My kids and I have never been skiing. We arrived at Whitetail at 9:15 this morning (MLK day), paid for ski rentals and lessons, and stood in the rental line for 45 cold minutes till they told us that there were NO skis or boards left for children under 5 ft tall. It was annoying, to say the least, and I'm not inclined to try that place again. Is this a typical experience? Can anyone recommend a better place to go for total novices?

Yes that is what normally happens on MLK weekend and presidents day weekend. They are the most crowded most peek. Usually Roundtop has rentals longer on that day. I was at liberty on that Sat and the overflow lot was almost full.

No place can stock enough on those peek demand days. After the end of feb the crowds die down on the weekends. Wed evenings are not that crowded.

But you shouldn't have had to wait that long to find out. When I first started skiing I had to learn all these things the hard way too.
Give it another try.
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Wow that stinks. But I guess its understandable given the crowds. 1st come 1st served right? Did you get a refund on lift, rental etc... ?

It is really unfortunate that you had a bad experience, but if Whitetail was like Liberty this weekend, the place was operating at beyond capacity. There is no good excuse for not letting you know they were out of rentals earlier. That being said, this was an extraordinarily heavy weekend, particularly since it snowed on Fri.. Holiday weekends are tough and even though areas try to plan, they can get caught short. You can't really buy an extra hundred pairs of skis just to have them lie unused 360 days out of they year.

OHMIGOD New. The stories I could tell about the number of times people went to RT based on info from their website only to find the conditions, facilities reported open were closed,lifts not running, trails no groomed, etc, etc. the really isnt any recourse other then to know someone whos already there and call them on their cell to get a first hand report. us RT locals have a whole network of that to keep getting skunked. for some reason, the folks at snowtime seem to think its more important to get people there even if they are pissed off and may never ome back, than to tell the truth and maybe have them come a few days or weeks later. their concept of customer srvice sometime boggles the mind.

Yes, we did get a refund, but only after standing in yet a third line for over 30 minutes. I understand completely about MLK being an extra-busy day for Whitetail, but what I cannot understand is why neither the website nor the customer service representative I called the night before suggested that we arrive well before 9 am if we planned to rent children's skis. Surely the staff knew that (1) it was a school holiday (2) the skiing conditions were good and (3) there were large numbers of Girl Scout groups coming. Nor can I understand why the computers in the rental facility don't tell the computers at the ticket line to stop selling rental tickets once the equipment supply has been exhausted.