In 1998, the Canadian National Exhibition offered several promotions on a single day, which also happened to be Chinese Day. On the middle Saturday of the fair, if you had bought a medium pizza at Pizza Nova you got into the CNE free; and if you had bought a certain number of 649 lottery tickets, you also got into the CNE for free that same day.
Needless to say, the promotion was hugely successful and the final attendance count for the day exceeded 250,000 persons — which still today stands as a North American Fair record for a single day attendance.
As the day progressed the infrastructure of the CNE was stretched beyond its capabilities. Washroom lines were a 2 hour wait, to get on a single ride would be the same amount of time. To purchase a water took an hour — and only if you could find a food stand that actually still had some left. The garbage overflowed in all containers and reports were that TTC streetcar took at least three hours at times to get aboard. Sure Mayhem!
In the early afternoon I was in a midway ticket booth assisting our sellers and I spy a woman and her two kids about 20 or 30 people back in the line. The woman was visibly upset and crying. I exited the ticket booth and approached the woman to see if I could assist. I asked the woman what was wrong and she said that she had been waiting in line for the Giant Wheel for almost 2 hours and she just realized that she was in line for the ticket booth. I took the woman and her family to the back entrance of Giant Wheel and got her on.
