Expo 86 World’s Fair Has the Look of Success

Run, don’t walk to Expo 86. Vancouver’s world’s fair is on and running. And in a summer travel season already hurt by the effects of international terrorism, Expo has emerged as one of the world’s booming tourist locations, and may well become the tourism event of 1986.

The theme for Expo 86 is “World in Motion--World in Touch,” a tribute to advances and achievements in transportation and communications.

“It seems ironic,” said an Expo official, “because if people are communicating anything this summer, it’s that they don’t want to travel.”

Except, of course, to Vancouver and the exposition.

Excitement Building

“We’re all excited about Expo,” said Gary Jack, a jovial, heavy-set Vancouver taxi driver. “It’s going to bring a lot of people and money into Canada.”

It’s not just the fear of terrorism that has contributed to Expo’s early popularity. Not everyone is going to Expo by default. Falling gas prices, coupled with a favorable exchange rate (the Canadian dollar is worth only 71 cents U.S.) also have helped Expo officials sell more than 13 million visits before the opening.

“We now predict more than 17 million visits to the site before the exposition officially closes Oct. 13,” said Gail Flitton, Expo’s director of media relations. “And that number is rising.”

Unlike some other world’s fairs, this one looks financially solid. The province of British Columbia has invested $578 million Canadian dollars in Expo, and the Canadian federal government has kicked in $180 million more.

To be sure, Expo officials needed few reminders of the dismal results of past world’s fairs. In fact, Expo organizers announced at the outset that the Vancouver fair would lose money, with a projected deficit of $228 million.

After all, the 1984 New Orleans fair planned on 12 million visitors, only got 7.4 million and left $35 million in unpaid bills. The 1982 Knoxville bash earned an embarrassing profit: just $57.

The Pavilions

This year’s Expo promises anything but disaster. There are 34 corporate sponsors, including General Motors and Coca-Cola. Fifty-four countries, from Cuba to the Republic of Nauru, will be represented. That’s more than twice the number that participated at Knoxville and New Orleans. It will also be the first time in North America that the United States, China and the Soviet Union have exhibited together on one site.

In terms of its scope and its variety, Expo is nothing less than staggering. Spread out over 173 acres, the site is in the heart of Vancouver.

And the exhibits are a wonderfully bizarre combination of high-tech wonder and whimsy. They range from a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft to a Malaysian canoe, a Chinese junk, a Japanese bullet train and something called the Aerocar, a soaring automobile that converts to an airplane in three minutes.

The whimsy department includes the world’s largest hockey stick, the largest puck, a giant yellow watch and the first McBarge, McDonald’s floating fast-food restaurant.

There’s even a demented tribute to transportation, an outdoor sculptural representation called “international traffic jam” featuring dozens of vehicles (including everything from a rickshaw to an 18-wheeler) wrapped around a pole.

Visitors will be entertained by the more than 43,000 scheduled performances. Many of them are free, but the Expo theater also has booked stars ranging from Bill Cosby (Friday and Saturday) and Joan Rivers (July 19) to Liberace (June 2-7), the Nylons (July 16-18) and Victor Borge (Aug. 14), with ticket prices ranging from $6 to $35.

“Our bookings are absolutely crazy,” said Murray Byrnes, spokesman for Canadian Pacific Air, Expo’s official airline. The airline has increased its schedule to six flights a day between Los Angeles/San Francisco and Vancouver. And, three times a week, to handle the larger loads, a DC-10 has replaced the airline’s 737 that normally flies between LAX and Vancouver. Don’t count on getting cheap fares, although there are still some midweek bargains left.

Even the Vancouver cabbies are ready. In anticipation of Expo, Yellow Cab and Black Top Cab pooled their resources and invested $2.6 million (Canadian) to computerize their taxis.

Each car owned by Yellow Cab carries a computer display screen that instantly alerts the driver when a client needs to be picked up. Because of the speed of the system, the companies promise that a cab will be sent to your destination within 50 seconds of your call.

Getting Tickets

All the advance logistics and organization for Expo haven’t come without Vancouver’s share of problems. Not surprisingly, advance popularity has attracted a small horde of ticket scalpers eager to make a small killing. Effective immediately, you can only officially buy four tickets at a time, and Expo has installed a toll-free telephone number for U.S. visitors to order tickets: (800) 663-0223.

Still, “the definition of a good show,” said one EXPO official, “is not when you have scalpers. It’s when the scalpers tell you up front that they can’t guarantee tickets on consecutive days.”

The same is true of the Vancouver hotel situation. “Although we’ve discovered that there are still good rooms available for our passengers,” said Bob Brennan, senior vice president of Holland America cruises, “the rooms are often only available for one day and not for three or four days in a row. It’s getting tough.”

But not impossible. Holland America, which is also the official cruise line for Expo 86, holds the largest block of rooms in Vancouver for the Expo season. The cruise line has also bought 70,000 Expo tickets for its passengers.

And if Holland America can’t find you a room, then ResWest, Expo’s official reservation service, can. “What we’ve discovered,” said Expo’s Flitton, “is that people are still able to find rooms, but if they want to come here during July or August, it might be tough.”

Expo has set up a hotel hot line: (604) 662-3300. ResWest will get you a confirmed hotel reservation for $5 Canadian (about U.S. $4.25). The service is open from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m. daily.

In addition, anticipating the housing crunch, Expo has begun a home host program. If every hotel room is filled (a likely possibility at this writing), more than 400 Vancouver residents have registered their extra bedrooms as alternate accommodations. For nominal fees the rooms will be made available to Expo visitors.

If the housing problem becomes acute, there is talk of mooring up to three cruise ships in Vancouver to be used as floating hotels. But Expo officials won’t confirm that plan.

Certain problems will still exist. Some visitors may need to use the Aerocar. Traffic doesn’t threaten, it promises to be a problem. If you plan on driving your car to Expo, plan on parking it a fair distance from the site. Expo plans to fly blue balloons over parking lots that still have space. My advice: Forget the balloon search and look for convenient shuttle buses running from major hotels.

The Scream Machine

At some pavilions and attractions you can count on some long lines. One such attraction is something called the Scream Machine, an advanced roller-coaster that turns you upside down four times in less than three minutes. Already, waiting time for the ride has stretched to two hours.

“We know that some pavilions will be more popular than others,” said Expo’s Flitton. (Count on the General Motors and Disney exhibits to be two favorites.) As a result, Expo has made arrangements with some of them to allow visitors to go to those pavilions and register a specific time for their visit.

“Still, there’s no way this will be a failure,” said Holland America’s Brennan. “It’s been well-organized and promoted properly, and while everyone anticipates losing money in the short term, it has given all the participants a tremendous exposure hit.”

Last Monday, Brennan was aboard the Noordam as it sailed into Burrard Inlet and officially christened the port of Vancouver’s new Canada Place Cruise Terminal. It’s also the Canadian Pavilion as well as the city’s new convention center, one of the few Expo facilities that will remain standing after the fair closes.

In fact, so many cruise ships will be using the modern terminal this summer that between today and Oct. 6 there will only be seven days when a cruise ship is not arriving at the pier. An Expo official said they are expecting 240 cruise ships during the 165 days of the fair.

“As a cruise line, we’re convinced that everyone who comes to Vancouver to see Expo will come back,” Brennan said. “The Canadians are spending for their future, and I would be greatly disappointed if Expo turned out to be anything less than spectacular.”

So will Brennan’s clients. A full 41% of the passengers sailing with Holland America this summer booked early for Expo. And for the past month, Holland America has been averaging a whopping 1,000 bookings a day for cruises and tours with Expo stopovers.

With projections being this healthy, most Expo officials are looking beyond the world’s fair. The deficit will be absorbed, officials claim, with revenues generated by a provincial lottery expected to raise $400 million. “The ultimate effect,” Byrnes said, “will be to transform Vancouver into the major tourist attraction it deserves to be.”

Only two problems seem to remain: A flood of counterfeit U.S. currency has hit Vancouver (police already have seized more than $500,000 in phony bills), and there are rumors that a large brigade of out-of-town prostitutes has moved into town.

“If it’s true, I think they’ll be in for a surprise,” said Expo’s Flitton. “This is truly a family event, and we don’t expect them to hang around here very long.”