Park City Mountain has a new slogan, and at least one local branding professional thinks it misreads the room.

The resort unveiled "Larger Than Life" as its new tagline on Tuesday, Sept. 1, with Olympic snowboarder Shaun White as the campaign's face and voice. It marks the third rebranding since Vail Resorts purchased Park City Mountain in 2014, following "There is Only One" in 2015 and "This Is Your Mountain."

Kate Sonnick, a Park City advertising and branding professional who writes a column for the Park Record, called the tagline "especially triggering given the past few seasons at Park City Mountain: the larger-than-life lift lines, prices, parking problems, patrol disputes — not to mention the smaller-than-life snowfall."

Those grievances have numbers behind them.

A peak-day adult lift ticket for the 2026-27 season will cost $369, according to TownLift. That is about 42% higher than the 2022-23 price and makes Park City the third most expensive single-day ticket in the country, behind Beaver Creek at $392 and Vail Mountain at $374. Both resorts use dynamic pricing, so advance purchases can cost considerably less.

The 2025-26 season was brutal. Snowfall at Park City Mountain ran 60% below long-term averages, according to Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz's January 2026 investor update. Utah recorded its warmest winter on record, according to ABC News. The resort closed early, on April 5. Across the Rockies, skier visits fell 25%. Katz called the stretch "one of the most challenging winters in history," according to TownLift's reporting on Vail Resorts' fiscal results.

The season before brought its own trouble. About 200 ski patrollers walked off the job in December 2024, forcing most of the mountain to close during the holiday rush. Katz acknowledged in a September 2025 investor discussion that "there could be some guests who didn't have a good experience and are concerned about returning," the Vail Daily reported.

Early Epic Pass sales for 2026-27 reflected the hangover. Units sold were down about 10% through late May compared with the prior year. Summit County's ski industry generates more than $1.3 billion a year, according to the Park City Chamber, and transient room tax collections finished 2025 down 9%.

In her Saturday, Sept. 5 column, Sonnick argued that the old tagline made something enormous feel intimate, while the new one just makes it feel bigger. She also suggested "Larger Than Life" may be a competitive response to Deer Valley, which more than doubled its skiable terrain in 2025 by adding roughly 3,700 acres.

Park City Mountain's own marketing leans on scale: 7,300 acres, 41 lifts, 330-plus trails and a role as a venue for the 2034 Winter Olympics. In a statement accompanying the Sept. 1 launch, the resort said the mountain is rooted in the legacy of Olympians, record-breakers and pioneers, and that the energy they brought still lives in the snow and terrain.

The resort is targeting Nov. 20 as opening day for the 2026-27 season. Shaun White's Snow League halfpipe series is scheduled to debut at Park City Mountain in January.