MY RANT ABOUT OLYMPIC TICKETS
First of all, let me say that I am a HUGE 2010 Olympics supporter. I love the Olympics. I’m stoked that they are coming to Vancouver. I’m excited about the infrastructure the city is finally getting that it has needed for a long time. I’ve been a proud Canadian my whole life and I’ve never been so proud as a West Coast girl before to have the world see our beautiful city, our spectacular mountains and ocean… and watch Canadians compete in my favourite sports.
Now, I’m very much aware that I wouldn’t be writing this post if I got tickets. I would be writing about how much I love the Olympic ticketing system. So yes — this post is entirely hypocritical, bitter, and jealous. Don’t say I didn’t warn you 
I don’t need to explain that I’m a huge hockey fan. You all know that. As for the Olympics — I’ve been watching the Olympics for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been mesmerized by the skiers, and then the snowboarders when boarding got introduced in 1998 in Nagano, Japan (despite the Ross R. debacle). I went to GM Place during the 2002 Olympics and cried and sang the National Anthem along with the rest of the crowd as the seconds ticked down and the Canadian Men’s Hockey team won their much deserved Gold Medal. I cried when I found out that the Olympics were coming to Vancouver. I signed up to the 2010 mailing list as soon as the website went live. I watched the days and seconds count down eagerly every single day as we drove by that overpriced Olympic clock at the Vancouver Art Gallery. I even convinced my boss to bring stuffed Olympic mascots with us as presents for our coworkers-hosts in Korea. I marked the day tickets went on sale on my calendar as soon as I found out and set my phone, Blackberry, and computer alarms to remind me not to miss it. I signed on and dutifully bought my tickets just like everyone else in Canada. And then I waited with baited breath every day, checking my credit cards and hoping I got a pair of tickets to the Gold Medal Hockey game.
So I couldn’t help but be disappointed today when I find out that all tickets in the lottery had been allocated and my ticket request was not fulfilled. My heart sank and I teared up at work. I was so upset. I should have known, and I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up… but I thought that somewhere out there I’d get a lucky break.
Meanwhile, I hear on the radio about people who maxed out their ticket requests and requested 40 tickets. I log onto eBay and Craigslist and see people trying to sell their tickets right away. No surprise there. So I e-mail someone on Craigslist and he tells me he wants $7500 for each ticket. I replied saying that was unfair, and he responded by saying, “Well, I have the chance to pay back $30-50k on my mortgage, wouldn’t you?”.
Wow.
I don’t know whether I’m more upset or jealous. There will be some lucky people making enough money to pay for a new car or pay off all their debt. But there are also thousands and thousands of people out there, like me, who just wanted to go to the game. We didn’t want to sell our tickets. We just wanted to proudly cheer on our Canadian boys and have a memory to last a lifetime. Couldn’t they have capped it at 2 per person? Or made it so the tickets weren’t resaleable somehow?
*sigh*
Well such is life. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t. 
If you got tickets out there, I’m really happy for you! And jealous! I hope you keep them and go partake in history. I’m hoping I can find some out there for a reasonable price.
Life goes on. If I can’t get tickets, i will DEFINITELY be glued to my TV watching all of our amazing Canadian athletes compete in possibly the most meaningful sporting event of all time — at least to me.
Did any lucky buggers get tickets?
———–
On another note, tomorrow night I start my long-anticipated AST-1 Avalanche course. It’s just an evening theory 3 hour classroom course to start, but then the following weekend we’ll do 2 field days (Seymour and then Whistler) for a total of 21 hours of instruction! We will be learning about technical snowpack, terrain observation skills, rescue techniques, and safe route finding skills. We’ll also learn how to use essential avalanche equipment. I’m so excited! I’ll definitely have videos and photos from the field days the following weekend to post and I’m sure it will be an experience to remember.
Tags: 2010 Winter Olympics, AST-1 course, Avalanche, Seymour, ticketing, tickets, Vancouver, Whistler
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December 11th, 2008 at 12:45 am
During Beijing 2008, my parents read a newspaper article on how people were waiting in line for tickets for almost a month in advance and the tickets were all sold out by 6 hours after booths opened. Then came and speculation and so forth. What is really sad is when these events finally occurred, they had to have idle Olympic volunteers sit in as spectators (sometimes 50% of a stadium), since not many people could get in and really watch it after the huge price hikes. So olympic officials convinced volunteers to sit in, as not to lose face.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Re: Olympics tix – Nananananna nananananana~!!! :p
Re: ASTI course. Are you doing it through CanWest? Bunch of my friends are doing it this weekend and they moved the Seymour field day to Whistler due to lack of snow. Chances are you’ll be doing the same thing too. Hopefully you’ll be using the Mammut Pulse Barryvox beacon. It’s so easy to use even a dumb monkey like me can locate buried ppl with it.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:15 am
What events did you want to see? My friend balked when she realized today that all her requests actually got fulfilled, and I don’t think she has the money to buy them all.
Your fanaticism/patriotism will be rewarded somehow. I can ask to see if she has any to spare!
December 11th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Well….hopefully it isn’t an easy sell for those who are buying purely to scalp. I’ve read that VANOC is setting up measures to prevent a ticket black market.
After reading though all the documentation, and choosing the events that I wanted, I was PISSED to find out that they only accept Visa, as it is their premiere sponsor. Since I’ve got a MasterCard, I was totally left out. How annoying is that?
December 11th, 2008 at 6:29 am
I was annoyed about the Mastercard thing, severely limited what tickets we could apply for. We ended up with ladies half pipe and tickets for a couple of hockey games. I was a bit disappointed at first (really wanted to see the Men’s halfpipe final) but now I’m feeling lucky. Sorry you didn’t get what you were after.
The Avy course is good, I did mine with Whistler Apline Guides last season, thinking about doing level 2 this year
December 11th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Sadly, I did not get any tickets. We put in for heaps of Men’s hockey tickets (like everyone else, I’m sure) and came up empty handed. Apparently, the tickets were a bit weighted too, eh? That for the most part, the more money you put in for tickets, the higher the chances you were of getting some. Of course, this logically/statistically makes sense but these peeps were given a higher priority. Damn being broke!
December 11th, 2008 at 7:27 am
Hey tough break with the tix.. at least an educational avalanche course might bring you some serenity this weekend (as a U.S. East Coast-er, I’ll have to settle for Vermont, but I will be going to B.C. for the first time in February!).
Also, just wanted to say- love the site. Inspired, I’m now focused on finding a good ultrazoom compact (thinking Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28) to get better shots on the mountain, as opposed to lugging around a D40 through the backcountry heh.. seems like a good bridge for sports. Maybe it can solve your to-SLR or not to-SLR dilemma too haha.
Keep up the great work!
December 11th, 2008 at 8:25 am
We put in for snowboarding half-pipe, ski jump and some others and didn’t get any allocated (we used 2 accounts too).
A couple of my friends and co-workers though got their request.
Damn to larger corporations and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tickets so us working class get’s shitall! lol
December 11th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Allie, I too was disappointed yesterday. I didn’t get any tickets and I had 4 Visas locked and loaded to buy tickets. I share your jealousy/rage and in your love for the Olympics. I knew my chances were slim and my luck in winning stuff isn’t that great.
Don’t worry though, I’m sure they’ll set up a huge screen downtown for like $5 to watch hockey in. In some way that would be just as excited as you’ll be surrounded by thousands of people who share the same passion as you and I. Lets hope COV and VANOC do this! It just makes sense to, no?
Anyays sorry to hear you didn’t get tickets
December 11th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I am thinking that convincing my Neighborhood pub to play the things that I wanna see on the big screen is a good idea. To be honest I think I would have a better view on the CBC then seeing it live anyway, plus they have beer
The Avalanche course sounds awesome!
December 11th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Damn, I really wish I lived in Vancouver. I would give anything to make it to the 2010 Olympics. Maybe I’ll see if I can take a week off of work…
December 11th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
What a rip off! Some people are crazy.
Well what I do know is that they will be needing THOUSANDS of volunteers for not only the ceremonies but also the events..so I’m sure if you keep your head up and put some good faith into the whole thing, maybe you can get tickets that way or at least be a part of putting it on so you can be there to experience it!
As for me I will be hiding in the forest somewhere…Or crying at the airport wondering why I didn’t take vacation.. or maternity leave like everyone else is planning to!
December 12th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I wanted to get tickets, though I never fulfilled my “input visa” information as I knew that if I did some how end up with tickets I would not be able to pay for them….. I sort of wish I did now as I am like you – I just want to go and watch the magic of the game.
When the Olympics were first announced I staked claim among all my friends that I would be getting Gold Medal Hockey tickets, and that I had “X” amount of days to get them….
I have also heard about people who are renting out their homes for thousands of dollars a night. That is just insane. If that guy with Gold Medal hockey tickets wants to pay down his mortgage he should just rent his place out!
I am still going to look into Volunteering during that time. Though really with the job I am in (Childcare), we will not be closed. If we are then – Wow!
ps. This is a great site! I will be back! It is great to find fellow local bloggers!
December 12th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I went to apply on the last day but discovered the whole “visa only” shinanigans, and also did a li’l rant on my website. I think there are still opportunities to get tix tho, with round 2 in February but seems like the chances then are slim to none. Great blog by the way.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Got locked out of the first-come, first-served bidding system for four hours before it popped up, “Due to overwhelming demand, preferred ticketing is now closed. Your next opportunity to buy tickets is in MID-2009.”
Bah. I did get a few tickets in the first round. So long as I get to scream “CANADA MAAAAAAAAAANG” in the stands, I’m happy. I don’t care who’s playing.
December 17th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Well, all I can say is I hope we can buy cheap scalped tickets when the time comes.. *sigh*
Fat chance of that though I guess!
December 17th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
“Cheap” and “Scalped” are mutually exclusive terms, unfortunately. They mass-buy ‘em (or organize people to buy and make a big pool of ‘em) and sell and ridiculous profit.
December 18th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I’ve heard they’re putting a lot of work in ensuring there isn’t a black market in tickets, I really don’t know how they’re going to do it though. Although it could be as simple as printing your name/address on the ticket and requireing proof of address at the gate?