Family Ski Holiday recommendations?

[sallythesheep73]

We are a family of 4 adults and 2 children aged 4 and 7. Adults can ski. 7 year old has been 4 times before. 4 year old has not skiied.
In the past we have been with Mark Warner. However prices seem to be going up and they don't seem to offer the discounts they used to.
Can anyone suggest alternatives? Has anyone booked a 'normal' ski holiday and organised their own creche and ski school?
7 year old could probably do all day ski school but 4 year old would need combination of ski school and kindergarten.
We like the Mark Warner format but this year can't afford the price tag !!

We changed from MW and Esprit and went with ski Total. Still provided 'high tea', so still good for the kids. We then used a nanny from T4 nannies and that worked perfectly with DD (also 4). The nanny could ski and came out for an hour or two in the PM and both were in lessons every morning. The chalet were fine giving her access. We did share the cost with another family, but it was cheaper than MW even if we hadn't. I preferred it as it was much more flexible. She also baby sat.

We also used a nanny in Whistler too to break up the week a bit and again it worked perfectly, but we self catered there so no access issues.

So basically you need a nanny/babysitter for the afternoons with your 4-year-old? If so, I would choose a resort that has in-resort agency. I know Morzine does, because we almost used it one year, in combination with a SC apartment. The family companies ARE expensive - we used them when our DC were tiny - but once they were skiing we used local creches (there is always one at the lift base, but depending on where you go you may struggle to find English-speaking staff), or booked a chalet with babysitter included. It's a bit scary to cast off the security blanket of a British company that provides everything, but it is entirely possible to organise yourself and it's so much cheaper.

I always organise our own holidays. I love Austria so just organise flights, transfers, ski school and accommodation myself.

In Austria both children could do ski school, but the 4 year old would probably have 2 hours skiing in the morning and then 2 hours childcare /play in the afternoon. Admittedly we've only ever booked morning ski school and then just taken it in turns to look after the dc in the afternoon, but I know that ski schools offer afternoon 'care'. Some will even do lunch as well, if you want an uninterrupted day's skiing.

We have used things like marmottons in France another is club pou pou
We also used to do morning ski school with supervised lunch which gave us skiing time till about 2 pm the gentle ski with the kids in the afternoon which they loved but also because we had a decent morning ski we were happy to not do much in the afternoon. We did this with evolution 2. I think quite a few Austrian ski schools offer full day from very young.
We gave up on Esprit because it was cheaper to book the above our selves.
If you want wrap around service Crystal also offer it, I think ski beat do too.

Crystal ski offer wraparound childcare in some resorts and I think are less expensive than MW or Esprit.

We have had family ski holidays with Espri, Snowbizz, Crystal and booked DIY. Cheapest was Snowbizz and their childcare and customer service was by far the best too. We would go with them every year if they operated in more resorts than just Puy St Vincent.

We spent a week with Family Ski Company over xmas and thought they were brilliant. We stayed in Ardent in a chalet with two other families and everyone got on brilliantly. The staff were excellent and so helpful and my 7 and 5 year old had so much fun making new friends. We did a more DIY option the year before and found it exhausting - the FSC option was exactly what we were after and would highly recommend.