About this guide
Where the pictures come from
Two building pictures on Up Close are free-licence photos with a credit line, and three are images made after real photographs. Every mark drawn on a picture states a fact the Up Close desk has checked.
Photos and made images
Two building pictures are free-licence photos, each with a credit line naming its author and licence. The Parq Vancouver photo is by GoToVan from Vancouver, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The River Rock Casino Resort photo is by GoToVan, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr. The Parq photo was taken in October 2017 and the River Rock photo in July 2019. Signs, colours and entrances may have changed since.
Three building pictures are not camera photographs: Elements Casino Surrey, Hastings Racecourse and Cascades Casino Langley. Each is a photorealistic image made with an image program, working from real photographs of that place. The site's line drawings come from the same program. Any figure in a drawing is fictional and portrays no one. Where a venue has no building picture, the page shows a drawing with a board in its place.
Cascades Casino Langley does not permit unauthorized photography, filming or live streaming. Up Close shows outside views of the buildings only, and it does so at every venue it covers.
Photos in use
How the marks are placed
Each mark drawn over a picture carries one fact about the venue. That fact may be parking, the nearest stop or station, a hotel on site, or the level where a service sits inside. The Up Close desk verifies each one on the venue's website and with official bodies. All of those checks carry the date October 7, 2026.
Marks are placed by hand on the building in the frame. They do not show the exact position of a door unless the venue publishes it.
When a venue's pages disagree on a number, Up Close prints neither figure. Grand Villa gives two poker table counts, so the guide shows no count. Hastings gives two slot counts, and that number stays off the page as well.
How distances are measured
Distances to bus stops and SkyTrain stations are straight lines, not walking routes. Each runs from the venue's OpenStreetMap position to the stop coordinates in TransLink's GTFS data. The feed used is valid from September 7, 2026 to January 3, 2027.
Parq is the exception. Its distances to its two stations are the ones Parq publishes, kept as given. Stadium-Chinatown Station on the Expo Line is 850 m away, and Yaletown-Roundhouse Station on the Canada Line is 800 m. Its nearest bus stop, northbound Smithe St at Expo Blvd, is measured like the others: about 119 m in a straight line.