Niagara Falls trip

[drpep]

Went to Niagara Falls,On Tuesday. Traded $60 US for $85 CAN. Gambled it away. Overall probably won and lost $250 CAN.
More importantly I did hit several retailers to check out the soda selection and pick up lottery tickets for my collection.
For non US sodas 7-UP Tropical was the one most stores had.Got a 20 oz but have not tried it so far. Sprite Ice was at the Coke store by the Falls in 20oz bottles.I was disappointed the Coke store did not have some kind of commemorative 8oz bottle,they just had the regular bottle. Wally had Ice in 2 litres and 12 pack cans. I picked up a 12 pack but have yet to try it. Crush was everywhere. Some stores had a variety case made up of 4 six packs, 3 Crush flavors and 1 Schweppes Ginger Ale. Bought a bottle of Crush Lime. Other flavours of Crush were Orange, Grape, Strawberry, I think Grapefruit, and several others I can not remember. One store had lots of Dads Root Beer. The facings and packaging varieties in the Canadian Stores did not seem as extensive as I've seen in US stores. Only 1 store had a rather large section. In this store I bought a bottle(glass) of Tizer. It said it was a product of Canada but I also think it said it was a UK company. The same company also had something called Dandelion and Burdock Soft Drink. I tried the Tizer. It was red colored and bland tasting. Can not hit on the flavor. Will try the Dandelion later.

[RunWithDaLilGuy]

tizer's from the uk. i once had it in an old tin can. it was so heavy. i thought it was highly carbonated and just weird. didn't like it at all.

dad's root beer for some reason is huge in canada. i'm pretty sure pepsi has it, or the CO that carries clearly canadian. either way, they do things different in canada than they do in the us. there aren't fourth tier's. selection is limited. everything's corporately owned. very hard to find stuff.

plus there's so many great flavors of crush there...

[Zeni]

Hmmm, not sure where in Canada Dad's Root Beer is huge, but it's sure not B.C.

It WAS huge back in 94, but really it's nothing spectacular anymore and the price to size ratio definitely isn't worth it.

We don't really miss out on selection of drinks per se, compared to the US, yes, but that may be due to the large variety of convenience store chains, here in Canada we're kinda limited to 7-11 as the nation wide chain, aside from that it's basically regional chains that aren't too in the know as to what is good and what isn't.

I've never seen another chain have something that 7-11 hadn't gotten first.

[sodadood]

Dr Pepperman - I'd be interested in your thoughts about Sprite Ice once you've had a chance to taste it. I'm about 2 hours away from Niagara Falls (still in Ontario) and I checked around today - not in stores in this area of Ontario yet.

Dad's seems to be in every grocery store around here, but I don't know anyone who buys it on a regular basis. Crush and Vernors are the two big ones here that I haven't seen much of whenever I've travelled to the States. But we don't have any Crush in glass bottles like I saw in Florida a few weeks ago.

The Little Short Stop chain of stores is much like 7-Eleven in terms of selection, etc. Before that it was Mac's Milk, but most of those stores are long gone now.

Regarding the Coke store in Niagara Falls. I've heard about it, but haven't had a chance to get there yet. Is it worth it for the Coke enthusiast? What kinds of stuff did they have there?

Blair.

[drpep]

The Coke store was nothing special. The one in Vegas is/was much better and I'm sure Atlanta is better. They had mostly shirts and some tins. The big reason its there I imagine is the ice cream stand inside. I would not drive 2 hours just to visit the store. There is a Hershey's outlet connected to it.

[ 04-24-2003, 10:17 PM: Message edited by: dr pepperman ]