Scott37
Practice Squad Player
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2004
- Messages
- 199
- Reaction score
- 0
I brought my 8 year old son to his first game yesterday after picking up tickets off of the Patriots exchange program on line. I thought we got pretty good seats in section 238 - second tier, corner endzone. We went in and asked directions to the section from the guy selling programs and he pointed and said it's right over there.
As we made our way over to the seats we made a couple of stops, first for a foam finger and second for a $7.50 beer, water a pizza and pretzel. It soon became clear that the directions we had gotten were faulty and we had to circle the entire stadium to reach our seats - no big deal, at least my son got to see the stadium. It was kind of a pain holding his hand (foam finger at that point) and balancing the cup of draft beer, water, and snacks in the cardboard holder as we walked around Gilette but, hey, this is football and you do what you have to do.
Eventually we reached the seats and sat down, my son got his first real view of the field and then naturally dove into the snacks. As I tried to take it all in I reached down for the beer that I'd been carrying around the place to take a sip when the usher walked over and said "excuse me sir, this is the family section - you can't have beer here!"
I was stunned - not only did the Patriots ticket exchange not say anything about the seats being in the "family section," the tickets themselves had no indication either. Furthermore, there is no signage at all advertising that this is the family section and to add insult to injury there is a beer vendor set up right at the bottom of the stairs. For the remainder of the first quarter I watched as excited fans approached their seats, most of whom were carrying $7.50 - $15.00 worth of beer in their hands, only to be turned away by the beer gestapo.
I have no problem at all with a family section where beer is not allowed I just think that the Patriots, stadium and ticketmaster all owed some type of notice to those sitting in that section.
I'm done with my rant, you can return to your regularly scheduled programming now...
As we made our way over to the seats we made a couple of stops, first for a foam finger and second for a $7.50 beer, water a pizza and pretzel. It soon became clear that the directions we had gotten were faulty and we had to circle the entire stadium to reach our seats - no big deal, at least my son got to see the stadium. It was kind of a pain holding his hand (foam finger at that point) and balancing the cup of draft beer, water, and snacks in the cardboard holder as we walked around Gilette but, hey, this is football and you do what you have to do.
Eventually we reached the seats and sat down, my son got his first real view of the field and then naturally dove into the snacks. As I tried to take it all in I reached down for the beer that I'd been carrying around the place to take a sip when the usher walked over and said "excuse me sir, this is the family section - you can't have beer here!"
I was stunned - not only did the Patriots ticket exchange not say anything about the seats being in the "family section," the tickets themselves had no indication either. Furthermore, there is no signage at all advertising that this is the family section and to add insult to injury there is a beer vendor set up right at the bottom of the stairs. For the remainder of the first quarter I watched as excited fans approached their seats, most of whom were carrying $7.50 - $15.00 worth of beer in their hands, only to be turned away by the beer gestapo.
I have no problem at all with a family section where beer is not allowed I just think that the Patriots, stadium and ticketmaster all owed some type of notice to those sitting in that section.
I'm done with my rant, you can return to your regularly scheduled programming now...