Where is the entrance

This month we decided to go to the Toronto Home Show, and we figured taking the TTC would be a good idea. Well, that turned out to be a challenge on its own. The Toronto Home Show was at the Enercare Centre which is located within the CNE grounds.

I decided to look up how to get to the Enercare Centre from where we live, and I used the TTC planner and immediately ran into an issue because this location was not available to be found on the APP. So, this is the first challenge that we had to deal with but given it is within the CNE grounds it shouldn’t be too much of an issue or that is what we thought.

Getting to the CNE grounds is normally pretty easy if you are on the TTC but this was a challenge that we were not prepared to deal with. Our first challenge was we decided to take the subway to Union Station because normally there is a streetcar that goes directly from there to the CNE grounds. Well, this proved to be wrong because there was construction on the route as they were replacing tracks and watermains so that impacted the route. We could take the streetcar part of the way but then had to transfer to a bus for the rest of the route. The issue with this was the location of the bus was not clearly identified so that was frustrating. The bus was not in the same location as the streetcar so that was the first frustration. 

We finally figured out the location of the bus and we were on the way to the Enercare Centre and that should have been easy, but it turned out to be a challenge again. There are two stops within the CNE grounds and there is no identification which stop is for what location so we decided to go to the loop because that is where we thought we should be going. The first stop is Manitoba Ave and you have no idea where that really is, so you don’t know if that is the stop you need or not so you just continue to the TTC loop. 

We finally reached the TTC loop within the CNE grounds and figured it would be easy to get to the Enercare Centre from there given the number of signs that said, “Home Show this way”. It was this way but at one point we got to a location that there was a door to the Enercare Centre so we figured we would be able to enter but discovered it was locked. It ended up that the entrance that we need was way around the front of the Enercare Centre.

What we finally discovered was we should have got off at Manitoba Ave. as it would have been a lot closer to the building but there was no way to find this out until you have walked all the way around from the TTC loop. When we left the show, we walked over to Manitoba Ave instead of back to the TTC loop to get the bus. Something that the show should have had was how to get to the location especially when taking the TTC, this would have made it a lot easier for people getting to the show. So what we have learned from this experience is to look at the total route that you are taking and see if there is a stop a little closer to your final destination.