Steamboat, Snowmass, and Crested Butte are by far better mountains. Hell, I'd take Wolf Creek over any of them for the on-mountain (less so the apres). But they're all 3 hours+ from Denver. And when you live in Denver, you can't generally do that every week. So if you're looking for something nearby Denver, BC is where it's at.
"2 years ago" → this was your issue. That was the "coming back from COVID" year, where
everything - including all the infrastructure - was wonky. Waits at BC were still shorter than the rest of the nearby big mountains -
Vail was averaging hour-long lift lines at the bottom that year, and the mid-mountain lifts weren't much better. All because of COVID worker slowdown, as well as Vail drastically dropping its pass prices (which led to more people signing up than they anticipated).
In short, the COVID BS was a lot more than just reservations on the mountain for lunch. I wouldn't judge any mountain by an experience from 2 years ago.