Charles, Diana on Hand in Vancouver : Canada’s Expo ’86 Opens With Pomp, Color, Rain

With Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana on hand, Canada on Friday officially opened Expo ‘86, its $1.2-billion hope for an economic and spiritual renewal for British Columbia.

The royal couple joined Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at opening ceremonies under the domed roof of Vancouver’s football stadium, while outside tourists dodged rain puddles and pushed into the 50 pavilions that dot the 350-acre site on the edge of the city’s downtown. Rain kept the crowd far below the 150,000 expected for opening day.

The fair’s theme, “World in Motion-World in Touch,” reflecting progress in transportation and communications, was evident at many pavilions, displays and gift shops. Even the hot dog stands were crammed with displays of cars, bicycles and space ships.

Several displays and the excitement generated by some clever sculpture, as well as the beauty of the mountains and the harbor that surround the site, left more good impressions than disappointments on opening day.

“It’s really awesome,” said Betty Malderson of Los Angeles. “Even the rain doesn’t bother me. This is better than San Francisco.”

She and many others were particularly taken with Canada’s pavilion, which features huge space sculptures that seem to move magically about a cavernous display room.

In the Ontario pavilion, some viewers wept at the beauty of a three-dimension film segment that made them feel that they were flying within inches of a flock of geese.

The fair, which has 30,000 paid and unpaid workers on the site, opened with a few minor glitches including a computer malfunction that stranded passengers on a monorail train for several minutes, and an interrupted space shuttle film and stubborn theater door at the U.S. pavilion.

Only one or two pavilions were unprepared and everything seemed to work, including the “Scream Machine” roller coaster.

Hour Wait for Ride

In spite of the drizzle on the midway, people waited over an hour for a two-minute roller coaster ride with four upside-down passes.

“It takes your breath away. You go upside down,” said one young woman. “You feel like you’re going to go off the track, but you don’t. For people with poor circulation, it’ll get the blood going.”

Although fair organizers and Canadian and British Columbian politicians are already claiming that Expo ’86 is the most successful world exposition of recent years, not everything is as wonderful as the boosters say.

Despite the claim that the fair will create new high-technology industries and make Canada’s Pacific Coast a business and tourist magnet, many economists doubt that Expo ’86 will turn the lagging British Columbia economy around or spark a national technological revolution.

Most of the pavilions either display existing products laid out more as showroom sales items than glimpses of future technology or promote tourism in the sponsoring nation.

The American display, for example, is largely a scaled-down replay of past space shots that leaves a visitor with the impression of having seen it all before on television.

Many expressed disappointment with the California pavilion, one of three from U.S. states. It contains a confusing room with competing video screens loudly proclaiming the state’s role in space.

But more important to the organizers and the politicians is the financial success of Expo. The original projection was for sale of 13.7 million tickets, with some fair-goers expected to buy several for repeat visits.

15 Million Tickets Sold

However, Expo President Jim Pattison said that tickets for 15 million visits had been purchased before the fair opened and that he expects to sell 5 million more before the fair ends in October.

That means, he said, that the initial projection of a $296-million deficit would be considerably reduced. “There is no question,” he told reporters, “that this will be the most successful world’s fair” of recent years.

Recent expositions in New Orleans and Knoxville, Tenn., ran into serious financial difficulties. The 1984 New Orleans World’s Fair--bankrupt after losing more than $100 million--had less than 8 million visitors. Knoxville’s 1982 fair attracted 11 million and just barely broke even.

“I worked at Knoxville and this fair is much more spectacular,” said David Lawson, a guide at the U.S. pavilion. “Knoxville was much more modest in scope and didn’t have the official government backing that Expo ’86 does.”

The uncertain weather and fears of predicted huge crowds apparently combined to keep crowds down in the first hours, but by late afternoon the fairgrounds were starting to fill up and there were long lines for the monorails and cable cars that transport visitors.