To start with as you are flying down the highway there is 1 small sign to let you know where you should go for each color parking pass. This sign displays 2 lines so Red Lot 1 / Exit at Lawrence Drive, then Red Lot 2&3 / Exit at .... I don't know what it said because by then you have passed the sign. There are Red, Blue, Green, and some other color lots and 1, 2 and 3 for each of them. Unless you get incredibly lucky you will never be able to find out where to exit for your lot. So we guessed and got off at the next exit. Once you are on the streets, there are no signs telling you where to go until you are right at the lot. This leads to a lot of people making left turns from the left lane, the center lane and the right lane. All trying to get into one lane on the new road. Traffic jams abound. Traffic control officers are nowhere to be found. Bottom line, we got into line for our lot at 12:30. We made great time getting down to the stadium. Then we sat in line until we finally entered the lot (a drive of .7 miles) at 3:45. Yes that means it took over 3 hours to get into the lot. At that point you get to hike to the actual stadium. It is just under 1.5 miles from the blue 1 lot to the gate. And blue lot 1 is not the farthest of the lots. It is about in the middle. Once you get into the stadium it is fairly nice. I actually thought the Steelers stadium and the Eagles stadium were nicer than Levi Stadium. Oh and that will be the last nice thing I ever say about the Eagles stadium or fans.
The interesting thing about Levi stadium is they don't have a club, they have 7 or 8 clubs. And depending on where your seats are and if you have signed up for membership in a club and paid the fee, you get access to different clubs. Of course your tickets don't tell you which club you have access to and the people there are not totally sure which club you have access to other than if you don't have access to the one they are in front of. This creates a bit of confusion.
Prices at the stadium are a bit more outrageous than most stadiums. $5.75 for a small water, 8.50 for a small fries, $9 for a plate of 6 chicken wing pieces. 9.50 for a hot dog. 6.50 for a small soft drink, Gatorade or ice tea. $11.50 for a beer. A bit pricy.
The fans are actually quite nice. They welcomed us to the stadium with a little good natured ribbing on how the Bears were going to get killed, but that is to be expected. No one was rude or made us feel uncomfortable. So that is great. We have found that to be the case most everywhere other than Philadelphia. (See I said I was done saying anything nice about Eagles fans.)
Once the game is over comes the experience of leaving the stadium. I can generally summarize my feelings by saying once you are in the stadium it is nice, but they are way short on direction signage. Outside the stadium, they are short on everything except crowds. It is my usual practice to wait about 15 minutes or so after the game to let the crowds die down a bit. This did not prove to be long enough. The exit from the stadium is great, several escalators bring you down to the ground level with minimal waiting. Then you hit THE BLOCKAGE. As 75% of the parking lots are to the west of the stadium as well as the light rail lines, most everyone exits to the west. There is one bridge at the exit that is about as wide as the tunnel to get to the Waldren deck at Soldier field. Except now you have 75% of the much larger crowd from the game all converging on the one bridge. It took over 20 minutes to walk across the bridge one shuffling step at a time with all 40,000 of my new close friends. By the way, if you want to get high, just decide to breath as you walk. No problem at all, everyone is more than willing to share. After that it is time to walk back to the car. Now fortunately we did not take public transportation, because the person doing crowd control on the entrance to the light rail line indicated it was about a 2 hour wait to get to the platform and board a train.
Once you make it to the lot you find out that every lot is exiting in the same direction to the same 2 streets, because that is the only way to get to highway 101 and highway 101 is about the only way out. After all this stadium is not in downtown San Francisco, it is in Santa Clara and everyone needs to get back to somewhere near San Francisco to get home. Imagine the Bears playing in Rockford as an example. Most everyone is going to want to get on 90 back to the Chicago area. Well that is the same situation here. 2 hours later we finally got to exit the lot (we were parked near the front of the lot, the lot was still over 3/4 full when we exited). Another 45 minutes saw us getting to the entrance to the express way. Then a short 35 miles and we were able to get back to our RV. Piece of cake. (Stale cake from sitting in the car so long, but cake nonetheless.)
The Bears Won. All is good and on to the Jets.
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