How is Villars, and with children?

Does anyone have any experience or tips about Villars? With children (well actually just one)?

I need a francophone resort for midterm next February. Flaine is my son's favourite, and I like it too. But hotel accommodation with other children around is already sold out. We tried Les Gets last year, but disliked all the traffic through the village and limited uplift capacity from the bottom.

Figured I could try Switzerland for proximity to Geneva airport and, as I sad, francophone surroundings.

cheers, bigmac

It depends what you want, really. Villars is OK, but there a lots of other Swiss resorts I'd favour. There's a fair amount of good intermediate skiing around Veysonnaz and Les Collons (near Sion) which would probably appeal to kids and I'll bet they're a lot cheaper. Ovronnaz is a thermal resort, south-facing up from Riddes if you like swimming a lot, but has rather limited lifts and ski area. La Tzoumaz has a new 8-man telecabine and connects to Verbier but is a lot lot cheaper (plus a small swimming pool) but your child would have to be comfortable with skiing very long blues. La Tzoumaz also has a 10km sled run which is a hoot (as long as you're both happy getting very wet. Champery is a very nice town but can be busy - Morgins is next to it but cheaper, however, the skiing can be challenging.

Thanks for these tips.

I've now looked a bit more at this and the real joy of the area looks like ease of transfer. Seems like we can take the train to most resorts (I nearly said 'stations', but I meant it in French). So dont need to worry about asking the driver to stop when someone wants to throw-up. In fact I'm in Muerren in January and just ordered a 'familienkart' with my Transfer Ticket - so my son will use the train for free.

But I'm going to stick to something like Villars/ les Diablerets/ Leysin. These seem to interconnect with lots of long blues/ reds for my son. But there's enough height to take uncertainty out of the snow. And I can at least try to travel around and up a bit when not skiing with him. But does Leysin have a lot of boarders (no offence guys - I'm not bothered but I dont want to have to explain to my wife why I allowed our first-born to be mowed down on a blue by 90kg of beginning boarder)?

cheers, bigmac