Anyway, I was saying before the apostrophe killed me, that my son is just sort of getting into to football, so while in LA I did not want to take him to all of the experience stuff. I felt it might be boring for him and sort of ruin the festive mood of the trip.
So, we flew in Friday morning from Tampa. Had a nice Friday/Saturday that included a trip to the equipment room at the Grove to get some jerseys with the superbowl patch. I have never owned a jersey before, I do not really wear much team stuff. I only have one shirt, a hoodie, and another shirt I gave my son, because it was always a little small for me. The look on my sons face when they rang up 2 jerseys and 1 shirt at over $500 was pretty funny. I knew it was going to be a lot, but I think he had no idea.
Most of our pre-game day experience consisted of traversing LA to take pictures at various locations featured in the show Euphoria. His girlfriend loves it, and well, I was wanting to have a fun time with him, so I was down for it. It was a good time.
I didn't think about it at the time, but on the trip out and in the mornings/evenings, I was wearing an orange fleece pullover. I like it a lot, but it was very bengal-ish. I think that a lot of people thought I was a bengals fan because of it!
The hotel near LAX was full of Bengal fans. I think there was a disproportionate amount of bengals fans in those locations when compared to the actual game, but it was shocking to seem them almost everywhere we went.
-Game day-
We had blue bus passes to the game which picked up a block or two from our hotel. We walked down, got my son some breakfast and got in line for the busses around 10am. The line was already about a block long for busses that started at 11. I am told that before we left it went another block down, turned a corner and kept going. I have no idea how many buses were there, but when we got in line there were already about 12 staged to load. Again, mostly bengal fans, but everyone was in good spirits. I met some people from Cincinatti, and then in a odd coincidence ran into them again on the other side of the stadium long after the buses were gone. Funny to keep running into the same people in a crowd like that.
We had passes to a tailgate thing, but my son is very anti-alcohol and I know it is not good for me, so we just walked around instead. We got into the stadium around noon and due to some poor instructions by an employee, ended up walking all the way around the outside, to get in, then walk all the way around again to our seats. Quite a lot of walking, but it gave us a chance to see the whole stadium.
The stadium is really nice, and it is everything that it is built up to be. Perhaps because of the buildup for it, the oculus was not quite as impressive as I hoped, but that is from my expectations more than it not being an amazing piece of technology. Most everything there was nice, and there were a lot of open spaces to move and plenty of bathrooms, which is always nice. The stadium is cashless, and apparently plastic-less. Everything was in aluminum or paper. I got a beer with my burrito for lunch ($32) and it was in an aluminum cup. The trash cans were labeled 'aluminum' and 'compostable'. We don't do that in Tampa, but I wish we would phase out the plastics as the aluminum cups and things recycle better.
The bengal fans also seemed to get there early and they were there in large numbers! For a game that everyone lamented the lack of fan access, the stadium was full of fans, along with celebrities and rich people. Every time they showed Burrow on the field warming up, there were a lot of cheers. Every time some bengals came out of the locker room, same thing. I was getting a little worried about the crowd!
The game itself was amazing. Our seats were in the corner where OBJ caught his TD. Not that we were that close, but still good seats. It was section 333, first row. So really a good view of the field. Sadly, not the endzone where the Rams won it, but hey, you get what you get! I was able to get tickets direct from a person, so I avoided the fees, which are insane.
I have a meeting now, but will add more about the game and post-game in a bit.
