Children's ski lessons in Les Gets

[bideyinn]

Any recommendations for ski lessons for an 8 year old on Las Gets? We're going out of school holiday time in March to celebrate a big birthday as a family with our 20 year old and his brother. He's only skied for a week and a bit due to being too young on previous holidays and having chicken pox another time (that was a great holiday). He's having some lessons at the dry slope before we go but by his age his brother was a brilliant skier and happy with any lessons so we didn't have to worry about where we sent him.

We want him to have fun but also really get going with the skiing. Any ideas?

Try BASS

We've used them in Morzine for our ds's and they've had a great time and progressed well.

They are all British instructors with full qualifications and the maximum group size is 6, unlike ESF who have huge class sizes and often much less qualified instructors with poor English.

Do book before you go though, they get very busy.

360 are also pretty good - it's a French company but their instructors speak very good English. BASS are good, but I thought the extra cost just to have a native English speaker wasn't worth it.

I think the extra cost with BASS is for the smaller group sizes. That's worth paying for IME. The instructors really get to know the group, and the kids get to know each other too.

We have used ESF and been pretty happy with them, though the mix of languages could mean there is more French spoken than English. One of our kids really thrived under their technical instruction while the other two preferred the more relaxed style of ESi 360.

The French school holidays run until 14th March, during which ESF offer ski prestige with a maximum of 6 per class though it is pricey at €300 for 2.5 hours for 6 days.

BASS cost €240 for 5 days of 2 hours, and imply that they only offer junior courses during UK school holidays and for children over 7 but can be flexible depending on demand so you would need to check with them first to see if they can accomodate you. I haven't used them so can't comment on the instruction. For us, French is a benefit and the cost differential seems a lot. We paid half that for 2 hours over 6 days last week with ESi 360.

Our kids skied with ESi 360 last week and all three loved it and progressed loads. Their complete beginners is for a maximum of 10 kids to two instructors and costs €155 for 6 days of 2.5 hours. ESi did have a wide age range in each group so our 4 year old skied with some much larger kids which is not always ideal but he coped fine despite being at the back for a lot of it and having to walk more than the bigger kids on the flat bits.

DS1 had his first week skiing ever with ESI 360 in Les Gets and he did really well. The instructors were French, but really nice and spoke good English. He was doing snow plow turns on the greens/blues by the end of the week.

Thanks for all your replies. Very helpful indeed.