It’s a great place for skiing and having fun around snow. Visited Cardrona with my friends for our skiing trip and had an amazing time. The only major issue I could find was the ridiculously high prices for foot and beverages. I understand it’s the only option but $16 for 3 chicken wings should be illegal.

We checked the ski report at Queenstown, drove to the ski field access road and checked the report, and the field was open. We drove up to the carpark, tramped 1 km through the mud to the base, went to buy lift passes to be told the mountain was at capacity and we couldn't ski. So Cardrona, you get 1 star for poor communication. When the field is too busy you must let people know before they waste their day.

We've been coming to Cardrona as a family (driving down from Christchurch) for a ski holiday in August since 2016. This year was our best yet! The snow was amazing, queues were generally pretty good and we all had fun exploring the mountain. We typically put the kids in skiwees but this year they skied with us and it worked out perfectly. If you have all your gear and you're an intermediate skier, highly recommend parking at valley view - awesome way to start and end our day and we felt we could easily go to our car for anything we needed. Captains queue was a bit average without a liftie guide as a lot of people don't know how to queue... Willow's needs clearer signage for people to wait for the chair. I got knocked over by a swinging chair as someone behind us didn't wait in the designated space. Nasty bruise on my arm and thank god my helmet saved it from being worse. Also, get your water at Captain's - it actually tastes good!

Returned to Cardrona after many years absence on a day trip from Queenstown. The ski area has grown so much, but it needed to for the numbers. More expensive than Coronet Peak and not as slicky run at the base. Ticketing and gear hire took too long. The restaurants (in both valleys) were packed to the point of not getting a seat. For all that, the skiing was mighty fine

The drive from Queenstown through the Crown Ranges was one of the coolest things I’ve done on my ski holiday. Cardrona is well-equiped, and had all the terrain I could ask for as an intermediate boarder. In comparison to the other resorts, I was impressed by the quality of the food and the customer service I received from the team. Thanks to the QT snow centre team and driver Josh for safely returning my phone to me after I lost it on the mountain. Such a fun day on the mountain, and I can’t wait to come back!

I have skied at Cardrona since it opened. I have been a season pass holder for many years. And now they take a month of my skiing out with a so called blackout period,. I’ll stick to Coronet in future.

It is better to take your own food! The quality of the food is really not good and made without any passion or even interest and that for ridiculously high prices. Even at the Mezz, what they like to call the fine dining, is not really a hit. Truffle chips?! They only get sprayed with something that might contain a minimum of truffles, if any at all. The food quality at noodle bar is exactly the same problem.

Always good times @ Cardrona even when the weather isn't the best. Usually go there during Winter X Games so that's busier than school holidays and during those times queues are a bit annoying if you are on the MdDougalls or Whitestar and want to watch so it would be great if they upgraded to a six-seater. But then the Captain's is usually relatively empty. Limited off-piste as you need decent snow coverage to hit the best diamonds trails but there are plenty of other cool drops and steep areas for adrenaline junkies around the Captain's. If the usually used for racing trails are open, you can get some decent speeds while carving it up hard :) Food/Beverages got a lot more expensive from the 2023 season to what I remember so you may want to pack lunch and bring your isotonic drinks with you :)

Staff were so nice, definitely worth getting a private lesson you get to skip ques so you don’t have to wait long, slops are great and well maintained.

All the staff at the resort are super friendly and helpful. The bus ride is very comfortable thanks to our skilful driver Pete. My friends and I have very little experience in snow sports so we did a first timer package which include a whole day lesson. Our snowboarding instructor Gav is experienced, friendly, encouraging. We all managed to learn a few basic snowboarding skills. We couldn’t stop talking about it for the rest of the day.

Great snow, despite it being an average winter. Two things make this a 3 star review. At no time in the last seven days did I see a ski patrol. What I did see, was parks riders, both skiers and boarders hammering down the slow area at the bottom of All Nations, whizzing around novice skiers trying to get there confidence up, scaring the living daylights out of them. It's appallingly bad. Do something about it. Second, Captians cafe is still the biggest joke on the mountain. A sold out day, yet the queue for coffee was 25 minutes. Grumpy staff, grumpy patrons, but.....BUT, they still only had one of two coffee machines going. Unbelievable.

We had a private 2 hour lesson with Eriska. She was amazing- really patient, encouraging and clearly a very experienced instructor. We learned much more than we expected and were able to feel confident with skiing with and without poles, stopping, controlling our speed , riding the magic carpet and beginning to explore turns. Thank you so much. Extremely enjoyable day

Having skied in the North Island for most of my life I have had a revelation. This field is so well run, so professional it puts RAL to shame. The snow conditions were quite low but it stayed in great condition through out the day. Crisp squeaky snow on a solid base. The staff managed the high numbers well and the free shuttle bus from the bottom carpark was great. We will be back.

Let me start by saying there wasn’t much snow but that didn’t stop us having fun on the beginner slopes and every instructor we had for group lessons was fantastic. But let’s talk about the downstairs cafe. Lunch is expensive but that’s what you expect on a mountain. Honestly, I have no issue with paying a premium for hot food. My issue is with the day we decided to bring our own noodles in a cup and use the boiling water tap in the cafe. I have spent a huge amount of money to bring my family here and wanted to exercise some frugality on one day. The single hot water boiler was out of water by 1:45 which is when lunch starts for those doing lessons. I asked staff behind the counter if it was broken and they said just to wait for it to reheat. I stood at the water heater for a full 20 minutes and every 4 minutes or so got a tiny dribble of boiling water. After 20 minutes I had enough water for one noodle cup and had a queue of disappointed customers behind me asking why I was taking so long. I repeatedly raised the issue to staff but they couldn’t/wouldn’t help. The best the staff offered was for me to buy an overpriced tea, throw away the teabag and use the water for my noodles. I found this a terrible experience, it soured our time at Cardrona and sent a clear message that profit is far more important than the customer experience. My advice is to have two or more water boilers, and if they aren’t working, do the right thing and provide free or reasonably priced boiling water from behind the counter. This is pretty basic customer service and I’m disappointed that Cardrona doesn’t put the customer first.

Great time for everyone! The instructors were amazing, and all the staff were so helpful. It was easy to get onto the mountain from Queenstown, pickup our rental gear, find the instructor and get started. They had some great food and drink options on the mountain, as well as spots to sit and enjoy the view if you wanted a break Or skiing just wasn’t for you.