Monday, August 25, 2008

How Do I Plan my Stadium Trips?

Many folks have asked me how I do what I do. How do I get to all of these stadiums throughout the year in terms of travel, tickets, and lodging? They always wonder if I have any tricks of the trade I might pass on. My response to them is the the entire Quest for 31 website is based on handing over these tricks of the trade, so others can begin their own Quest for 31. When I developed the website it began as a place for me to store the links that helped me to prepare for and plan each of my trips to different stadiums around the country. I always start with an NFL Schedule (I have it posted on the website broken down by team and by week) and my road trip NFL City Distance Chart. This NFL city matirx is a tool I developed which lists the distance between NFL cities in terms of mileage and time between each. Using the NFL schedule and NFL city matirx, I can determine which stadiums are close to each other or which are feasible for me to hit on a weekend, over a vacation, or on an extended road trip. The next step is finding cheap nfl tickets. Becasue I'm trying to attend so many games through out the year, I gotta get NFL tickets cheap! I've found that the best sites for finding reasonable NFL tickets are TicketCity.com, StubHub.com, and TicketsNow.com. You always know what you're getting and one is an extremely reputable online ticket broker thatI have used multiple times with great results. On Questfor31.com, if you go to the individual team pages you will find links to each online ticket broker allowing you to easily compare NFL ticket prices between each broker to get the best deal. I've also listed the published face value ticket price by each section, so you know what the tickets were initially priced at. In today's NFL, once the tickets go onsale, the ones that are not taken by season ticket holders and gobbled up by these online brokers. I think we'll find that in the near future, most of us will be buying NFL tickets through a broker rather than the team ticket office. The last item is lodging. When I started the Quest I realized that I have friends and relatives in NFL cities throughout the country, but when I'm not hitting up a distant relative for a place to stay, I ususally go directly to Priceline.com to the name your price feature. I've had lots of luck getting hotel rooms on the cheap and staying in some of the nicest hotels in the country for much less that I would ever expect tp pay. So that's it, I encourage you to check out my website http://www.nflfootballstadiums.com/ for all of your NFL game needs. In addition to the tools I talked about above, I have directions to each stadium, gameday weather, and NFL proshops for NFL team merchandise. Good Luck!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I figured I would share a little tip for any fellow NFL or college football fan looking to go to a game this year…
If you are looking to save some money but want to see a game then wait till the Wednesday night or the Thursday before the game. These are the days when ticket holders start to reduce ticket prices big-time on sites like StubHub, RazorGator and eSellOut… Why? Because many of the guys still holding tickets live outside of the state or area the game is being played and have no chance or ability to attend the game BUT they would much rather take $50-$100 for their tickets instead of nothing. Think about it this way…If you tried to get tickets off a scary scalper on game day your walking around with at least $300-$500 cash without any idea of what you might get. Being from Norwin in Pittsburgh I always use eSellOut because it is locally owned by a fellow IUP alum. Check them out: http://www.esellout.com/ResultsGeneral.aspx?kwds=Pittsburgh+Steelers or use who you are most comfortable using BUT try this method sometime and notice how much money you will save the next time you head off to a game!

~Mark Guilles

Januarius said...

Sounds like a great way to plan. I tend to take a few other things into acccount too including who I know in different towns. That way I can stay with a friend and vice versa to get a few extra stadiums in and save a bit in terms of hotels.