Pearson Airport to Toronto's Museums

How do I get from Pearson Airport to the ROM or the AGO?

The UP Express to Union and the subway to Museum station or St. Patrick is the honest alternative for a visitor with a backpack — fifty minutes, and the ROM's doors are at the top of the stairs — and this page says so. What the train does not do is carry the luggage, hold it while you see the exhibition, or connect four museums in a day; the chauffeur is the version that does. The downtown route covers the Gardiner hour by hour.

The ROM: the crystal on Bloor

The Royal Ontario Museum's entrance is on Bloor Street West under the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, with the original 1914 doors on Queen's Park around the corner reopened as a second entrance; the chauffeur drops on Bloor at the crystal or on Queen's Park at the old doors, whichever the exhibition's queue favours, and the return pickup is at the same door with the point texted from the galleries. The ROM's dinosaurs, the bat cave and the Chinese galleries are the family's morning; the special exhibitions on the lower level sell timed tickets that the ROM sells online, and the arithmetic from a Pearson landing is an hour from touchdown to the curb, forty minutes to Bloor Street and a ten-minute walk from the drop to the exhibition — a noon landing makes a 2.30 slot. The Gardiner Museum of ceramics is across Queen's Park, the Bata Shoe Museum a block west on Bloor, and Yorkville's hotels — the Park Hyatt across the street, the Four Seasons two blocks east — are the visitor's base.

The AGO: Gehry on Dundas

The Art Gallery of Ontario's entrance is on Dundas Street West at McCaul, under Frank Gehry's glass-and-wood facade, with the Grange park behind and Chinatown and Kensington Market on either side; the chauffeur drops on Dundas at the doors, or on McCaul when Dundas is closed for a street festival, and the return pickup is at the same corner. The AGO's Group of Seven galleries, the Henry Moore centre and the Gehry staircase are the afternoon; the special exhibitions sell timed tickets through the AGO and the same arithmetic applies. The AGO is a fifteen-minute walk from the Chelsea Hotel and ten from the Shangri-La, and the Ontario College of Art and Design's tabletop building beside it is the photograph.

Casa Loma: the castle on the hill

Casa Loma sits on Austin Terrace above Davenport Road on the escarpment north of the Annex, a Gothic Revival castle of ninety-eight rooms with a conservatory, a tunnel to the stables and a view of the city from the towers; the chauffeur enters from Austin Terrace and drops at the castle's front steps, and the return pickup is at the same door. It is a family's afternoon and a wedding's evening — the castle hosts more weddings than any other venue in the city, on the wedding pattern — and its summer escape rooms and the Christmas lights are the seasons families come back for. Casa Loma sells timed tickets in the busy season; the castle is ten minutes from the ROM by car and thirty on foot up the Baldwin Steps.

The museum day by the hour

The museums are close enough that a day covers three, and the chauffeured day is the way to do it with the luggage or the stroller in the boot: the ROM at opening, the Gardiner across the street, lunch in Yorkville, the AGO after lunch and Casa Loma before dinner — or the Aga Khan Museum on Wynford Drive, twenty minutes east on the Don Valley, with its Islamic art and its gardens, for a visitor with a second day. A family with children does the ROM's dinosaurs and Casa Loma's tunnels; a couple does the AGO and the Gehry staircase and dinner on Baldwin Street; a scholar in for the ROM's collections books the standing car from the hotel. The three-hour minimum on the hourly booking covers two museums; a whole day covers four with the stops in between.

Members, openings and the gala night

The museums' members' evenings, exhibition openings and galas — the ROM's ball, the AGO's fundraisers, Casa Loma's Christmas — are the event pattern: the chauffeur at the hotel forty minutes before, the drop at the door under the crystal or on Dundas, and the pickup at the end with the point texted from the hall. A patron flying in from New York or London for an opening books the Pearson arrival to a Yorkville hotel, the evening on the event pattern and the departure timed to the flight, and the museums' development offices book their visiting donors on a corporate account with a manifest.

Accessible visits and the school group

All four museums are accessible with elevators and rentable chairs, and a visit with a grandparent who uses a walker is the SUV or the Sprinter, the accessible drop at the door and the pace the accessible page describes; a school group from Kingston or Buffalo is the coach on a manifest, invoiced to the school, with the drop at the ROM's Queen's Park doors where the school buses unload.

What the fare includes

The fare from Pearson to any of the museums is the fixed downtown fare by vehicle class and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, tolls, 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 museums' own tickets are bought from the museums, not from us.

The winter museum day and the PATH

Toronto's museums are the winter day: a family flying in for Christmas does the ROM's dinosaurs on the day the wind chill keeps them off the streets, the AGO the next, and Casa Loma's Christmas lights in the evening — and the chauffeur's role in January is the door-to-door: the drop under the crystal rather than at the subway stairs, the pickup at the AGO's Dundas doors rather than a walk to St. Patrick, and the warm car between them. The Chelsea and the Yorkville hotels are the winter base, and the downtown route covers the Gardiner in a squall.

Scholars, curators and the collections

The ROM's research collections, the AGO's prints and drawings study room and the University of Toronto's libraries across Queen's Park bring the scholar's visit: a curator from the British Museum or the Met for a week's work, a doctoral student for a month, a visiting lecturer for a public talk at the ROM's theatre. The corporate account serves the museums' own bookings for visiting curators and donors; the scholar books the Pearson arrival to a Bloor Street hotel, the standing car for the week if the collections are across the city, and the departure timed to the flight. The University of Toronto page covers the campus that surrounds the museums.

The Bata, the Textile Museum and the smaller houses

Beyond the four big museums, the city's smaller ones are on the same hourly day: the Bata Shoe Museum a block west of the ROM on Bloor, the Textile Museum on Centre Avenue behind the AGO, the Museum of Contemporary Art in the Junction's tower district twenty minutes west, the Ontario Science Centre's successor exhibitions at Ontario Place, and the historic houses — Spadina House beside Casa Loma, Mackenzie House downtown, the Gibson House in North York. A chauffeured day threads them with the luggage in the boot, and a visitor with a museum pass does five in a day.

Book Pearson to the museums