Most ski areas sell daily lift tickets that are good from the minute they open in the morning until the minute they close in the afternoon. Some ski areas offer night skiing as well. This is usually included in the daily lift ticket price or you can purchase a ticket that lets you ski from 4pm until close depending on the ski area (usually around 4 hours of skiing for substantially less than a full day ticket). There are exceptions to this such as discounted half day tickets or discounted tickets that only allow access to beginner areas.

During Covid, in an attempt to reduce crowding, Wachusett broke up their business hours into four blocks. I don’t remember the exact time frame of each one, but they were 3.5-4 hours each of memory served. The problem was, they didn’t reduce the price accordingly. So instead of ~$100 to ski from 8am until the lights shut off at night, you were paying ~$70 to ski from 8:30 to noon.

My numbers are probably off a little since I don’t typically ski Wachusett during the day, but people were upset that it felt like paying more to ski less. I don’t have much of an opinion one way or the other, I bought the night skiing pass last season for $160 and went about 20 times. Best value I’ve ever found for skiing. Besides, Wachusett is convenient, that’s gonna cost a premium.

Hope this helped!

You buy tickets for a session - roughly 3-4 hours. If you want to ski longer, you buy multiple sessions. They’re roughly time blocks like 7-11, 11-3, 3-7, 7-10

You used to just buy a ticket for the whole day.