Just a reminder to those who have tickets to the Circus outside of Vancouver and Richmond proper that you cannot drive yourself to many of these events. Bus tickets are on sale at a discount rate until 18 Jan. and will double after that.

No driving to and spectator parking at all events at Cypress Mountain Circus (snowboarding, IIRC), no driving at all to the Whistler circii unless you can prove you have a place to stay up there (not to mention no parking at events).

http://www.vancouversun.com/miss+Oly...322/story.html

Translink passes (for bus/skytrain) are included in the tickets though.

No good for events outside Vancouver and Richmond (no public transportation).

Just because you have a place to stay in Whistler does NOT give you permission to drive there between 6am and 6pm. You need to request a parking permit from where you are staying in order to get through the checkpoint near Squamish.

Tickets for sale for Opening & Closing ceremonies (FACE VALUE)
 

I have 2 tickets available for both the opening and closing ceremonies that I am selling for FACE VALUE, as the people whom I bought them for can no longer attend. These are all CATEGORY A tickets (the best category).

Details:
Opening ceremony: $1,100 each (FACE VALUE) - 2 available
Closing ceremony: $775 each (FACE VALUE) - 2 available

Please let me know if you are interested.

Thanks.

I need tickets for Figure Skating Men free program (Feb, 18). Please, send me a message if you have any tickets for sale.

Here's a little snippet of the circus. I'm not sure how big contingent NBC (U.S. rights broadcaster) is sending up here but they have hired 50 drivers locally to drive their crew around - 20 drivers in Whistler and 30 in Vancouver or v-v, and provide accommodation, at least in Whistler, for the drivers.

In other news/Ringmaster F***Ups, they've been hiring young adults from all around B.C., if not the ROC (rest of Canada) too, late last year to work at the Circus. They, through the recruiter, asked these young people to come down to Vancouver for orientation and told them they would start training at the beginning of January and be paid for it. Mid January has come and many of these people came down specially to Vancouver and have found out training has not yet started and the Ringmasters don't seem to have a clue and told the recruiter and the young people anything.

With the security circus in effect, spectators are being advised to arrive 2 hrs before game time for indoor events and 3 hrs before for outdoors (good thing it's nice and mild!)

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/news-centr...rport+olympics

Ridiculous, and in many cases practically impossible. There's no way to get to Cypress Mountain other than on the Monopoly Bus, and the vast majority of the buses will arrive less than 3 hours before the event starts. Same is true for the Monopoly Buses to Whistler events (though not really monopoly buses per se given other options to Whistler).

This is either (1) an attempt to inflate demand for the earliest Monopoly Buses, (2) a quasi-CYA policy to point to when spectators grow frustrated at standing in line and/or missing the start of events, or (3) both.

Decent seats are still available! :)
Some closing ceremony tix available on the official website directly from Vanoc (ie. not fan to fan resell). Only the $775 seats. They are at the back rows of level 2 in the endzone sections.

Anyone thinking of just showing up and trying to get seats below face value?

I've been to several Olympics and would certainly have considered going to Vancouver, but I was scared off by the high ticket prices. My sense is that others had the same reaction. At the end of the day, Vancouver is a pretty isolated locale and my guess is that there will be plenty of tickets available. The question though is "at what price." Any sense of the hotel market? Unless Vancouver is different from every other Olympics I've been to, you have horror stories (which keeps everyone away) and then accomodations magically appear at affordable prices at the end.

From the US, my guess is that flying to SEA (plenty of cheap airfares there for February, including many $200ish transcons) and driving to Vancouver would be the most cost effective strategy.

I'm not sure if you will be able to get them below FV but the circle masters have said they'll sell seats not taken up by "olympic family" entitlements so TV audiences won't get to see swaths of empty seats at prime events.

The other consideration is that if you do buy tickets off the street, you don't know if they're valid, have been printed many times (these are print-your-own with access/validation by bar code), cancelled, resold or otherwise invalidated.

All local hotel rooms have been taken up by the circus. They released some hotels far away. Hampton Inn in Langley wants $250 /nt during the games but it'll be a bear getting into and out of Vancouver (even just during your normal work week). Checking random Tuesdays and Thursdays, even the Hampton Inn in Bellingham is sold out.

The only hotels that have rooms to sell directly are those who weren't in existence before the circus was awarded here and aren't bound by the monopsony purchased by the local ringmaster. These would include the Loden and the Coast Coal Harbour.

That'd be the way to do it, but accommodation unless it's in the distant periphery of Vancouver may prove to be expensive if you can find it at all. I think the value will be in renting private accommodation.

Which is why I said:

Is the Olympic Committee running any sort of clearinghouse for private accomodations?

Many years ago, I showed up for the Albertville winter olympics in France and a very nice woman put me and my wife up in a nice condo for about $50/night with a view of the Olympic flame! Booked through the Olympic Committee office after we arrived.

Given Vancouver's location, I just don't think you'll get a lot of walk-in traffic. So everything not rented should become magically available at the end. Always a risk, of course.

I still think the biggest problem will be affordable event tickets, but even that should loosen up. I don't think the locals will snatch them all up at face -- too expensive.

Of course, you always run into the problem of NOBODY using the tickets. In Beijing, it was common to see half empty stands, even for finals. There wasn't really a way to buy these tickets (although I'm sure Vancouver will do a better job than the Chinese on this).