, you will see “Published sources” or “Partially unverified,” derived from the fields, not typed by hand.
Scores for your kids' ages
The default number is the one on every card. If you tell us the ages in the back seat, we re-weight the same seven sub-scores — we do not invent new ones.
- 0–3: childcare 15% → 30%; ski school 25% → 10%; non-ski up. Care is the trip.
- 3–6: ski school 25% → 35%; beginner terrain up; non-ski down. The carpet is the trip.
- 7–12: roughly the default.
- 13–17: ski school down hard; on-mountain and non-ski up. The village and the interesting terrain start to matter.
Mixed ages use the youngest kid. The week is only as good as the least-happy child. You will always see both numbers: Family Score 7.8 · For your 4-year-old: 8.4. The global score does not get replaced. Alta at 4.9 for a toddler and something far less punishing for teenagers is the same honest mountain, answered for the right family.
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