Vancouver Canucks Poster Contest for Playoff Tickets 2012

The Vancouver Canucks held their first contest today.  It was a Canuck Poster Contest.  Thirty posters of Canucks were hung around the city in different areas all throughout the day.  If you followed @VanCanucks on twitter, they would have posted clues for you to find them as well as pics of the posters hung up that you were to find.  Once you found a poster, you were place it as creativily as you could in your home, school or office and make a video or take a picture of it.  One pair of tix would be given to the winner of the most creative place you put your poster.

So, I thought I would head downtown and try to see if I could find these posters....really, how hard could it be, right?  I knew that they would be starting the contest around 10:30am this morning so I got up early, grabbed my iPod touch and headed to the downtown core.  I got off at the Stadium Station skytrain and thought I would grab a cup of coffee first.  This was a good idea as I needed free WiFi for my iPod to follow the clues.  I was probably there for 10 mins before the first clue came on twitter via @VanCanucks.

Fortunately, the Blendz coffee shop I was sitting in at the time was only a block away from Pender and Carrall, so I quickly rushed over there thinking that I would be able to get one no problem.  But there was a problem.  As I approached the corner of Carrall and Pender, so did 10-15 other people also in the hunt for the posters.  We all frantically looked around for the posters where they should have been easily seen, but to no avail.  Moments later one of the other guys on his twitter checked for an update and as it turned out, @VanCanucks had just tweeted that the posters were all taken.  On to the next one!  Turns out the first guy was seen taking ALL 3 of the posters and he wasn't supposed to.

So then I decided that maybe the next one will not be near the stadiums but might be closer to the Vancouver Convention Centre.  So I got back on skytrain and headed towards Waterfront station.  I got off and walked up to the Starbucks at Canada Place to get WiFi for my iPod so I could find out when the second clue came out and where it would be.  It only took 15 mins before the next Clue location came.

This was located at Columbia St and Alexander in Gastown.  I wasn't sure where this was and I took too long getting there.  So again, no posters for me.

Another 15 mins wait and another location tweet was given.  This was also located in Gastown.

I was there pretty quick...maybe a minute after the tweet went out but by the time I got there, they were all gone.  I did remember passing a kid on the way there wearing a Canucks jersey and he had one of the posters in his hand.  Other Canuck fans also starting showing up and the guy across the street at the bar came out and said the posters had all been taken.  Ok...this was starting to get frustrating. So I headed back towards Waterfront and then decided I would hang out by the Starbucks across from Jack Poole Plaza.  On my way there, it was pretty obvious another tweet came out cause I saw people running out of the coffee shop and running past me on the sidewalk in a rush to get somewhere.

There were tons of people racing towards the marina from Jack Poole Plaza and I knew I wouldn't be able to outrun them so I didn't bother with this one.  It was kinda far from where I was.  So I decided to wait for the next one instead.  So this time I headed inside the Starbucks at the Shaw building, ordered something to drink, sat down and checked my twitter for the 5th clue.  @VanCanucks had tweeted that they would be taking a short break for the press conference at Rogers Arena before they will continue.  So about an hour and a half later, the next clue was given.

I actually had to Google Wesbrook.  I had no idea where it was and when I finally found out, I had no inclination to head that way.  It was located on the UBC Campus.  There were two locations where these were hidden and they didn't last long.  10 mins for both sites to be taken.  At this point, I started to walk back towards Canada Place.

This is where clue #6 was tweeted.

I thought this might be easy to find so I started to walk over to Granville St and it was only a block over from Howe St, where I was located.  My iPod touch by this time had also started to lose its battery power.  I was down to 20% and it wasn't loading new tweets for me anymore.  So all I had to go on was this picture.  I wasn't even able to find out if they had already been taken or not.  I walked all the way up Granville from Cordova looking into every alleyway until I hit the Granville St Bridge.  At that point I had given up and couldn't find the poster anywhere.  The place was called "Violet Boutique" on the other side of the Granville St. Bridge.  I thought I had come close when I found a boutique clothing store called "The Hanging Rose" but there wasn't anything out back. So thats when I decided maybe it was time to head back home as it was already 2:30pm and the contest was going to end at 3:30pm anyways.  There were still more posters to be searched for but I was very tired at that point.

But here are the other clues:

Obviously, Roger Neilson's statue outside Rogers Arena. This lasted out there for about a second before someone picked it up!

The last location was at the SFU Campus.  The went something like this "On top of a big hill. A to the Q. Images"  There were 3 posters up for grabs.  Gone in seconds!!

So I came away early cause my iPod died earlier in the day so had no way to track @VanCanucks and his tweets.  I didn't manage to grab any posters even though I was so close to them all morning.  But thats alright.  There's another playoff tix giveaway on Wednesday morning at the Save-on-Foods in Fleetwood that I'm going to try.  All I have to do is drive up and give them my name and phone number.  Then wait til 3pm and listen to Team 1040 to hear if I won!

Anyways, I'm sure there will be more competitions out there for playoff tickets from the Vancouver Canucks.  I'll be taking part in them and blogging about them as they happen.  Stay tuned!