Myself and a friend were in Calgary from out of province and brought clubs since we had time to squeeze a round in to our trip. We're both heavy golfers in the summer and picked Valley Ridge based off positive reviews. We showed up for our round and were told that the greens on the back 9 were being aerated so we had to play the front 9 twice. Fair enough considering we showed up on a Tuesday (Sept 24). The pro shop attendant said that because of that we got a lower rate of $60 instead of the regular $89, which was fair. He also said "it's too bad you booked online because you would not have known about the greens". An e-mail letting us know would have been appreciated since we provided it in the online booking.
We get out on to the front 9 and the greens were fresh aerated themselves along with a heavy dose of sand. Had some roll to them but really took away from the round. Again aeration is a necessary part of maintaining a course, but would have been nice to get a heads up.
Finally since we were playing the front 9 twice, there was a group of tee times blocked off so that each group could loop around twice. The marshal told us that they accidentally blocked off 6 tee times for 7 groups and asked us to pick up the pace so we wouldn't hold up the first group after the blocked times. This really irritated us as we kept both 9's just under the 2 hour mark (3:50 total round).
It's a gorgeous looking course that is probably unreal when the greens are rolling and the whole thing is open. An e-mail or quick call about the conditions of the course before the round would have gone a long way. If you decide to play here, call ahead of time for course conditions.