Predators Game Yesterday

So my wife won tickets to yesterday's Nashville Predators game against the Islanders.  They were in the club seats where you get free food and beverages during the game.  Cool, huh?



You would think so, but as I get older, I am finding it harder to enjoy events like this.  The free parking passes are all digital and only give the address of the arena.  There was no signage as to where you were to park with the passes.  The lot did have a generic name, but we were told by one of the staff that we should have parked there.  We were in that lot and it was totally full.  We ended up having to buy more parking in a different lot.  Even then, there are no attendants or machines.  You have to do everything by an app that is wonky to use!  How stressful!

Then, we had to stand in line to show our vaccine cards.  Then, we had to go through airport level security emptying pockets into little plates squeezing everyone into three little lanes.  I had to throw my pocket knife away as I forgot to leave it in the car.  I set the machine off even with empty pockets.  My steel plate in my ankle has NEVER done that before but did yesterday!  How stressful!

Everyone is running late by this time as the game has started.  We then got squeezed again into TWO lanes for scanning the digital tickets.  Luckily, we had service, but a lot of people were having to step aside to find a signal to bring up their digital tickets and try again.  People were allover each other and getting quite angry!  HOW STRESSFUL!!!

Then, we get to the elevator to go to our free club seats.  The attendant told us where to go and so we go off in search of this mythical box.  We found the room she said it would be and entered.  That was a private box and not the right one!  HOW STRESSFUL!!!!!!

We found other attendants who then told us we were on the third floor.  We went up there and finally found it.  We had already missed 12 minutes of the first period!  HOW STRESSFUL!!!!!!!!

The food wasn't good.  I also found it extremely hard to focus as there are so many lights, sounds, and some loudmouth who kept screaming in my ear trying to get the team on the ice to listen to his coaching from 100 ft. up.  I was so over-stimulated!!!!  Did I mention it was STRESSFUL???

We used to go to games all the time and I thought I loved it.  I usually had to watch everything on the Jumbo-tron as I can't follow the puck due to all the distractions.  I had trouble even staying focused on the screen yesterday.  I was so over-stimulated that I wasn't even blinking when we left.  It took about 30 minutes before my eye functions returned to normal.

If my wife ever wins tickets again, I might go with her.  However, I won't intentionally do this again.  She can watch all the games at home or take a friend of hers, but I will be in my chair getting snuggles from my cats.  Call me old, but I don't care.  Get off my lawn, junior!!!!

I can understand that totally.  I had a similar experience going to see Brighton play football (soccer).  My friend and I stood on a train for 30 minutes, crammed full of other supporters.  We then shuffled from one train on to another train, and there was even less room on this one.  Then we had to find our seats, and went to the wrong end of the stadium.  Because we scanned our tickets in, and went in to the wrong end, we had to go back and get another ticket from the ticket office.  Then finally we made it in to the stadium, and it was cold and noisy.  The game was okay, but nothing special.  Then we had to repeat the crammed train idea on the way back, but this time with a lot of shouting, and complaining.

I didn't enjoy it much at all, and the cost of the tickets were quite high.  It felt like you were paying for pain!

Chris, you're old 

Welcome to the brave new world, everything is digital and tracked.

Let noise reduction headphones be your friend  

Thankfully the Mercy Me show wasn't stressful though the parking and show tickets were digital (unless you printed them). I take screenshots just in case I have no signal though apparently that's not necessary if you save them in Google Pay or some other "wallet."

Typically I don't go to big name shows anymore because of the prices (I just looked to see what Casting Crowns and TSO would be), but my wife actually said she wanted to go to this months ago and she is not at all a music/concert type person so I joyfully paid for them.

I actually enjoyed Micah Tyler more than Mercy Me. He reminded me of Big Chris.

Quote :

I actually enjoyed Micah Tyler more than Mercy Me. He reminded me of Big Chris.

Really?  I will have to check this guy out!