The 2016 Rio Olympics

Three years ago, I had the opportunity to be a spectator at the 2012 London Olympics. It was an amazing experience, and I definitely plan on going to the summer olympics in Rio next year. Here's how I managed to put a trip together last time in light of Individual Tickets going on sale (to Americans) on May 19th at 10am EST.

Tickets

My Sochi Tickets

The biggest obstacle everyone has to attending the Olympics is getting tickets. In 2011, somehow I stumbled across this website, Cosport, which happens to be the only authorized ticket reseller for the Olympics in the United States. This means that the only legal way for any person with a U.S. address to get tickets to the Rio Olympics is through them. If I remember correctly, I actually found out about them through an LA Times article. Either way, I discovered CoSport a few days before they opened a round of Individual Ticket sales. They had a ton of availability for most sports at relatively affordable prices. I found a friend to come with me and I ended up getting tickets to see events in Basketball, Field Hockey, Beach Volleyball, Gymnastics, and Soccer/Football. There were some Tennis and Swimming tickets available, but I couldn't afford to buy absolutely everything I wanted to see. I also got tickets to the 2014 Sochi Olympics last year through CoSport, but I ended up being unable to get to Russia at that time.

When you purchase tickets, you don't know what countries are playing yet, so there is a little bit of chance that goes into that. I actually got lucky enough to watch "Team GB" play in every single event except Beach Volleyball, which I ended up watching Team USA play in. It's always great to root for the home team. The best surprise was being able to see Team GB's very first soccer match of the games in Wembley Stadium. I ended up with amazing seats on the ground level, maybe 20 rows or so from the field at one of the corner sections. I only paid $60 for that seat, and it was an amazing experience to be surrounded by loyal, drunken people from the UK singing fight songs as their team played the UAE. There was even a SWAT style team that came out onto the field when the UAE scored a point. And even Prince William was there. It was great!

The view from my seats at Wembley :)

To top it all off, each ticket included a free day pass for the London Tube. Free transit! So I never had to pay for a single transit ride minus the initial leg to go pick up my tickets. I can't say if Rio will offer a similar free transit program, but they do have a pretty neat bus system so it would be amazing if that was made available again.

Anyway, if you are at all interested in getting tickets to the Rio Olympics, I would urge you to create a CoSport account as soon as you can and set a reminder in your phone to be online and logged in before 10am Eastern Standard Time with an idea of what you actually want tickets to. There is a Competition Schedule on their homepage so you can pick specific dates and events you want to aim for. It even includes pricing schedules. And this is also a friendly reminder that RUGBY will debut in Rio as an Olympic sport for the first time! I will definitely be trying to score some Rugby tickets this time. Rugby and Swimming.

Free Stuff
One important thing to know that makes the Olympics affordable is that there are a TON of sponsors at the Olympics and there are even more companies that want to advertise there as well. This equates to there being a ton of free stuff available for spectators if you know where to look. My favorite perk in this category was being able to enter the Chase VIP Lounge on Pall Mall. All you needed for entry was any Chase Visa card in your name and you could enter with up to 6 guests. In the lounge, Chase offered free Chase Olympic pins, free baseball caps and bags, free food and drink (including European Fanta if you don't drink alcohol!), free calls to the US, free internet, and free unique experiences that you could sign up for. One of those experiences was to have dinner cooked by Chef Morimoto. Yes, THE Iron Chef. I got to have dinner cooked by him and his crew on two separate occasions that week I was there. Best sushi of my life! They also had some meet and greets with various American Olympians on a sign up basis, but the food was more important to me :)

Hanging out with none other than Chef Morimoto! He was excited that I was from Hawaii :)

Flights
Another big obstacle to seeing the Olympics was getting an affordable flight there. London is already a pretty pricey destination in July, so of course demand would push up prices even higher during the Olympic period. My friend purchased her ticket there for around $1500; however, I had some miles saved up on Delta Airlines (which I would not recommend now that they have completely changed their mileage program) and was able to fly to London for 90,000 miles and tax which added up to around $130 roundtrip. A typical off-peak mileage award ticket to Europe is 60,000 miles, but 90,000 miles was pretty standard to go from anywhere in the US to anywhere in Europe in the middle of July. And since I was graduating from my master's program that fall, my parents donated their miles to my cause. That was the best graduation present my parents could have ever given me!

Anyway, my point is that if you know what dates you want to be there and if you can get tickets next week during the first round of open ticket sales, start looking for plane tickets to avoid a high surcharge when demand starts to increase as the games get closer. Airlines typically begin selling tickets 11 months ahead of time, so in August, start looking for tickets whether you are paying with cash or miles. I would highly recommend using miles, and as an added bonus, flights out of Brazil do not collect certain taxes, so if you wanted to add on a flight to Europe from Brazil this might be a good time to do so! Rio also isn't very far from South Africa, one of my favorite places! And there are a number of low cost carriers that fly within South America if you are interested in making a bigger trip out of it. I loved my time in Rio, and I would love to visit Buenos Aires the next time I head down that way. Iguacu Falls is also worth a stop in my opinion. There are a million options! You could even fly into a city not too far from Rio which may be cheaper, then find a bus or low cost airline to get in to Rio. I imagine Sao Paulo might even be a much cheaper option and it's not too far away.

Our campsite

Accommodations
The last major consideration if you want to try to attend the Olympics is accommodations. Hotels and even hostels will jack up their prices due to demand at the time of the Olympics. If you can, finding a friend to stay with would save you a fortune. I ended up spending a part of my time in London with my cousin who lives in Oxfordshire. Oxford isn't super close to London though, so for three nights, my travel buddy and I stayed at a place called "Camp in London" which was literally a campsite one Tube stop over from the Olympic Park where mostly volunteers stayed. It was only 10 pounds per person per night to stay there since we had our own tent. That made it super affordable to stay in the city near the events. It really was amazing. And when else can you safely camp in a big city like London? I am not sure if Rio will be doing something similar, or if it will be as safe even if they do, but this kind of Olympic sponsored affordable accommodation is something to keep an eye out for.

I hope this info helps anyone who might consider going to the Olympics next year! And remember, the first round of Individual Ticket Sales begin next week Tuesday, May 19th, at 10am EST.