Pokemon Go players to get free admission to the PNE on opening day

With hopes of targeting a younger generation, this year’s The Fair at the PNE will offer free admission to Pokemon Go players on opening day.

The annual fair begins this Saturday, Aug. 20, and organizers have announced they will be playing along with the latest Pokemon Go craze in order to create some added excitement.

“We just thought it would be a fun thing to do,” said spokesperson Laura Ballance. “We are always looking at ways to engage different demographics, and this is a generally young person’s activity, so we thought it would be fun.”

Players will get in for free from 11 a.m. to noon on Saturday just by showing their Pokemon Go app on their phone at the gates.

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The Fair also boasted about the “many” Pokestops throughout the grounds, and announced they would be dropping “lures” all day.

Ballance said they don’t have any expectations of how many Pokemon fans will take advantage of the offer, but it will likely be a few hundred.

The weather for this year’s fair is another added bonus for attendance numbers. Forecasts are calling for hot, sunny weather into next week.

Last year’s fair was interrupted half-way through by a vicious storm that shut down the event for one hour and kept visitors away. The weather causes an estimated 100,000 lost visits.

“We’d had our best opening five days in recent memory, and then when that storm hit, essentially summer in Vancouver ended that day. We never recovered the temperatures and we really didn’t recover from the attendance momentum either,” said Ballance.

Along with the Pokemon Go gimmick, the line-up of musical performances, brand new exhibits, a nightly 90-minute magic show in the Pacific Coliseum, an extensive range of food and drinks, and of course the rides, the fair will likely start off strong.