Sunday, August 3, 2014

Estadio de Pantalones

Went to the opening event at Levi's Stadium last night. I only got the briefest of views of the place because I was with the twins, so I couldn't wander, but I'm happy to offer my take of what went well and what didn't.

Getting there:
Not really a problem. We made sure to drive down early. Getting there via 880 and 237 to Great America Parkway a couple hours before kick-off was a breeze. We only encountered traffic when we originally got in line for parking lot 6. After not moving in that lane for 10 minutes, I changed lanes, and decided to park in my backup plan lot, #3. I knew my old Casbah and Club Quake comrades were there, and the extra $5 to park ($35 total) wouldn't be too bad. I was right. Once I switched lanes, I got right into lot 3 without any delays. I also noticed that if you did a left turn U-turn at Bunker Hill and Great America, you'd be able to get into lot 6 a lot faster from the other direction (consider that a tip).

Getting in:
Metal detectors? Really? I'm not too keen on emptying my pockets and taking off my belt to go to a game. An airport is a semi-secure location, a stadium is not. I was little paranoid about someone snatching my phone while I put my belt back on.
This is the first time I've ever used electronic tickets. They scanned the ticket barcode with no problem at all. No one had any problems looking at my phone for the seats we were at.
Everyone seemed to crowd around the north side of the stadium, so they need folks to tell guests to move to other gates to keep things from clogging up. We were on the south side, so we just walked to gates closer to that side and got in with no crowd delay.

Inside:
Wow. Roomy. I really mean roomy. No cattle pen this. The bathrooms are huge! I nearly got lost trying to find my way out. Lori said the same for the women's bathrooms. It was easy to get around without a lot of trouble.
I was never able to connect to their WiFi, and I never got the stadium app to work either. Some people did because I did see food being delivered to their seats which was one of the things you could do with the app.
In terms of food, sell your first born to eat here.
Lori did pick up some popcorn, M&M's, and hot chocolate. She noted that they were running out of items (something that's easy enough to correct), and that they had trouble hearing her order over the noise (something not so easy to fix).
After the game, we walked around behind the luxury box side of the field. That whole side says, "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".  We weren't allowed in after the game, but we could see a team store, escalators, bars, and restaurants. I'd like to get the chance to take the tour some time, just to see it.

Getting out:
Great America closed just as the game was ending resulting in the carmageddon everyone predicted. The crowds leaving the stadium blocked VTA from really moving quickly, and there were huge queues of people waiting to get on. Organized queues, but stationary. As we walked back to our van, traffic was not moving. at. all. It did, however, give me time to plan our escape. We managed to get out of the lot with no problem, and I turned away from the main clog of traffic. Bingo. Completely clear. It seems the biggest lesson I learned is to be flexible, and have multiple options to getting in and out.

I am interested to see how well they do once they have an event that fills the place completely.
The wine and cheese 49er crowd has their palace. :-)