Rose Bowl Travel

[statman0007]

I know that football talk is supposed to go to Lambeau Leap, but hopefully this is acceptable as the question regards travel plans. I'm hoping to travel to the Rose Bowl this year and was looking for advice from those who have gone before. My questions:

 

1) When/where are the best places to get tickets? I know UW's allotment sold out already and Stubhub is currently at a minimum of about $250 per ticket. I'm guessing that this will go down significantly as we get closer to the event, but I'd feel better knowing how prices have played out in the past.

2) Has anyone ever flown into Vegas and drove over? Plane tickets are about $200 a piece cheaper into Vegas than LA and it appears to be just a 5 hour drive between the two. Does the traffic get considerably worse around the Rose Bowl?

 

I'm open to any other advice/suggestions as well. Thanks in advance!

[tristarscoop]

It's a convoluted story, but we drove from Milwaukee to LA and then flew home.

 

I did not find traffic issues at all while driving. I was expecting awful traffic in and around LA, but never ran into it. We were in Santa Monica, near Hollywood and Highland and in Pasadena.

 

We went to the Rose Parade and straight to the game and tailgated. We did wait a while to get into the parking area (I purposely did not use Lot. You park on a golf course and there is little to no signage. It took us awhile to find our car after the game)

 

Did you look into flying out of Chicago? We found cheaper flights out of there.

 

I actually won tickets on Twitter last year. Quite a few folks give sets away, if you're on Twitter and want to look around. I found out at least 2 weeks beforehand that I had won, and they overnight FedEx'd them to me. We also got our tickets from UW employees.

 

I'm not sure that prices will decrease as the game approaches. Don't forget that Oregon is much closer. I would guess their fans are going to snatch up every available ticket.

 

My suggestions: Go to the pep rally. Make sure you get the band/school schedule. The Band ended up playing on the plaza outside either the Coliseum or Staples Center (can't remember) and had a huge long concert. Found out about it on Twitter as it was happening. Wish we'd known ahead of time so we could have gone.

 

They make floats for the cheer squads of each team and finish them in the days before the game/parade. You can go help construct the float. I'm sad we did not get to do this.

 

I know its part of the experience and I might be sacrilegious for saying this - but I would not go back to the parade if I went back out there. We actually had an "in" to park nearby and we were able to get in and out without much hassle, but I heard from others that it can be super busy and congested. And frankly, I just wasn't impressed. The street is wide and therefore you don't even get that close to the floats, so you can't really appreciate the detail. And that's about all you do - you stand there and watch the floats go by. And its really, really early. It might be better this year since it's not New Year's Day, but we ended up going to bed before New Year's and got up super early for the parade and it was just A LOT. The time change messes with you.

 

I will quantify it that I lived in New Orleans for six years, so I am probably a bit of a parade snob. I didn't expect it to be Mardi Gras or anything, but the complete lack of interaction took a lot of fun out of it for me.

 

Feel free to message me if you have more questions.

[NeedMoreFans]

My father-in-law and brother-in-law went last year. They flew from Rockford to Phoenix-Mesa, rented a car, and drove to LA...staying near Palm Springs, I think (pretty far out). They drove to a trains station (expecting heavy traffic, which they never encountered), then rode a train downtown, then out to near the stadium. They said it worked like a charm, but got down there to the stadium too early.