Parking in Vancouver during Olympics
 

Hello!! We are heading to Vancouver for a day trip on Monday. We plan on leaving early in the morning. Pretty excited! Any suggestions where to park for the day? Thank you!!

where are you coming from?

We will be driving from Seattle.

Sorry hit too soon
The South Surrey Park and Ride might work if you are early enough. Take the "King George Highway North" Exit #10. After exiting turn left on Hwy 99A heading south back over the freeway. The park and ride is on your left. From here take a #351 bus to connect to the Canada Line directly to downtown.

Another option is the parkade at the River Rock Casino both of these do fill up quickly on weekday mornings with commuters. However, there is also some street parking available in the vicinity of the casino which I have been able to get recently in the mornings.

enjoy your visit

Thank you so much for the thorough details. They are much appreciated :o)

Just FYI, there are also quite a few detailed threads about day trips to the Olympics, parking etc, on the Vancouver Olympics forum on Tripadvisor.

Hi Dave,

We went to Vancouver yesterday for the day. We parked at the River Rock Casino Resort park and ride for $2 for the day. It is on the skytrain. We barely got a spot (were lucky) and I understand it may be full during the week, but it is worth a try. It is where the skytrain line splits and all the trains south go there. You can get directions to it on-line.

If it is full, you can also park at the airport, which is just a few minutes to the west of the casino. Print out directions between the casino and airport in case you wind up going to the airport. Also, you can go on-line and get coupons for the aiport parking, making it less expensive. The sky train also runs to the airport. It is the end-of-the-line.

If you have tickets to any events, you do not have to pay for any public transit. In fact, noone is checking to see if anyone has tickets for public transit, so it is, in essense free. It is easy to use and quite frequent. It is jam packed. Vancouver is jam packed.

I will post a trip report shortly but you can shoot any questions at me on this post and I will try to answer them. I'll be out in the evening so may not get back late afternoon.

dave, see my looong post under Vancouver - on the town during the Olympics. I've done that instead of posting a trip report.

Just a note for clarification - the train to the casino, airport etc is the Canada Line. The sky train is a different line. People refer to the whole system as the sky train but if looking for signage etc you want Canada line.

The parking at River Rock will be more difficult during the week but the border crossings have been better during the week.

Hello!

I've checked Tripadvisor forum and didn't find much info since we will only be there for a day trip.

@Orcas: Think we'll try River Rock Casino first, although we plan on leaving Seattle at 7am. I have a feeling that morning commuters will already fill up the spaces. If it doesn't work out, we'll do the Airport next (found the coupon.. thanks!). Read you report... sounds amazing! I'm even more excited now!!

@geosand: Thank you for the clarification. I think I need to look for the 980.

Thanks again :)

If you are parking at River Rock or the Airport you will get directly on the "train" Canada Line towards waterfront. I would still try the park and ride in South Surrey on your way by.

Dave, that's odd, as I used a lot of information from that forum to plan my own day trip last week, and there were several threads about parking, what to see on a day trip, etc. Were you on the Vancouver Olympics forum (as opposed to the regular Vancouver forum)? I also posted a bit of a trip report in response to a day trip question that was posted this weekend.

I ended up parking my car at the River Rock. There is an unpaved area southwest of the garage located under the Skytrain tracks (googlemaps says that it is on Charles St). We got there around 9:30am with plenty of space left... and it was free. Got back to the car around 8:30pm and it was fine.

Thanks again everyone for the advices!!

So tell us about your experience when you get a chance!

What a wonderful experience!!

We fortunately had nice weather and the drive was quite pleasant.

When we arrived at the Bridgeport station of the Skytrain, I noticed a lot of red - a lot of Canada gear. Lines moved pretty well and there were people to assist you if needed.

When we arrived downtown, I was the only one in my group that really wanted to go to an olympic event so I decided to look for a ticket. I was previously told that I would only find tickets at 3 times the face-value price. I also knew that it was going to be tough especially for me since I was by myself; scalpers prefer to sell tickets in pairs for obvious reasons. Walking east on Robson Street towards the Hockey Stadium, I started to look for scalpers holding odd numbers of tickets. As I approached the stadium entrance, I noticed a lady in Sweden gear holding 3 tickets to the current hot even: Women’s Ice Hockey – US vs. Sweden. I payed an unbelievable price, which made me quite skeptical, but decided to go for it.

Game was at noon. It was a great game; US beat Sweden 9-1. During the game, Canadians were cheering for Sweden due to the Men’s loss to Americans the night before (5-3). During the 2nd intermission, the lady that sold me the ticket was interviewed by the in-game host. It turns out that she used to be in the Swedish ice hockey team either in 2002 or 2006 Winter Olympics. Too bad I didn’t know who she was at the time of buying the ticket. I would have asked for an autograph and/or picture taken.

After the game, I met up with my friends and we walked around making our way towards the Olympic Cauldron. Silly thing is that I was in Vancouver in October and Cauldron was already built, but at the time, I didn't make the connection that it was THE Olympic Cauldron. At least, I can say that I touched it?!? The atmosphere was great. I didn't feel too restricted. Wait lines were not too long. 20-30 minutes for the Olympic Cauldron, but then again it was a Monday.

We then headed South thinking that we wanted to head back on Robson Street and walked east towards the Skytrain station. On our way, we were able to watch street performers, view the ice rink, ziplines, and bright lines. Just an amazing time there!!

Wonderful! The joy really is contagious. Don't you wish you'd had more time? If I'd known how exciting it would be, I might have sucked it up and gone for a few days and seen more events - but the cost was ridiculous. Too bad about that. Good for you getting to the US versus Sweden game....Women's US versus Canada this afteroon, live broadcast! Can't wait!

More time would have been great!! I was considering going back this Sunday, but being the weekend and the last day.. i'm sure it's going to be insane.

This afternoon's game will be awesome and quite interesting!

I was at the same Sweden vs. USA game. :)

It might be insane this weekend, but I've noticed the crowds dropping off dramatically already. Don't discount the idea yet! :)