One of my friends is in the Los Angeles area for a trip, and during her visit, she wanted to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers play against the St. Louis Cardinals at Dodger Stadium during Hello Kitty Night. I also happen to be in Los Angeles County right now in preparation for an upcoming international trip departing from LAX, so I agreed to go along and watch some baseball.

She really wanted the limited-quantity Hello Kitty co-branded merchandise that they give to attendees, so much so that she wanted to show up and get in line early. I did not think they would run out of merch packs, but I had never been to one of these special nights where they give out gifts; I didn’t want to be wrong and lead her stray, so I agreed to accompany her to the stadium a few hours before the game.

With that being said, I didn’t want to just be there unreasonably early and do nothing, so I suggested that we do a stadium tour while we wait for the game to start. She agreed and added on a game day pre-game tour. Usually, I end up being the one to arrange travel itineraries and event logistics because I tend to be the most well-traveled, but for Hello Kitty Night at Dodger Stadium, I entrusted her to organize everything. (Yes, I am mentioning this as a form of foreshadowing.)

 
When you purchase tickets to an event, there is usually information on the confirmation page, or at the very least, a “know before you go” email that is sent afterwards so you have a general idea of what to expect during the event. These informational emails usually include tips on how early to arrive, where to enter the event, and a map of the venue, among other things. I was not forwarded any of this information, even after asking a few times. The only thing she forwarded me was a receipt for the purchase so she could ask me to pay her back for my portion of the tickets (which I found to be ridiculous because I cover her portion of tickets, meals, and other costs of activities we do together an overwhelming majority of the time, so it is silly that she could not pay for something this one singular time… but that’s beside the point).

Yesterday at around 3 PM PDT, I called a Lyft to take us to Dodger Stadium. Again, note that I have no information about what’s going on. I looked on the Lyft app and noticed that the only drop-off spots I was able to pick were near Gate A. However, apparently they moved the rideshare drop-off location to Gate B (and the entrance to the pre-game tour was near Lots F and G, which were very close to Gate B). If I had known this ahead of time, I would’ve just asked our driver to drop us off street-side near Gate B, but instead, we were dropped off at Gate A and had to walk.

Fortunately, I pulled up Google Maps and noticed that there was a side street that took us straight to Gate B, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I said we should take that shortcut. However, she insisted that it did not have access to Gate B and that we have to walk all the way around. After a ⅔-mile (1-kilometer) trek through the heat and direct sunlight, we made it to the entrance of Gate B (and promptly discovered that taking my suggested shortcut would have indeed worked just fine).

At this point, we spent another 15 minutes or so walking from checkpoint to checkpoint trying to figure out where to actually enter for the pre-game tour. I was dripping sweat, basically had just given up on everything, and was following her around with half my brain in hibernation as to not continue overheating. Eventually, we found the entrance (which was disclosed in the informational guide) (the same one I did not have a copy of).

Our tour was scheduled to start at 4 PM PDT. However, in typical Los Angeles fashion, the tour doesn’t actually start at 4 PM. I later found out that the suggested arrival time for a 4 PM tour was at 4 PM, but they expect everyone to be late, so as to not cause people to miss their tours, they instead use a first-come first-served grouping system for everyone that gets you on the next available tour. Us arriving at 3:50 PM meant that we were there in time to be included in a group that started at 4:20 PM.

There was no waiting room, no water, no snacks, and even no concessions available for purchase yet. What there was plenty of, though, was heat, on the hot day. At least I was able to wait in the shade this time.

 
The tour eventually started, and we were taken to the northeastern side of the stadium near the outfield. The tour guide explained some history about the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dodger Stadium while we were able to watch the players prepare for the day’s game.

By this point, fans were already lining up to enter the stadium. Apparently there was a ticket add-on just to be able to enter the stadium early (even without a pre-game tour). The game wasn’t scheduled to start for another almost 3 hours at that point, so I found this to be somewhat mind-boggling.

After seeing the outfield, we looped around the back and into the indoor section of the stadium.

After seeing what was basically a bunch of baseball-related art hung up in hallways, we popped out right behind home plate and was able to watch the players warm up some more, but this time from a different angle.

After several minutes, we were brought into a room that had a bunch of trophies and awards on display.

We were then led out a floor that had a bunch of baseball memorabilia. From this, I learned that the Dodgers were originally from Brooklyn. Apparently this area is accessible to the public, so being able to see these was not exclusive to the paid tour.

After seeing the indoor section, we were brought back outside and up near the outfield again. On this path, I saw this graffiti-style mural painted on one of the concrete walls.

To conclude the one-hour tour, we were brought back to where we started on the upper-most floor of the northeast deck overlooking the outfield. By this point, the players had swapped and it was now the visiting team that was warming up.

The tour was absolutely not worth it whatsoever. The only thing that I think you get special access to is the room with the trophies and awards; otherwise, I believe a majority of what we saw was already viewable by and accessible to the general public anyway. Keep in mind that the stadium is just an open building, so once you actually get into the building, it feels like you can sort of just walk around wherever you want.

By this point, the lines were getting substantially longer. However, there were still about two hours left until the game started.

There was a cabinet of bobbleheads near the entrance to the indoor section of the stadium; here is one of Vin Scully, a former commentator for the Dodgers.

In order to get the full baseball stadium experience, I decided to buy some stadium food. I decided to get two regular hot dogs and a small soft drink, which came out to US$23.01. My friend said she wanted to walk around a bit and check for some other food options, so we temporarily parted ways. I grabbed my hot dogs and drink and tried to find a place to eat.

There are no tables or eating areas in the stadium (which I guess makes sense, because that wouldn’t be an optimal use of the space). I tried to sit down somewhere so I could eat, but every time I sat down, a stadium employee would come up to me and ask to see my ticket to ensure that I had purchased the use of that seat. I kept on trying to sit down in seats that were not mine, so I kept getting turned away.

So you might be wondering at this point, why didn’t I just go straight to my own seat? Well, including not receiving any information about the tour or game, my friend also did not send me a copy of my ticket. The tickets were in her digital wallet, and I literally had not seen them, so I didn’t even know where my seat was. I texted her letting her know that she had doomed me, but she did not respond for a little while, so I was just standing in the hallway awkwardly holding two hot dogs and a drink for several minutes.

When I did finally get a copy of my ticket and the location of my seat, I found out that they were booked way in the back, apparently in the “nose bleed” section. This involved going on a literal hike up many flights of stairs (still with my two hot dogs and drink in hand) to get to my seat.

I eventually made it to my seat and unwrapped my hot dogs, just to discover that they had about half the girth that I was expecting. Considering the quite small volume of the hot dogs, I finished them fairly quickly and was left sitting there for another hour and a half before the game was scheduled to start. I pulled out my phone to reply to emails and messages during the wait.

Here are some photographs (with maximum optical zoom on my camera, and then further cropped pre-export) of the field.

A bit before they started playing, they did some pre-game activities, such as calling in a bunch of Hello Kitty fans and running a round of trivia.

Eventually, Hello Kitty came out to throw the first pitch.

Once the game started, I got a little bored and went to get some more food.

After walking shoulder-to-shoulder in hallway congestion and standing in a line for what I believe was around half an hour, I finally purchased an all-beef hot dog, garlic fries in a helmet-shaped souvenir bowl, and a large soft drink in a souvenir cup for US$37.86. I didn’t actually want any of the souvenir items, but those versions of those items were the only ones they had available at that particular concession booth, and I didn’t want to wait in a new line all over again.

Apparently the Dodgers were doing quite well, including a back-to-back home run (or something close to it). The crowd was very frequently very excited.

Around the sixth inning, I decided to get some dessert. I headed back out into the concession area, only to discover that everyone else (including on every other floor of the stadium) had the same idea that I did. The shortest line I could find to a dessert concession was about 300 people long. I ate a grand total of zero dessert, though I guess that’s fine, because I had already spent US$60.87 on food so far anyway.

My friend wanted to leave early as to not get stuck in the traffic and congestion of people exiting the stadium after the game, so we departed during the seventh inning.

This was my first time ever going to a baseball stadium on a general admission ticket, and it was an absolutely miserable experience. I genuinely cannot comprehend how people manage to not go insane in this environment. Dodger Stadium is not built to accommodate even half the attendees as the number of seats available in the stadium.

I later looked up the cost of getting a suite or other private area at Dodger Stadium to watch the baseball game and discovered that it was fairly affordable—far cheaper than what you’d expect at a stadium or venue in Las Vegas where I’m used to. Of course, in order to split the cost and make the price reasonable, you would have to put in the extra effort to gather up a group of friends to share the suite with you, but I’d rather do that and watch the game with 10-20 other friends rather than tens of thousands of sweaty, smelly strangers. On top of that, suites come with some decent-looking catering options where I could’ve literally gotten an entire tasting menu for only a few dollars more than how much I paid for my hot dogs, fries, and drinks (with no refills).

If you know me, you probably know that I am very flexible and somewhat indifferent person, and although I have certain strong preferences, I am generally adaptable to most situations. Thus, for me to reach this level of frustration, you know that things had to be mismanaged pretty badly—both on our side and on the venue’s side.

If you are a huge baseball fan, extremely patient, and on a very tight budget, then this might make sense for you. However, at least for me (and I am fully aware that I probably sound extremely spoiled right now), this was a mildly torturous experience. To be clear, I don’t regret having gone one time just to have the first-hand understanding of what it’s like. But in the future, I will most likely never watch a sporting event in general admission again, or at least, not in a stadium as inefficient and unaccommodating as one in Los Angeles.

This all happened yesterday, and somehow, I still feel dehydrated.