Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010

[violetpretty]

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!

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

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.

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.

[SOPi_Jawbreaker]

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


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

[Benzgirl]

Originally Posted by SOPi_Jawbreaker

That logo is Friggen weird

[breathesgelatin]

Originally Posted by SOPi_Jawbreaker

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


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

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

[LucyKKG]

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.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by AGDee

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

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.

[PeppyGPhiB]

Originally Posted by SOPi_Jawbreaker

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

Correction: two years. Vancouver is in 2010.

[Taualumna]

Originally Posted by CutiePie2000

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.

The 1980s just attacked!

[SOPi_Jawbreaker]

Originally Posted by PeppyGPhiB

Correction: two years. Vancouver is in 2010.

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

[breathesgelatin]

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!

[breathesgelatin]

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.

[AGDee]

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.

[AGDee]

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!

[PeppyGPhiB]

Jealous.

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