paralympics venues and kings cross

balletshoes

Hi all,

Now that I can see availability for some paralympics events on 30th and 31st August, can anyone tell me which venue is easiest to get to and back from, to the Kings Cross area (we arrive by train there on Thursday morning, are staying in a hotel on the Grays Inn Road on Thursday evening, and are departing London on Friday evening from St Pancras).

The venues are -

the Aquatics centre,
Copper Box,
ExCel,
Greenwich Park
North Greenwich Arena.

The aquatics centre is looking favourite for event to be honest, as its finals and medals ceremonies, but is it difficult to get back and forward there on public transport?

There are also events at the Orbit, but these seem to need an addition olympic park ticket, so I guess I'm ignoring those, as we don't have olympic park tickets.

marksmith99

The Aquatics Centre and Copper Box are in the Olympic Park - you can get to Stratford for the Olympic Park on the train from St Pancras so that would be your best bet.

The Orbit is just a big tower in the Olympic Park that you can go up (its a sculpture by Anish Kapoor I think) - if you have tickets to the aquatic centre or Copper box you'll be in the park so you could do the Orbit tower as well if you wanted.

balletshoes

thanks for that, this has probably been covered somewhere already, but is there a reason why you need olympic park tickets as well as venue tickets for some things like the orbit, but you only need venue tickets for the copper box or aquatics centre?

marksmith99

Olympic Park tickets are for you to wander around the park but don't get you into any of the actual buildings where the sports are happening, you can just get the atmosphere of the place and watch on big screens.

If you have a ticket to actually see a sport then this effectively doubles up as an Olympic Park ticket too.

The reason the Orbit tickets all say that is they don't want people to be confused and think that by buying an orbit ticket it will also double up as an olympic park ticket to let you in to wander around, an orbit ticket just gets you up the tower, you need another ticket to actually get you into the park in the first place, either a sporting one or a general olympic park ticket.

SimbaSimon

marksmith99 wrote: »

Olympic Park tickets are for you to wander around the park but don't get you into any of the actual buildings where the sports are happening, you can just get the atmosphere of the place and watch on big screens.

If you have a ticket to actually see a sport then this effectively doubles up as an Olympic Park ticket too.

The reason the Orbit tickets all say that is they don't want people to be confused and think that by buying an orbit ticket it will also double up as an olympic park ticket to let you in to wander around, an orbit ticket just gets you up the tower, you need another ticket to actually get you into the park in the first place, either a sporting one or a general olympic park ticket.

The above is correct for the Olympics but not the Paralympics. There are tickets named 'Olympic Park Day Pass', they start at £10 and allow you to get into a number of venues and sports on a first come first served basis.

e.g. buy a Olympic Park day pass on Satuday 1st September for £10 and your be able to see the below events.

09:00-12:30 Football 7-a-side: preliminaries (PFT01)
09:00-12:30 Goalball: preliminaries (PGB07)
10:45-17:00 Wheelchair Basketball: prelims (PWB09)
11:00-20:00 Wheelchair Tennis: preliminaries (PWT01)
13:45-17:15 Goalball: preliminaries (PGB08)
14:00-17:30 Football 7-a-side: preliminaries (PFT02)
18:30-22:00 Goalball: preliminaries (PGB09)
18:30-22:30 Wheelchair Basketball: prelims (PWB11)

All for £10... bargain or what?!

lambourne

Watch out if you get the train from St Pancras to Stratford Internation as it is NOT covered by the travelcard that comes with tickets and costs £6 each way. From Kings X you can get a Victoria line tube to Walthamstow central then bus 69 or 97 to Stratford.

balletshoes

is the London 2012 travel planner wrong then? As that says the journey between St Pancras and Stratford International is covered by the railcard provided with spectator games tickets (its the Southeastern service from St Pancras apparently) -

http://travel.london2012.com/SJPWeb/Pages/JourneyOptions.aspx?jrh=-1753730868&o=9100STPX&ot=S&d=8100STA&dt=V&do=20120903&to=0830&dr=20120903&tr=1430&rr=1&pm=PT

SimbaSimon

The high speed train from St Pancras to Stratford International is included on the spectators games travelcard. Its also available to use for Olympic volunteers.

lambourne

Well I was given the wrong information by the Director of TFL I asked about the javelin at an event promoting the Games - sorry for passing it on

80schick

As Simbak2k states you can you the spectators travel card on the javelin train - the director of TFL obviously doesn't know what he is talking about.

It seems mis information is be given out there by different people - would have thought director of TFL was aware! To ensure I do not get stopped (as a volunteer) I'm printing out the info from an e-mail I got from Southeastern confirming I can use it so if I do get stopped by someone that doesn't know I can clearly show them...but also it is on Southeastern's own website.