The Bombardier Train
I also have some PDFs with information regarding the trains here if you're interested. Pass them on to friends and family because the more people who know about the them, the better! As Bombardier would say, "The Climate Is Right for Trains":
Atlantic House
After the train ride, I decided to try my luck at Atlantic House, located on the top and bottom floors of the Granville Island Arts Club. I thought that I had left early enough that the line would be managable, but to my dismaying unsurprise, it was snaking out into the road. I resigned myself to wait and did so for about forty minutes before getting completely bored. They had volunteers walking up and down the line answering questions and reassuring people about the wait, but their efforts didn't help. Most line-ups at least move so you know it's not all in vain and you're actually working towards something, but the Atlantic House line was stagnant, and that's because they only allow ten or so people in at a time. I eventually gave up and found a smaller line for a 12:30 performance of Come On In! Songs and Stories from Atlantic Canadain the building across from the Arts Club. The performers were: Daniel Payne, Monique Poirier, Meaghan Blanchard, and David Myles.
The music was wonderful and traditional, sung in both French and English. The performers told their stories and invited some of the audience up on the stage with them to help sing along. After the performance was over and I was back outside, I noticed a small line-up moving quickly into the bar portion of the Arts Club. I follow it in and noticed a door standing ajar that led up into the upstairs portion of the pavilion. No security guards or volunteers were around so I pushed the door open, walked briskly up the stairs, and BOOM, there I was. I had just SNUCK into Atlantic House!!
I was so surprised I'd actually gotten in that I was overly delighted and polite about the free samples I got; it was New Brunswick day, so I was given New Brunswick fare, which consisted of a bag of potato chips, a box of tea, chocolates, and a delicious round of chocolate cake from McCain. There were also oysters, but I of course didn't eat those. I got some pins and lip balm on the way out, and outside of the pavilion were three rows of touch-screen computers, plump lines of people in front of them. During my initial wait in the Atlantic House line-up, one of the volunteers handed out cards with a code on it that visitors were supposed to enter onto the computers. Once you had punched in the code, you were entered into a contest for a trip for two to Atlantic Canada. But entering in the code also brought up a game to win a pair of hand-crafted wooden clappers. 
Three doors popped up and you had to choose the right one. Well, it must have been my day, because I won!! It was great, just great. After that, I hopped a ferry to Yaletown to see if I could get into some other big venues.
Ontario House
Ontario House had been the one pavilion I really wanted to go to, but the lines were always unappealingly massive. That's why my mom gave me her Olympic transit staff pass to see if I could use it to bypass the lines. We really weren't sure if it would work, but guess what ... IT DID!! I got up the courage to go up to the main entrance, flashed my pass at the door volunteers and walked in quickly before they had a chance to tell me to turn back and wait in line.
Ontario House is part bar/restaurant and interactive exhibit. I'm sure you've all heard of this, but they have this thing where three screens project live aerial footage of three places in Ontario: Niagra Falls, The Parliament buildings in Ottawa, and the CN Tower. Three chairs are below the screens. Three people at a time sit down, have head phones with special sensors put on them, and are told to then focus their minds on something. A screen attached to the chair allows the participants to see their brain waves and how high or low they are rising. The lower the waves, the more relaxed the person is. The higher the waves, the more concentrated the person is. The chairs react to the brain waves and sends vibrations from the bottom of the participant during low waves, to the head of the participant during high waves. The participant can control the light of the aforementioned places on the screen with their brain waves, and in the case of the CN Tower, which is the one I did, you can light it up and make it spin.
It was the coolest experience: strange, humming music started playing as vibrations went all the way up my back. The CN Tower went from a slow spin and dull luminance to a brilliant pink and wildly-fast revolution. I gripped the arms of the chair as I concentrated all my thoughts on one thing: Massachusetts. I got my wave reader to reach all the way to the top, and a little bit beyond that. Once in a while I would break my concentration to stare at the screen and watch the Tower light up and spin. When it was over, I collapsed back in the chair, mind exhausted. I received a pin that says "My Mind Lit Up the CN Tower." Pin Collecting
If you were to go downtown now, you would see hundreds of people wearing vests loaded down with all sorts of Olympics pins, or sitting behind small tables laid out with pins, or newbie collectors wearing Olympic lanyards around their necks, strung with pins. Pins, pins, pins! The trading and appraisal of Olympic pins is taken very seriously. I should know, my mom used to be a trader and she has several very valuable '84 Olympic pins in her collection. Anyway, I`ve collected a lot of stuff in my life, from spoons to stuffies, but I never did get in on the pin action. However, seeing so many collectors got me into the collecting spirit and I went about getting as many free pins from the pavilions as possible.
Helpful Hints: tell venue volunteers you're from the province that the venue you're at is representing. It's the best way to get pins. Also, all Apple stores are giving away limited edition red square pins, and most retailers are throwing in mascot pins when shoppers spend a certain amount of money. Holt Renfew isn't giving away any pins to my knowledge, but they do have a FREE booth where you can have several photos of yourself taken and then compiled into a mini flip book. It's a pretty awesome keepsake.
Here`s my pin collection so far:
It's not much, but then again I'm not willing to spend ten bucks a pin. Just thirty dollars on stuffies.
The O Zone
After a busy day of cutting lines and pin collecting, I thought it would be a good idea to go out to Richmond and check out the O Zone. The Zone has got really strange hours, not opening until 3:00 pm on weekdays, 12:00 weekends. But the time I got there, it was around 4:00 and pouring outside. Without an umbrella and unwilling to walk around, exhausted, in the cold rain, I decided to hang out in Richmond Centre Mall. I ended up seeing Shutter Island, which started out passable (it takes place in Massachusetts, Boston Harbor, HELLO!) but quickly detoriated into predictable garbage. Here's a hint: its formula is exactly like Angel Heart (1987). Here's a tip: If you haven`t seen Angel Heart, watch it instead of this movie.
Once the film had ended, I left the mall and ventured outside, where blessedly it had stopped raining. By this time it was around 6:30, and the O Zone was strangely dead for a venue that had only opened three hours earlier and still had four-and-a-half hours to go until closing. There were still a few venues open, like the O Zone Signature Tree in the Cariboo, BC, showcase tent. Now let's see if I can get into Russia House!
-Bonnie
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