There are some good points about Soda, more so when considering family friendly prices. They have good deals for family packages etc. It's also good place for pure beginners with kids for learning to ski based on the slope difficulty and rental packages. However, there is a serious lack of maturity from the staff there, and little or no supervision. At one point, my 8 year old and I were getting on the lift, him being a beginner, and he fell, which is a pretty common occurance on the beginner lifts. The kid manning the chair stood and stared at us while I struggled to get him back on his feet. Didn't move a muscle to help! He even looked a bit annoyed at us. I gave him a really dirty look once we managed to get back up and onto a chair, and he seemed completely oblivious to why I would be mad.
We decided to do some tubing that afternoon, since the prices were good. However, they had kids running the show there too, and again, no supervision. It was the Tuesday after Presidents Day, and there were about 10 of us in line at any one time, which is not a long line in my opinion. However, it took 20 minutes for us to get to the front because they didn't have nearly enough tubes, requiring users to wait for a tube to arrive. This was particularly annoying in the longer tube run, as it ends a solid 50 yards from where you need to drag the tube over to the next person in line. How long does it take an 8 year old to drag a tube 50 yards? I could not understand why there were not staffers at the bottom of the run waiting to help drag the tubes back over, and I was really annoyed that they had so few tubes. When I voiced my feelings about the lack of tubes to one of the staffers who looked more "senior" than the others ( he looked like he might actually be out of high school, although his mohawk hair cut made it hard to tell). he simply brushed me off and said " you should have been here yesterday. The wait was an over an hour for a tube." This was his answer to my complaint. If they would have just had another 7-10 tubes on each of the hills, the wait would have been cut in half. That's just being cheap in my opinion.
After getting in 3 tube slide runs in 60 minutes, my kids were sick of waiting in lines and asked to leave. So much for the bargain prices.
Cheap yes, but you get what you pay for, including unhelpful, inexperienced staff. I'm not going back there.

Took our two kids there for their first experience on the snowy hills and had a fun time tubing. I would echo some criticisms posted regarding staff. There were two staff running each tubing run, one at the bottom hooking up, and one at the top observing. My 7 year old daughter's tube came unhooked near the "interesting" off load ramp at the top and went careening down the lift chute, running into a metal fence post. She was not hurt, thankfully, but the staff took no notice whatsoever of what happened, during or after the event. So if you're taking your kids, plan on being the Safety Officer and Rescuer. Otherwise, we had a nice time at Soda Springs and would recommend it.

Note: I only rated 'Overall' and 'Family Friendly' as there were no "not applicable" ratings availabe.

I'm normally a visitor of Boreal or Sierra At Tahoe, and occasionally Squaw, but I did learn at Soda Springs, so there was a nostalgic factor to the trip. We went solely because lift tickets for "Youth" is only $16, a good deal compared to the outrageous prices of Boreal or Sierra at Tahoe, not to mention Squaw Valley.

Seemed relatively low on snow, as it hasn't gotten any since the 5th of January I believe, so it's been 10 days (today is 1-15-06). Relatively quiet for a popular skiing holiday. Snow quality was surprisingly good, for how cold it's been recently, even if there wasn't quite enough of it.

I was looking forward to at least a few black diamonds, being an intermediate-advanced skier, however the right half of the mountain was "closed for race training" and I didn't bother to ask more. The terrain parks were groomed over for a lack of snow I presume, so there was very little to do other than park it on the side and build jumps and etc. along the side of the second bunny hill.

Definitely a plus when you can ski straight down into the icy parking lot, and even slide along to the car that's at most 20 yards away; much less hassle without the walking.

It is a great place to go skiing. The equipment is pretty good and the track is excellent. It's a place you will want to visit over and over again.

Dangerous and incompetent. Dangerously bad equipment. Horriblly overcrowded. Staff that has no clue and doesn't care to get one. I've never seen a place so badly run. The only reason these guys are in business is that they're the first ski area people driving east on Hwy80 see. Do yourself a favor and avoid it.