Pearson Airport to Pickering Casino Resort

How do I get from Pearson Airport to Pickering Casino Resort?

The alternatives are the GO train from Union to Pickering station — a few minutes from the resort by taxi but starting at Union, not at Pearson, an hour and three-quarters in all — and the casino's coach programme from pickup points in the east. The chauffeur is the version that runs from the arrivals curb to the porte-cochère at a fixed fare with the vehicle sized to the group; the Oshawa route page covers the same corridor and the 407's timing.

The resort beside the 401

Pickering Casino Resort stands at the corner of Church Street and Bayly Street beside the 401's Church Street interchange, with the hotel tower, the gaming floor, the theatre and the restaurants in one complex around a porte-cochère; the chauffeur stops there, and the return pickup is at the same door with the pickup point texted before you come out. The theatre has its own entrance for show nights, which the chauffeur uses when the booking is the show. The resort's position — beside the highway, ten minutes from the Pickering GO station, twenty from Oshawa and forty from downtown — makes it the casino for the east of the city in the way Woodbine is for the west.

The Durham hotels and the 401 corridor

Pickering's resort hotel is the first choice, and the Durham hotels along the 401 — the Hilton Garden Inn and the Holiday Inn in Ajax, the Homewood Suites and the Holiday Inn in Oshawa, the Residence Inn in Whitby — are the overflow and the choice of the corporate visitor whose meetings are in the Durham business parks; the Hilton and Marriott pages list the doors. A visitor at any of them is ten to twenty minutes from the resort by car, and the evening at the casino is a short fixed fare with the same chauffeur holding for the return. The Oshawa GM plant, the Ontario Power Generation offices and the Durham College and Ontario Tech campuses bring the corporate traffic that fills the corridor's hotels midweek.

Group nights, birthdays and the Sprinter

The group night is the resort's core traffic from the city: a birthday party of eight from Scarborough or Markham, a corporate team from a Durham office, a stag from the Beaches. The Executive Sprinter collects from one or two addresses, delivers to the porte-cochère forty minutes from the east end, waits or returns at the booked hour, and the fare is one figure for the vehicle split however the group likes. A group arriving at Pearson for the weekend is met at the group meeting point inside the terminal and driven on one manifest; the event page covers the theatre's shows and the pattern for a concert night.

Shows at the theatre

The resort's theatre draws the touring comedians, the tribute acts and the mid-size concerts that play the province's casino circuit — Rama, Fallsview, Pickering — and a show night from the city or the Durham hotels is a chauffeured arrival at the theatre's entrance, a car that waits on the event-night pattern or returns at the end, and the drive home. Tickets and rooms sell together on the big nights, and the booking pattern is the tickets first, the room second, the car third.

From the resort: the east end, the lake and the Kawarthas

Pickering is on the lake, and the resort is fifteen minutes from the Pickering waterfront and Frenchman's Bay, twenty from the Toronto Zoo on the Rouge, forty from the Scarborough Bluffs, and forty north-east from the Great Blue Heron on Scugog Island for a player working through the province's rooms. Downtown Toronto is forty minutes west on the 401 and the DVP, and the Pickering GO station is the connection for a guest continuing to the city by train; a chauffeured day from the resort covers the Zoo, the Bluffs and the lake.

Winter and the 407

The 407 is the province's best-plowed highway and the forty-five-minute drive is rarely more than an hour in January; the 401 through the east end is the stretch that stalls in a squall. The chauffeur reads Ontario 511 before leaving, the vehicles run winter tyres, and a drive that cannot be made safely is rescheduled rather than attempted.

Responsible play and what the fare includes

The casino is nineteen and over with identification checked; the hotel and the restaurants take families, and the resort operates under Ontario's responsible-gaming programme. The fare from Pearson to Pickering Casino Resort is fixed by vehicle class and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, the 407 toll, taxes, curbside pickup at the pre-arranged area and the included waiting with the flight tracked; meet and greet is the paid add-on; gratuity is never added; a cancellation before dispatch is free.

The show-and-dinner night: timing the east end

The resort's theatre runs at 8 and its restaurants fill in the hour before, and a show night from the city is timed backwards from the curtain: the chauffeur at the door in the Beaches or Leslieville at 6.15 for an 8 pm show with dinner, forty minutes on the 401 and the DVP against the evening flow, and the pickup afterwards at the theatre's entrance with the point texted before the encore. A guest at the resort hotel who wants the city afterwards books the forty-minute downtown leg from the same chauffeur; a group of eight from Scarborough in the Sprinter is one fare and the drive home asleep. The Durham hotels ten minutes away are the overflow when the tower is full, and the standing car between them and the porte-cochère is priced by the leg.

The layover and the east-end connection

Pickering's forty-five minutes from Pearson by the 407 make it a layover casino for a traveller with an evening between flights who prefers a newer room to Woodbine's — the fixed fare to the porte-cochère, the evening on the floor or at the theatre, and the fixed fare back to the correct terminal timed to the check-in cut-off with the terminal finder confirming which, the luggage in the boot all evening. It is also the casino for a traveller landing at Pearson and staying in the east end or Durham — a visitor to family in Scarborough, a contractor at the Darlington nuclear station, a conference delegate at the Ajax convention centre — for whom the resort is fifteen minutes from the hotel rather than an hour across the city.

The loyalty traveller and the standing car

Great Canadian's rewards programme moves its higher tiers between its rooms, and a player working the province on a hosted weekend books the legs between Pickering, Woodbine, the Great Blue Heron and the western rooms as fixed fares on one profile. The resort's hosts book their guests' airport transfers on a corporate account with a manifest and monthly invoicing, and the guest sees a name board inside the hall and a car at the porte-cochère when they leave; the standing car for a hosted weekend — the airport, the resort, downtown, the resort, the airport — is one booking by the hour and by the leg.

The Ajax convention centre, the racetrack and the weekday visitor

Pickering's resort shares its corridor with the Ajax Convention Centre five minutes east and the Ajax Downs quarter-horse track beside it, and the weekday traffic between them is the corporate one: a trade show at the convention centre whose exhibitors stay at the resort hotel, a dealer group with an event at the track and a night at the tables, the Durham business parks' visitors who fly into Pearson on Monday and out on Thursday. The corporate account carries the airport transfers on a manifest, the standing cars between the hotel, the convention centre and the offices, and the departures timed to the flights; the forty-five-minute 407 run to the terminal is the reason Durham's business hotels fill midweek with visitors who would otherwise stay on Dixon Road.

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