When China builds an indoor ski resort, it really builds an indoor ski resort. As in, it looks like they found a mountaintop resort, moved it to just outside Shanghai and put a roof over it.
Welcome to Shanghai L*SNOW Indoor Skiing Theme Resort, which opened its doors on Friday (September 6th) and was immediately certified by Guinness World Records as the largest indoor ski resort in the world (beating another indoor resort in China). This is the skiing version of glamping.
With a total footprint of 1,063,783ft² (98,828.7m²) – about 15 football fields – the resort boasts a vertical drop of nearly 200ft (60m), and three slopes totalling nearly 4,000ft in length (1,200m).
It features four different difficulty level ski slopes, including a 340m (1,115ft) long advanced slope, while the average coverage of snow reaches a depth of more than 70cm (27.5in), supplied by 33 snow machines. They can even make it snow inside.
And then there’s the fun stuff: from the photos it appears that the resort has at least one four-person chairlift, a gondola high up overhead and some kind of snow train running around the edge. And that’s not to mention outside and on the roof where the developers have built an entire theme park with water rides, a hotel and various shops and restaurants.
According to Powder.com, the resort has already sold more than 100,000 tickets since presale ticketing began on August 8th. The resort expects to host more than 15 million visitors annually.
Yin Kang, executive deputy general manager of the resort, told reporters: “We built this project to fulfil people’s wishes, which has filled the gap for those seeking ice and snow tourism.” (We suspect this has lost something in translation.)
- The best men’s ski pants 2024: trousers for all skiers and boarders
- The best ski backpacks 2024: for adventures on and off-piste
