EpicMix, Cool New Feature or New Tracking Annoyance?
EpicMix is a new feature offered by Vail Resorts to make keeping up with your on mountain activities easier and more social. Keep up with your favorite places to ski, vertical feet skied, automatically share your achievements in social media outlets and more. Sounds cool, but how do they track this? What if I don’t want to be tracked? Who has access to this information once it has been collected?
EpicMix is a breakthrough online and mobile application that allows Vail Resorts guests (and employees) to digitally capture their ski and ride experience, and share it with friends and family. EpicMix leverages all of our past innovation in radio frequency (RF) technology to open a whole new world. We are currently installing state-of-the-art RF scanners at each of our 89 lifts across our five mountain resorts that will allow us to capture the lift rides and location of our guests. Guests and employees can then engage with their information online and in a free mobile application. We will then allow guests and employees the option to integrate that information with Facebook and Twitter.
– from Vail Resorts Vimeo Account
The promo video on Facebook has mixed reviews, where some critics raise some very good questions about privacy and how the system works. Vail Resorts mentions on their Facebook page that this is opt in and the RFID chip can be removed from the pass if you don’t want to be tracked.
Tracking my ski activity sounds cool as long as Vail explains the new feature to people buying passess clearly.