Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010
 

I figured it's high time for a thread on these. LOL.

Is anyone planning on going? I am going to enter the US lottery to try to get tickets, but I'm not sure how my chances will be. I know that Canadian people get a lot of the seats - understandably so. I'm just guessing it'll be the closest Olympics to me in a while (2012 - London, 2014 - Sochi, Russia, and 2016, soon to be announced).

FYI, the ticket lottery for Canadian citizens begins in October. You can sign up for ticket info emails here:

http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/Part...mation/Tickets

Citizens of other countries have to sign up via approved national vendors of the tickets. For the US, you have to go through CoSport. The link to sign up for ticket info for US citizens is here:

http://www.cosport.com/vancouverrequestformcosport.asp

The crazy thing is that I understand basically all the hotel rooms are already gone, booked by vendors, so you almost have to purchase a vacation package that includes the tickets and accommodations. I am so worried it's going to be crazy expensive, but I'm going to start saving now.

I am still angry at my parents for refusing to take me to the Atlantic Olympics because they didn't want to deal with the crowds. I was in middle school and wanted to go SO bad - and I grew up only six hours away from Atlanta. BOOOOOOO.

The other problem is that I seriously doubt I'll get the tickets I'd really like to get for the Vancouver games. I really would like figure skating, or either genre of speed skating. And preferably either the opening or closing ceremonies as well. But those are all pretty popular events. Maybe speed skating less so though? Although bobsled/luge/skeleton are close runners-up. But I guess I'd pretty much take what I could get. And I might have to rule out the opening/closing ceremonies because they're ridiculously expensive and I'll be traveling with another adult and a child more than likely.

Anyone else going to try to go?

Anybody? Bueller?

I figured with all the Pacific NW GCers, I'd get responses quickly.

Two more notes: people who can get accommodations can volunteer for the Olympics, which I considered doing too, but have pretty much decided against. I think people from the region have priority for obvious reasons anyway: they're the best hosts for visitors.

And I think Vancouver has my favorite Olympic mascots ever. These things are so frickin' cute I could die. If I had more cash I would totally splurge on the plushies:

http://www.vancouver2010.com/mascot/en/

My boyfriend and I have been looking into going. They have already posted ticket prices. Maybe it might be a better idea for me to get them because I am Canadian (although I grew up here in the USA). Or if its harder for me...just go to all my family living in Canada!!

I would think that they are still developing places, hotels, and what not in preparation for the Olympics.

BTW...a finalist for the 2016 summer games is Chicago!! But Chicago is up against Madrid, Spain; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Tokyo, Japan. The decision won't be announced until October 2009.

LOL...totally didn't see that you had another thread going about the 2016 bids...Sorry!

I definitely think it would be easier for you to get the tickets as a Canadian. I believe more tickets are reserved for the host country. You should enter the lottery rather than him entering the US lottery.

I'm sure they're constructing new hotels, but I'm also already sure they're already pre-booked. Sad to say, but I think the ticket vendors just reserve all the hotels and then you have to get the rooms through them. Or maybe it's not sad and it's the only way to keep things affordable/organized. I'm not sure. Although I'm sure there are exceptions like also renting people's houses and stuff like that - Craigslist and such. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but everything I've read on the Vancouver site (both the ticket and volunteer sites) basically says, if you don't have your own accommodation already, forget it and go through the vendors.

And... I just created a huge post about the 2016 Olympic bids. LOL. Check it out if you're interested.

LOL, and I totally didn't see this post before I posted my response to your first one. :)

You rang? LOL. I do want to go watch the Olympics (cuz I live in the 'Couv), but I haven't really thought about it that much. I should sign up for the emails so I am kept current.

As for the mascots, my favorite is Miga. The top of her head reminds me of the soft-serve ice-cream that you get at McDonalds with the loop-de-loop. I think Miga is supposed to be a bear, mixed with orca whale (i.e. in "old skool" terminology, the orca was called killer whales)
http://www.vancouver2010.com/store/r...500&height=500

I like the mascots....but not feeling the logo....Is it supposed to be something?

Ditto^^^
I was only 10 when the games were here, but I wanted to go soooo bad!!!!!! My family are huge fans of the games, so I still have no clue why we couldn't have gone! It was probably too expensive!! My uncle went though and brought me back some cute pins and stuff!

Yeah...I was in middle school during the Atlanta Olympics, living here in NC, and I really really wanted to go! One of my the guys I went to school with went, I was very jealous...as was everyone else!

When I was living in Arizona, I wanted to go to the Olympics in Salt Lake City since that was really close too! Oh well...it'll happen one of these days! I really do want to go to Vancouver, as it is Canada, and being that I am Canadian...it would just be double special for me!

Re the logo, see this thread:

http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...ad.php?t=65848

I think the tickets are really expensive. Looking at the Vancouver website, they promo that many of the tickets are $25, but they're not necessarily to the popular events. The ceremony tickets are like $300 for example. Figure skating is pricey too.

I think the orca/bear thing is so cute. I guess it's a traditional native spirit symbol, from what I've read. I love the sasquatch one too. soooooo cute!

The tickets draw for Canadians begins October 3 and runs through early November. I don't know much about how the US system works - I haven't read the email they sent me after I signed up for the list. *fingers crossed* that I'll get them.

For my family, I think the turnoff about Atlanta was really more driving into the city, dealing with people, etc. etc. We're country folk (I grew up in NC too Dreamful Spirit). LOL. I remember I even got the ticket request form (at that time it was a paper thing, oh, the days before pervasive internet) and they wouldn't let me fill it out. I wanted to SO BAD. Making things worse, my dad's first cousin lives in Athens and kept sending me memorabilia, which was really sweet of her but just made me want to go even more.

Salt Lake City I wanted to go to but I was kind of out of it that year - I was in college and pledging Pi Phi and very busy, and didn't really have time to watch it. Even though I had a TV in my room, I missed a lot of the competition. Although... maybe part of it was over W&L's February break and I caught that? I do think I tuned in for Michelle Kwan's performances (love her).

The logo is supposed to be an "inukshuk" (it's not a Transformer...LOL, although some of us jokingly call it that). Yeah, we didn't love it either...sigh, but we are stuck with it.
To read on what an inukshuk is, just go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inukshuk
There was some backlash on it here: http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/natio...clogo0426.html


London 2012 isn't that great, either, IMO. Oh well.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/...te_385x450.jpg

CutiePie2000, I've got to say that I think Vancouver's logo is MUCH MUCH MUCH better than London's. At least it evokes native culture/the Pacific NW to me. London's doesn't really evoke anything to me at all except the early 90s and neon fanny packs.

I lurk at Olympic discussion forums and the consensus is that the London logo is one of the most hated ever. Especially by those from the UK. The worst part is that some animation from the London Olympics website revealing the logo back in June 2007 evidently caused seizures in some epileptic individuals. Here's a rundown:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Logo

So I think Vancouver is definitely sitting pretty with their logo.

Other notable logos... hm... I really liked Sarajevo's, Nagano's, Seoul's, Atlanta's (though it now looks particularly dated to me), and ESPECIALLY Athens's.

The worst thing of all by far though, was Atlanta's awful, awful, awful mascot Izzy.

Fun graphic of Olympic mascots:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Olympicmascot.jpg

Cosign, Izzy sucked eggs. I like Schneemann!

BF and I are going to try to go to the Vancouver games. I've been a subscriber of the emails for a while now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but last I had read on the Web site, the organizing committee was encouraging hotels not to book ANY rooms yet while they tried to figure out a solution to the vendors/scalpers situation. The exception to that was Whistler...I know people with cabins there that have rented them out for a bundle!

One more suggestion: consider looking at hotels across the border. It's not far of a drive, but I'm sure there will be a TON of busses going into the city, too.

But keep in mind that by then you will need a passport to travel back and forth by land.

Oooh this is exciting! One of my friends made the Canadian Women's Olympic Ice Hockey Team for '06 but she got injured. She broke her foot, got it casted, cut off the cast a few days later, so of course her foot healed incorrectly and she had to have surgery to fix a tendon in her foot. I hope she makes the '10 team!

After a re-read of the website I think you're exactly right - they're not booking ANY rooms to ANYONE. Although the website also seems to say that 30% of the rooms will be reserved for "members of the Olympic family," which I assume doesn't include little ole me. :(

Renting is a good idea. I have a passport that expires in late 2011 so that shouldn't be an issue.

I could definitely check the US hotels but I wonder if they are all already booked!

I am sure I could Craigslist stuff already too. I notice the website has a disclaimer about renting from people individually and stuff.

The thing is I don't want to worry too much about accommodations until I know more about my ticket situation! I signed up for ticketing emails from both the Vancouver site (although that's not super-useful since I'm not Canadian) and for info from CoSport, the US vendor... but I haven't got so much as a peep from them, not even a confirmation that they got my info.

You do have four years to make friends with someone in Vancouver who can house you. :p


And I think the London logo is ICK!!! I think they should have gone with something like this BBC reader submission.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...ichard_416.jpg

That logo is Friggen weird

LOL - if I get the tickets, I should know by mid-2009 at the latest I think, and I'll definitely plan for the housing right away. Plus I'll be traveling with another adult and a small child, which would make couch surfing a little more difficult than it if were just me. I'll just save up my moolah and keep my fingers crossed on both the tickets and hotels. I know CoSport probably sells everything included packages... I hope... I hope...

I liked the London bid logo that the crazy neon thing replaced just fine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:London-2012-logo.svg

I wanna goooo! Ah! It's not that far from CA, right? Hehe

Oh, and on the subject of Olympic mascots: I loved the mascots from the Lillehammer winter games in 1994. (I'm Norwegian, ja!) If my name was spelled the proper Norwegian way, it'd be Kristin. (Yes yes, Lucy is my dog's name.) I definitely had a doll of her and some other pins and stuff with both of them.

So? I've had a Passport since I was 11 years old. Those of us that make trips up to Canada (or Mexico) have probably been in the habit of bringing a Passport since 9/11, when a driver's license just wasn't enough to satisfy border patrol. A Passport won't make things go slower...in fact, it might make passage faster.

It's pretty sad that so many people in this country think of Passports as an inconvenience instead of the things it makes possible.

Correction: two years. Vancouver is in 2010.

The 1980s just attacked!

D'OH!! I don't know where my mind was last night. :confused:

Ticket requests are about to open on October 3! They run from October 3-November 7. You can request tickets at any time within that period; tickets will be allotted after November 7 according to a lottery.

Press release:

http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/news...c-ticketi.html

Canadians can buy tickets at the main Vancouver Olympics webpage:

http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/tick...b2s/index.html

Residents of the United States, Australia, Sweden, Austria
and Bulgaria can request their tickets during the same period with CoSport:

http://www.cosport.com/

I'm trying to decide what I'm going to request this weekend! whee!

Got my tickets. I ended up getting a hospitality package so I didn't have to deal with finding a hotel myself.

I'm going to the ice dancing original Dance and ice dancing free dance (the final two of the three stages, medals awarded after free dance) and the women's short program figure skating. soooooo excited. That's one event/day, which I think will be plenty seeing as I will be carting a young child around with me. Also didn't want to deal with outdoor venues + a child. I might try to pick up some medal ceremony tickets though. I like the idea of one event/day overall, though, because it means I can do plenty of tourism/taking in the experience.

Really, really, really, really frickin' excited about this one.

Bumpity bump bump...

Time for a BUMP! I'm watching the figure skating nationals as they are competing to get to the Olympics and thought "Hey, the Olympics are soon! We need to bump the GC thread"

This is awesome in HD, I gotta say.

I was reading today about local Olympians and saw that Meryl Davis, an ice dancer, is a Tri Delta from the University of Michigan! She and her partner have beaten Belbin and Augosto!

Jealous.

The news just had a report from the border crossing, which is already seeing a big pickup in traffic.

I would gladly give you all of my snow, but there's no way to truck it there - the streets are all closed!

This is the first time in my life (well, since I was about 8-9) that I didn't know who was in the USA Women's Figure Skating Team. Weirdly, I'm not upset by that, although I'll probably google it. Is the Jamaican Bobsled team in the running?


Okay, found them: Alissa Czisney (went to Bowling Green & volunteers for breast care skates?) & Rachael Flatt (in high school).

^^^Did I miss something? I could have SWORN Rachael Flatt and Mirai Nagasu were representing the women. They definitely went 1-2 at the US Figure Skating Championships.

On another note, Kappa just blogged that Chrissy Jean Young of Gamma Upsilon carried the Olympic flame through Vancouver today!

I'm allowing my crush on Ryan Miller to grow in honor of the Vancouver Olympics.

It is Rachael Flatt and Mirai Nagasu, you are correct.

http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic...--+Keywords+--

what did you all think about the opening ceremonies? i was expecting a more exciting way to light the cauldron.

No sadly, they aren't. They didn't qualify this year :(.

There are some Jamaican athletes in other events though!

I was bored and turned it off before the lighting. IDK...Sometimes I think Opening Ceremonies are just too long.

I like the symbolism they attempted. It took a lot out of it at the one pole didn't rise. That has to be an Olympic's organizers worst nightmare. I like that 4 people were supposed to light it, not just one. I liked the additional jaunt across town with Gretzky too!

One athlete for Jamaica. He is an American skier with dual citizenship who used to ski for the US team. His father is Jamaican and passed away when he was 14, but he got to carry the Jamaican flag! It's a lot easier to make the Jamaican winter Olympics than the US one perhaps?

They were a little long.. they are always a little long, but I liked them a lot this time.

As a Pacific Northwesterner I loved the Opening Ceremonies and its emphasis on the diverse natural beauty we have here, as well as the native culture. Everyone should come visit! haha.