This week you can save your cash to stuff your face with deep fried Oreos or to take a few extra spins on the Polar Express.
Lyft has teamed up with the CNE to offer free admission to the Ex grounds Tuesday and Wednesday between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Chris McDowell, Media Promotions Manager at the CNE tells NEWSTALK 1010 the promotion came together in the last four or five days.
Six days ago, CNE's CEO Virginia Ludy shared a letter with Toronto city council declaring "significant negative impact" on attendance and revenue from an ongoing city lockout of stagehands. Members of IATSE Local 58 have been picketing at the gates to Exhibition Place daily.
Ludy blamed the picketing, social media campaigns by IATSE and news coverage for driving down attendance, projecting a loss in the neighbourhood of $1.5 million.
Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
But on Monday McDowell dismissed questions about whether or not the CNE was trying to mitigate those losses with free admission.
"That might be an obvious thing that people think, but to be honest, we really can't gauge that specifically, what the impact of picketing has been," McDowell said. "That's a fight between Exhibition Place and the union so we kind of leave them to that and we focus on what we want to do which is making sure our guest experience is as good as possible."
Talks between the Exhibition Place board and IATSE resumed Friday but had cooled by Sunday.