The T-Mobile centre opened at 10 this morning, and we were anxious to get in line. Line? Still no line. Oh, this does not look promising.
When the Box Office opened, it was the same news, except this time the only ticket left was the $1,000 one (and this is US money remember, so more like $1300 for us.🙁) The super-nice kid that helped us was very patient as we hemmed and hawed about the standing room only tickets. On one hand, when would we get to see an opening game again? We were here, the timing was right, why not? But on the other hand, did we want to spend $500 to watch it from so far away that you need binoculars? And stand the whole time? And walk a mile to a bathroom? And no new seats had been released. Scalping a ticket was out of the question because they don’t use paper tickets at all anymore. Not at all. Too easy to counterfeit. As we were mulling this over, the kid’s manager came over and whispered to him, and he then turned to us and said “Lucky you. The NHL just released 24 seats, 12 of them are in the lower bowl, with a table and chairs and in-seat service!” We asked how much, and they were less than the nose-bleed standing room ones. My Mastercard almost melted with the speed with which I whipped it out of my pocket. Two tickets were ours! We had to head over to the store and buy appropriate clothing....all we saw all day were people in Golden Knight attire, from the street cleaning crew to all the hotel staff to every soul walking outside. It was so amazing, the support the team gets.
The Knight symbol on my t-shirt is silver and gold glitter and those of you who know me, know how I love glitter and sparkly things. Steven’s jersey has camo sleeves, so right up his alley too. The beads are from a Mardi-Gras style parade, every hotel had a parade with drummers, acrobats, knights in golden suits of armour, etc going through the hotels, tossing beads to the crowd. The air in the whole city was electric.
We walked over to the plaza outside the arena about an hour before the game to see what sort of goings on were going on. They had a golden carpet (like a red carpet, but no actual carpet, just tons of gold glitter and ribbon) for the “celebrities” to walk down. Carrot Top (ewww....I dislike him immensely), The Blue Man Group, some Cirque du Soleil folks, The Eagles (the band!), Cris Angel, a lot of sports names, none of which I knew....I don’t follow soccer or basketball and such) and the guys from Thunder from Down Under (yowza!) and Jeopardy James (James that won all that money on Jeopardy, I was nerdishly excited to see him). It was pretty cool.
The Cirque folks did a few of their routines, as did Blue Man, and Cris Angel, the Thunder fellows just flexed and posed and I was ok with that. 😊
Our table area
Player #3 is one of our Kootenay Ice players, as was another one of the Knights, as well as their assistant coach was our old coach, so it was sort of fun to see familiar bodies. The game itself was fabulous, the pre-game show was a Vegas spectacular....all the glitz and glamour you’d expect, and the team won, so that made for a happy crowd. The only thing that would have been better would be if we had won the 50/50, which was almost $64,000 US dollars. (They call it a 51/49, something to do with tax laws)
We had a small pizza there, which was $13.00, not a bad price, but a can of beer was $18.00 and I’m sorry, but I could never enjoy an $18 beer. We passed on that.
After the game we went back to our hotel, met up with our peeps and had a final evening of gambling and laughs. The streets were jam-packed with revellers and everyone was having fun with all the outside bands and activities.
This is standing in line to get into the arena, our hotel was “thisclose”
That’s the end of Day 4. Tomorrow morning we have an early flight....7 am, which isn't horrible in itself, but it did mean getting up at an ungodly hour. I set my alarm for 3:30. Yes, I said 3:30. It takes me 1/2 hr to get ready, then the lineup for check-out, then the ride to the airport, then security and all that madness, in order to be there by 6. Of course, there were no lines anywhere, our travel peeps had arranged a limo pick-up again, and we were mightily early, but my big fear is always missing a plane.
So, bye-bye Vegas, until next time.
And we lucked out and had a row to ourselves, as did BOTH of the couples travelling with us. The plane was full when we flew down, and it’s the same charter flight, so maybe some of the travellers got themselves tangled in a situation. Oh well....more room for me.
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