“Look, there’s Berta!” cried my nine-year-old son, Sam. We were busy making pizzas to cook in our very own “pizza dome” at the Sonnenburg Family Restaurant and had been interrupted by a colourful costumed cow.
Having successfully navigated the resort’s 4km-long toboggan track in the dark – twice – we were both ravenous. Nevertheless, when Berta, the resort’s mascot came over and waved hello, Sam took a pause from adding pizza toppings and waved back.
We had arrived at the Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis ski resort earlier that day from London, flying into Innsbruck Airport and then taking a quick one-hour taxi ride to the village of Fiss.
Located in the Austrian Tirol, Fiss is one of a trio of traditional Tirolean villages that make up the ski area of Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis. Together, the three neighboring villages offer 214 kilometers of slopes and over 2,000 hours of sunshine a year.
It also has a reputation for being fantastic for family holidays with oodles of kid-friendly fun, and Sam and I were there to try it all out.
Disclosure: I was a guest of Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis, Visit Tirol and Visit Austria for the purpose of producing this guide. As always, my opinions are honest and my own. This post may contain affiliate links. I have been or could be if you click on a link in this post compensated via a cash payment, gift or something else of value for writing this post. See our full disclosure policy for more details.
We Are Family
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I have skied in a lot of resorts, many in France and elsewhere in Europe, as well as some in the US. Often I have my kids in tow so I’m well versed in what makes a good family resort.
Most places that I visit – even those that market themselves as family-friendly are ski domains with added extras for kids: the odd themed run, a family-friendly hotel or three and some fun, kid-appropriate apres-ski activities such as tobogganing or ice skating.
Rare is it, however, that I visit a resort where kids are front and centre of absolutely everything. And yet this is exactly what Sam and I found in Serfaus Fiss Ladis.
“Ever since the beginning, kids have been our focus,” said Alexandra Hangl from the Serfaus Fiss Ladis Tourist Board who we met shortly after arriving at the Hotel Chesa Monte in Fiss, the middle of the three pretty villages that make up the villages of Serfaus. “We have always been about families.”
Sure enough, the resort’s tagline is “We Are Family”.
Keen to put this family-friendly reputation to the test, Sam and I quickly unpacked, put on our ski clothes and headed to Intersport in the heart of the 600-year-old town to pick up our skis and, more importantly, our toboggan.
Family-Friendly Activities
There are some 10 kilometres of dedicated toboggan runs in the Serfaus Fiss Ladis ski area and the most convenient one for us was the Witches Toboggan Run that starts at the mid station of the Schönjochbahn cable car and whizzes down around a series of bends and curves to the valley station.
On Thursday evenings, which is when we happened to arrive, the run is open at night and together we manoeuvred our wooden sledge down the floodlit snow-covered track attempting – rather badly admittedly – to steer the toboggan with the tow rope and brake with our feet.
The run leads families to the Sonnenburg Family Restaurant and, when our toes were too numb and cold to do another run, we stopped for dinner and set to work making our pizza.
As well as an appearance from Berta, we were visited by a clown seemingly walking upside down on his hands, a knight on horseback and a couple dressed head to toe in sparkling mirror costumes. In another room, face painters were hard at work creating designs for eager children and a pair of performers wandered around on stilts.
This entertainment is all part of the weekly kids night, held to tie in with the nighttime tobogganing. In terms of family-friendly activities, we were off to a great start.
Later during our stay we tried out the Skyswing, a giant, high-speed swing that stands at 1,800m near the navy blue Möseralmbahn gondola.
Seating eight people, the funfair attraction swings back and forth at up to 65 kilometres per hour and 22 metres above the ground.
There are three different levels: 15%, 40% and 100%. The latter involves a somersault and – if you’re feeling particularly brave – a pause at the top where you hang suspended upside down for five seconds. We opted for the 40% version but quickly downgraded to the 15% option once the swing started!
Nearby is the Fisser Flieger, a hang glider-like ride that soars above the Möseralm. Unfortunately – our fortunately given that we were both feeling rather queasy post-Skyswing – the ride was shut when we visited but we’ve bookmarked it for another time.
Family Skiing
Apres family ski activities are all very well and good but what about the skiing? The good news is that the Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis ski area has some excellent skiing for beginner, intermediate and expert skiers. Plus, the high altitude (the highest point of the resort sits above 2,800 metres) means you can enjoy snow sure ski slopes as well (there are also lots of snow cannons around).
We spent our first morning with Tomi, an Australian ski instructor with the Ski School Fiss-Ladis who showed us around the Fiss and Ladis ski areas, starting in Berta’s Kinderland.
Berta is the colourful cow that we met on our first night and is the mascot for the villages of Fiss and Ladis. Murmli the Marmot is the mascot for Serfaus and together the cute duo are hugely popular with younger kids.
“Children don’t talk about going to Fiss or Serfaus,” explained Tomi. “They talk about going to see mascots Murmli and Berta”.
Berta’s Kinderland
Berta’s Kinderland sits above 1,500m on a sunny plateau and is an incredible winter wonderland for kids. Forget the tiny learner spaces you may have seen on previous family ski holidays, these practice areas are enormous with a variety of slopes for learner skiers to progress on, magic carpets with animatronics, mini permanent race courses, and more.
The large, modern Kindervilla comes with a spacious play area, kids’ stage where movies can be screened on bad weather days and – most importantly given the many years I have spent lugging kids’ skis around – a storage area for children’s skis. There’s also a sun terrace where you can you sit and watch your children master their snowplough and parallel turns.
Sam carved his way down one of the learner pistes before we all skied down the blue run Ladisabfahrt towards Ladis, the smallest of the three villages. Tomi explained that this is the first piste that kids will do when they graduate from the learner slopes and to keep them entertained, the resort has built Berta’s Indian Village half-way down the slope.
This fun area – with a mock western town Main Street and Indian teepee – is the perfect place to stop with young kids in need of a break with games and storytelling sessions.
Skiing in Fiss
After we said goodbye to Tomi, Sam and I took the cherry-red Schönjochbahn II gondola up to 2,436 metres and access to the north side of Fiss.
This side of the mountain is made up of predominantly red runs and we carved our way along the red run Plazörabfahrt to Zirbenhütte, a table-service restaurant with a menu packed full of traditional Tirolean dishes.
We filled up on wiener-schnitzel and Frittatensuppe (sliced pancake soup) before ordering two enormous desserts – all in the name of research of course – kaiserschmarren (cut up sugared pancake) for Sam and the homemade apple strudel for me.
Energy levels restored, we spent the next couple of hours riding up the Schöngampbahn chairlift and down Berta’s Family Cross, a fun slope with jumps, tunnels and wide banking turns.
When it came time to make our way back to Fiss, we took the Schöngampbahn chairlift back to the top and skied Frommesabfahrt all the way home. Unbeknownst to us, this red run is one of the longest (if not the longest) run in the ski domain, a massive 10 kilometre-long piste if you take it all the way to Ladis and with a descent of 1,200 vertical metres.
We stopped “early”, finishing in Fiss, but it was still an epic way to end our first ski day.
Skiing in Serfaus
We woke up to blue skies and dusting of fresh snow and headed over towards the Serfaus ski area where we spent the morning carving tracks on wide slopes in the brilliant sunshine.
We discovered another fun park where Sam could practice his jumps before exploring Murmlipark – home to the marmot mascot. For lunch we skied down into the village of Serfaus before heading back up to repeat the fun park several more times.
There’s some very good skiing on the Serfaus side of the ski domain but we ran out of time to ski all of it – Sam’s enthusiasm for the fun park left little room for other slopes!
Nevertheless, it was encouraging to see that despite the resort’s family focus that there are pistes of all levels of difficulty. The top of the Komperdellalpe, for example, gives access to what are supposed to be some excellent black pistes.
Obviously, Sam is not quite up to black runs yet (although it won’t be long!) so I would not have skied these with him but for families with advanced skiers in their group, there are many different ski options.
Returning towards Fiss we found ourselves at the top of the Sattelkopf from where our only option down was the red run Kerbbodenabfahrt. This was one of the trickier red runs but Sam skied it brilliantly.
Where to stay in Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis
We stayed in Fiss at the family-run Hotel Chesa Monte, which was perfect for us. The hotel was one of the first to open in the village back in 1968 when ski tourism was in its infancy. It was also one of the first hotels in town to get an indoor swimming pool.
Today, Chesa Monte is a modern and comfortable place to stay with a lovely spa area with indoor pool and one of the best breakfast buffets we have ever had. The hotel is a short walk to the lifts or they run free shuttles in the morning for the (uphill) journey.
How to get to Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis
If you weren’t already convinced that Serfaus Fiss Ladis was a great family ski resort then here is the clincher: the resort is just one hour away from Innsbruck meaning no long tortuous transfer times.
If you’re lucky, you may even arrive in time to have a couple of hours on the slopes. At the every least you will have more than enough time to sort out your ski hire so you’re ready to go the next day (if you’re wondering where to rent your gear then there are a handful of ski shops in the centre of town, we went to Intersport).
