Mets Opening Day 2017

April 3, 2017

We experienced a ballet of emotions over the course of the last two weeks with our teams' opening days, but we'll focus on the Mets right now and discuss the Yankees later this week. We've experienced things never before experienced on an opening day. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's just get right to it. Last Monday afternoon was a lovely one. Sunny with just a slight breeze in the air. Lisa packed travel wine cups. We packed Dr. L and snacks. We hit the road around 11:15 for a 1:10 game start time. We arrived at Citi Field at 11:45. Again. 1:10 start time. We cannot stress that enough. Police officers denied us immediate access and detoured us, which was fine. That's happened before and usually, we're simply detoured to the other side of the stadium so we weren't concerned.

Slight concern began to set in when the cops kept waving us on as we drove by the US Open. And then the Queens Museum. Even more so as we navigated passed the World's Fair. Full panic set in as we headed into territory we never saw before. Eventually, the cops deposited us in one of the parking lots of Fresh Meadows Park (which we didn't know existed). It took us approximately 15-20 minutes to arrive at this destination. At the entrance of the parking lot, Lisa got into an altercation with the senior citizen monitoring traffic. She called Lisa, "honey." This was a mistake.
Lisa: "How do I get back to the stadium?"
Old Person: "Honey. Ya not goin' to the stadium."
Lisa: "Yes, I am. I don't want to park here."
Old Person: "Ya gonna park (sounded like pahhhhk) here. Ya gonna to take the shuttle to the stadium and when you get back, ya gonna take the parkway (pahhhkway) home." (please note: the shuttle stop was a half mile away from our parking space)
Serena: "How does she know what parkway we need to get home?"

After Lisa begrudgingly pulled her car into the lot, another senior citizen demanded that we pay $25. They didn't even discount the parking rate for us. At parking time, it was 12:15 pm. We needed a little breather, so we tapped into our awesome wine sippy cups and a bag of chips. Look at our nails.

At 12:45, we headed to the shuttle. We walked through a geese sh*t filled field in order to get there. The shuttle transported us back towards Citi Field. Ten minutes. No big deal. But guess where they dropped us off? Not at Citi Field. Roughly four blocks from the subway station, not even the gate. We've now seen where the 7 Line is parked and where the MTA offices are. No one ever needs to see that. This is photo taken halfway to the subway. Not the stadium. The subway:

When we emerged from the subway station, this is the sight that greeted us:

Hell on earth.  Lines. Lines upon lines of people. We thought we were being clever by circling around the entire stadium, but we weren't. We were not clever at all. The lines wrapped around the stadium and god knows where else. Our gate was the bullpen gate and our line was so long that it encircled McFadden's, the stadium dumpsters, and began in the parking lot. It was so crowded that it was hard to determine which line led to McFadden's and which line led to the stadium itself.

Sidebar regarding McFadden's: Citi Field should not allow non-ticketed patrons to park in their parking lot during prime games such as opening day, popular rivalry games, or playoffs. It's not fair that non-ticketed McFadden's customers took parking spaces that could've been made available to customers who actually purchased opening day tickets. For too much money. Especially since Citi Field has limited parking. There is only one lot. Once it's full, fans are sh*t out of luck. Have you ever been to Flushing? Tom Glavine was a liar. No one should ever experience Queens or get stuck street parking. Trust us.

Now rumor has it that the reason some teams have nixed the idea of "print at home" tickets is that the tickets are able to be scanned more than once. We cannot speak to whether or not this is true. We don't know. We've never tried it. We're a-holes, but we're not d*ckheads. However, that being said, it's clear that SOME people think it's a trick that works because while we stood on line near McFadden's, Serena watched several people enter the stadium through the bar's entrance and then pass their printed tickets through the fence to their friends waiting outside. While they may not have gotten into the game with these tickets, these individuals definitely contributed to the crowd control issues surrounding the stadium's exterior.

Once inside, we noticed this little addition:

Lovely touch. We also found this wonderful M&M bench. Note our awesome free giveaway socks courtesy of Serena's work mom.

At the top of the staircase, we stepped right into the supposed "standing room only" section. Mayhem. It looked like the scene from Independence Day just before the aliens attacked and the humans just stood around like jack wagons staring up at the sky. That's a sh*t ton of people just standing around in the walkways if you ask us. Let's call a spade a spade. Baseball stadiums should not offer standing room only tickets unless the venue also functions as a football stadium. Citi Field and Yankee Stadium cannot possibly accommodate a crowd size like Met Life Stadium can, for example. They're just not big enough. Most likely, a facility the size of Citi Field cannot provide the PARKING necessary to accommodate these extra bodies. That's right. That's another dig at the parking f*ck up.

This is a view of the crowd congregating around the food court as we used the escalator to get to our seats:

We reached our seats at 1:45. It was the top of the 3rd inning. Remember, we arrived at Citi Field at 11:45 in the morning. We sat at 1:45 in the afternoon. Perspective.

 

The wind was no joke up there.

The view from our overpriced seats was decent. And by overpriced, we mean that we spent $200 total for this view.

We received a visit from both Ginger Snaps and Old Man Ed. Neither of them bought us snacks, so we had to go get our own. Unfortunately, it was so crowded, that we couldn't deal with the concession lines, so we simply settled for the shortest line available to us. Which is why we ended up spending $13 on a boring, lukewarm cheeseburger/french fries platter. We ate it before we could take a picture of it, but we did take a picture of ourselves on the way to the concession stands, so we figured that would be a suitable substitute. Plus, you're not really missing much by NOT seeing our food because it wasn't that interesting and in this case, you get another photo of our kick ass socks.

After the game, we waited 15 minutes before being able to get onto the shuttle back to the car. Needless to say, we had a long day. On the upside, the Mets won 6-0.