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Bansko Reviews
12 reviews of Bansko in Bulgaria.
Voted 3rd out of 3 reviewed ski resorts in Bulgaria
- Superb(2)
- Good(4)
- O.K.(5)
- Poor(1)
- Awful(0)
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Liked the skiing but not the town
Reviewed 7 Jun 2016
I don’t think we will go back to Bansko… The skiing’s is brilliant but the town isn’t. It’s almost like Benidorm with neon lights everywhere. The slopes are amazing though, it’s just the town that we didn’t like.
Cheap as chips skiing
Reviewed 7 Jun 2016
Bansko’s skiing isn’t particularly exceptional, but my boy hadn’t been before and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is skiing for the first time. I wouldn’t go for advanced skiing.
The cost of living is cheap as chips – a bottle of premium beer costs 50p and you can get a great meal for £10. It’s one of the cheapest places I’ve ever been. Even the holiday cost was good, France or Austria would have been double what we’d paid.
It was a long trip from Sofia, with never ending roads that weren’t really nice. Our coach stopped half way for a good 20 minutes though which made it better.
There were queues for the gondola but I think the place is a victim of its own success – because it’s so cheap a lot of people go there.
Great beginner-intermediate skiing/boarding
Reviewed 20 May 2015
I’d recommend Bansko to beginner – intermediates as a nice place to play around. If you’re above this level it can get a bit repetitive for a whole week, but I knew that before we arrived (Bulgaria isn’t like France in terms of big ski areas). We had two beginner skiers with us and it was good for them, with some nice spots to practice on. They raved about their ski instructor and came away feeling confident which was great. We were quite surprised how quiet it was – maybe it was because we stayed there towards the end of the season but we expected a bit more après ski.
Impressed!
Reviewed 24 Mar 2015
I honestly really enjoyed our week here! I’ve skied a lot in Italy and Austria – Mayrhofen is my favourite – and Bulgaria wasn’t bad at all. We like to visit different places but we’ll definitely come back here in a few years’ time.
There are plenty of restaurants with such a lot of variety when it comes to eating out – we ate in a lot of restaurants and found the prices cheap, staff friendly and the quality always very good. In one restaurant, we had 7 drinks and good quality main meals for £15, we couldn’t believe it! They often put pictures of the food on the menu which is even more helpful and a lot of restaurants also had music or singers creating a lively atmosphere.
The shopping is also good – Bulgarian resorts certainly have more shops than you get in Austria. There were many shops to provide you with skis, and a lot of souvenir shops. We went shopping every night!
With regard to the ski area, if you were super professional and only liked black runs and adrenaline you might not find the area fun however I’m a good skier who prefers red slopes and it was fine for me. For families the area would be great. It was so cold, -10 to -15C and because of the holidays over the New Year and it being the weekend, there was a lot of queueing on the first day. We were waiting nearly 2 hours for the lift in the cold, standing there thinking my goodness but then we found two better options which I would recommend:
1 – If you buy the ski pass you can use the bus to get to another ski lift which gets you onto the slopes really quickly
2 – You can also pay for private taxis which will take you to the lifts (they’re always waiting around)
3 – Don’t wait for a ski lift at the end of the day, but ski down. We found a nice 5-7km easy green run that took us really close to the Hotel Lion where we were staying (a very good hotel, highly reccomended)
Long queues at the gondola put us off
Reviewed 20 Jun 2014
The snow wasn’t very good while we were here. We were very disappointed with the lift system, we wouldn’t come back to Bulgaria. We had to queue for around an hour at the gondola to get up onto the slopes. It was about 12 or 13 degrees at the bottom, so there was no snow. The resort is good value, but we would prefer to spend some more and go to a more snow sure resort next time.
We ate out on the slopes a bit for lunch. We went to one place which was an interesting experience. We ate horse burger and it was cooked on a bbq in the woods (heath and hygene went by the board). I would have hated to be a vegetarian here. They don’t know what a vegetarian is. The local people were very friendly and we got a very warm welcome everywhere we went.
The town of Bansko is interesting. There is an authentic village down at the bottom which is quite picturesque and has a church as some older buildings, and then at the top there is a new, purpose-built ski resort which doesn’t really look finished and isn’t anywhere near as nice. I think most people don’t really bother walking down into the older part of town. We went down for the celebrations on New Years day which was quite weird, lots of men in traditional dress.
Resort is still under development
Reviewed 21 May 2014
We preferred our holiday to Borovets in Bulgaria. In comparison Bankso is very much still in development. The buildings and the roads are still under construction. A lot of the pavements into town were broken and had potholes.
The skiing was good. We didn’t have any snowfall while we were there, in fact I think there was a bit of a heat wave, so the snow deteriorated over the week. There were definitely enough runs, and there was plenty to suit our level of skiing.
It’s worth knowing that if you leave your gear in the storage room at the lifts as we did then it can take around an hour to queue to get your stuff and then queue for the lift. You can get a pass which allows you to go in the priority queue and this saves you having to wait for the lift, or you can arrive later at the lifts. If you get there for about 10:30 or 11am then you can pretty much walk straight through.
It’s good value for money in resort, it was quite cheap to go out at night and to eat out. It’s much more expensive to eat out up on the mountain than in town, it’s literally double the prices up at the top. Bankso is very good for going out, there is night entertainment for adults but there are also plenty of restaurants for families, etc.
The transfer from the airport was quite long. It took about 2h30.
Make sure you pre-book a VIP lift pass
Reviewed 18 May 2014
It’s the perfect place to go for beginners! It was our first time on real ski slopes and we did quite a bit of research to work out where was good to go. I couldn’t fault it. There are good slopes to learn on. The ski school was very good; our instructor was great and spoke good English (we used Ulen ski school, the ones with the blue and yellow jackets).
For lunch there is one main hut on the main slope. I found it expensive to eat up on the slopes, about £12 for a hot dog and a coke.
It can get rowdy in Bansko over New Years, so it might be better to go here out of peak season. There are lots of people touting their restaurants and hotels in town, but everyone is polite and friendly. It was nice to be staying a little out of town and away from all that. I would massively recommend getting the VIP lift pass which means you don’t have to queue for the lifts, it was so worth it. If you don’t get one of these then you can be queuing for around 2 hours!
If you are in the ski school then you can jump the queues
Reviewed 16 May 2014
It’s a good resort, we’ve been before. It’s probably best for intermediates to advanced level. If you are in the ski school then you can jump the queues. Some of our party used the ski school and they found it good.
Incredible value and a fun place
Reviewed 24 Apr 2014
I would definitely go back to Bansko, everything is really reasonably priced - I’ve been to France before and it’s much cheaper than there. The skiing is probably not as good as France but it was everything we needed. It’s definitely enough skiing for a week, but if you stayed any longer than a week you would probably want somewhere where you could explore further. It’s best for about intermediates moving on to experts, although there’s not an awful lot of off-piste, there are a couple of black runs. There are a few bars there that had bands on which was quite cool. We had a good time here as a couple but I’d definitely go back with the lads on a group holiday. It is suitable for families but I think with the rowdy bars it’s probably best for young groups.
Brilliant skiing, brililant value.
Reviewed 22 Apr 2014
The skiing was brilliant; I’ve been to more challenging places in terms of slopes like Val d’Isere but for what it was, it did the job pretty well and we were really impressed with what was on offer. It’s bang on for a nice cheap ski holiday, not top of the range lovely powder like you get in Val d’Isere and Canada but fine for what you pay for it.
We stayed in a hotel but ate out, we just walked down the main high street and picked a different place per day. There are some nice Bulgarian places as well as more commercial places like burger joints etc. Eating out is a lot cheaper than ski resorts in France and we were having three course meals for about £20 each with cheap drinks too.
It’s quite a young place where a large contingent of the people are 18-30 year olds living out and working in the resort. Everyone is so friendly and there are some really cool people, we made mates with the ski instructors and went out with them a few times. The nightlife was good on certain days, one night we went to a club and it was completely empty but we still had a good laugh and whenever we went to the busier places they were really good too. There are other things to do like snowmobile toboggan stuff which we didn’t do but heard it was awesome and well worth doing. There are also signs for paintballing and other stuff like that.
It’s good for young groups but families would do well there as well, my auntie had a holiday in Bansko with her family and they had a great time.
Prefect learn to ski with children
Reviewed 22 Apr 2014
If you're going to learn to ski or with small kids, Bansko is perfect, however if you’re intermediate above you’d probably get bored (I did pretty much all the area in half a day). For beginners, the main run that links back down from the top station is really good as it’s nice and long whereas on the nursery slopes you have to keep going up and down.
The cost of lunch on the slopes is really good compared to the Alps, but then you don’t get the huge ski area you would have in France.
There was cannon snow at the bottom but it was decent up at the top, we were here over the half term week and there was a busy morning rush for the gondola to get to the bottom main station, but once you were up on the mountain it was fine.
Slopes more difficult than they looked
Reviewed 22 Apr 2014
The slopes were marked up wrongly as to difficulty, they were a lot more difficult than they looked. They were also really busy to the point of being dangerous and there were horrendous queues for the lifts. We were all so disappointed and really fed up and the people I went with said they would never go there again.
I had an accident on the first day and was completely ignored and not told we had to make an insurance claim until it was too late. One of the people in our group couldn’t come and they kept her lift pass and sold it on without giving her a refund, which when you think we had cancelled her holiday quite a while beforehand was so disappointing.
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