Just under a year ago, I had a tragically poor experience attending Hello Kitty Night 2025 at Dodger Stadium due to some poor planning and poor logistics on the part of the person who organized the trip. However, I learned a lot from that experience, and now I am much more familiar with Dodger Stadium (and non-suite seating at sporting venues in general).

About a month or so ago, one of my friends asked me if I wanted to join her for One Piece Night at Dodger Stadium on July 2, 2026 during the night the Los Angeles Dodgers hosted the San Diego Padres. She wanted to go because they were giving away One Piece gift bags consisting of a Luffy straw hat and a collectible trading card, and she really wanted those exclusive items. I don’t really care at all about One Piece, but this is a friend who I trust and enjoy spending time with, so I agreed to come along.

She told me that she had never been to a baseball game before, and this would be her first time. I immediately had a flashback to Hello Kitty Night 2025 and realized I had this untapped encyclopedia of knowledge in my brain about how to go to a baseball game without wanting to kill yourself. I told her that I would help handle a majority of the logistics so that we can have as pleasant of an experience as possible.

I first looked into buying individual tickets to shared suites, but upon more diligent research, I found out that there is a high risk of those kinds of shared suite tickets not coming with a gift entitlement, which would defeat the purpose of us going. I then looked into some tickets classed as “baseline club” and “dugout club,” which came with private lounge access and front-row seats to the action; those were between $1,000-2,000 per ticket. I would’ve been fine getting those tickets, but after discussing with my friend, we decided to go for something cheaper as a trial for her first baseball game, because she didn’t know if she would even enjoy the game at all.

I ultimately decided on executive club seats, which were a much more reasonable ~$400 per ticket. Although they didn’t come with a private lounge, they were on the same floor as the suites, which meant that it was much more peaceful and less congested than the regular general admission floors.

Our welcome email told us that the entry gates open two hours before the game starts, and the parking lot opens an additional half an hour before that. We ended up arriving about three hours before the game started because my friend wanted to make absolutely certain that they wouldn’t run out of gift bags. We were expecting to need to wait before being let in, but apparently, so many people were arriving so early that day that they were backed up into the street and causing a traffic jam, so they had no choice but to start letting people in early.

Two and a half hours before the first pitch, the lines to get in were already completely packed.

Fortunately, the executive club seats also come with priority access. The line was still pretty long, but nowhere near as long as the loge and reserve entrances. We had to wait for a while, but there was a friendly guy in line near us who was chatting with us, and that combined with conversing amongst ourselves made it so the wait didn’t feel that long.

Upon walking through the metal detector and passing security, we were given our straw hat and collectible card. After that point, there were no more lines for the rest of the night.

This is the entrance to the suite and club level of the field.

We made our way over to our seats in Section 229CL. This was the closest section next to where the suites start, so in theory, we were in the section with the next best possible elevated view without being inside an actual suite. I also liked that this section had an overhang; it didn’t matter for this particular game, but it sounds very convenient as shade for days when the game starts earlier, or as shelter for days when it rains.

This is what the rest of the club level looked like. As you can see, it is substantially nicer than general admission, and I think it is absolutely worth the upcharge. There are far fewer seats, more legroom, nice padding on the seat bottoms, and more space to walk around. In general, this space felt far more relaxed and easy-going than the other levels of the stadium.

The collectible cards came in their own plastic packaging, but my friend wanted to be extra safe and put the cards in another layer of hard plastic covers. We went as a group of three, and these are the three cards we got.

I told her to take pictures of the cards with her at the stadium so that the photographs could act as a substitute certificate of authenticity, in case she ever wants to sell them. However, she ultimately decided that the cards made her happy and she wanted to keep them for her own collection.

There was a lot of One Piece branding spread out throughout the stadium for the collaboration, including on the massive screens in the outfield.

The elevation of this level was perfect—far away enough that you could get a perfect bird’s-eye view of the entire field, but not so far away that everything was too small. Because we arrived early, we were able to see the players warming up.

There were some signs on the wall near the concession stand, and I tried to use it as reference to find out how to navigate to other areas of the stadium. … Then I found out that they were just decorative.

This is the view from the outfield, from the far edge of the club level. I walked over here because I was looking for a set of stairs to use to go downstairs to the loge level because my friend wanted some pizza, and there was no pizza concession stand on the suite and club level.

This far edge of the club level also had a view of the entrance. I thought it was a very funny visual seeing everyone wearing their straw hat on the inside of the gate.

We made it down to the loge level and I basically got an episode of PTSD from my prior Dodger Stadium experience. There was still about two hours to go before the first pitch, so most people still hadn’t arrived yet, but it was still absolutely packed. It wasn’t shoulder-to-shoulder like it is after the game starts, but it was still extremely congested. My friend said that she was instantly overstimulated by how many people there were everywhere already.

… Here is a random picture of a cameraman.

After walking all the way around from left outfield to first base, we made it to the pizza vendor, Batter’s Box Pizza.

My friend got a personal cheese pizza, and I got a personal pepperoni pizza. There was not enough sauce, but it was still extremely salty. It was very doughy, so I guess you’d like this pizza if the crust is your favorite part of pizza. I was not a fan of this pizza.

For my drink, I ordered a fruity non-alcoholic mocktail. It tasted like I was served a full cup of ice with a little bit of pineapple juice and grapefruit juice mixed in.

While enjoying my pizza and juice, I was able to watch the crew prepare the field for play.

In celebration of One Piece Night, someone got dressed up in a Luffy costume and threw the first pitch.

After celebrating his pitch, Luffy went up to the cameras and officially declared the start of the baseball game.

I noticed that this particular section of seats was empty for some reason. It was funny thinking that maybe someone just bought out all the seats in that area because they happened to be cheaper and they just wanted to collect more gift bags. The collectible cards from previous collaborations have sold on auction websites for several hundreds to thousands of dollars, so technically, I guess this could be quite a lucrative way to make a profit.

To the grave disappointment of Los Angeles Dodgers fans, the San Diego Padres started the game with quite a substantial lead.

The personal pizza wasn’t enough to fill me up, so I also ordered some surf and turf tacos. I am pretty sure they put about six times more salt into the tacos than the recipe called for. They were edible, but not even remotely good, and I would never get them again.

I ordered this along with some Diet Coke in a standard, non-souvenir fountain drink cup. It was much smaller than I expected, and it is unfortunate that fountain drinks do not come with refills, but fortunately, I was able to get free tap (non-bottled) water.

My friend got ground beef nachos. They were marginally better than the tacos, but still way too salty.

For dessert, we shared a churro sundae. This was the best thing we ate at the stadium—not because it was delicious, but because it was the only thing that wasn’t bad. It basically tasted like generic ice cream that you’d get in bulk from a grocery store.

Partway through the game, my friend decided to enter the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation’s 50/50 Raffle. This is a program where you buy raffle tickets and your purchase price is added to a jackpot pool. At the end of the eighth inning, a winner is selected from the raffle tickets; the winner wins half the jackpot, and the other half of the jackpot is donated to the charity.

The raffle entries scale up depending on how much you spend. If you pay US$20, you get 10 tickets; if you pay US$50, you get 50 tickets; if you pay US$100, you get 150 tickets; and if you pay US$150, you get 300 tickets. My friend opted to get 300 tickets for $150, so she ended up with a comically long receipt with all her raffle entry numbers.

At the seventh inning stretch, I got up from my seat and went to the edge of the suite level beyond the overhang so I could get a picture of everyone standing up with their Luffy straw hats on.

One nice thing about having executive club seats is that you get your own server who will take your orders and deliver food and drinks directly to you. Apparently they can also arrange special celebration desserts, like for this person who was celebrating his birthday.

At the bottom of the eighth, the winner of the 50/50 Raffle was selected. My friend did not win. In fact, she failed to even match the third digit…

With only one strikeout to go at the top of the ninth, we left our seats and headed downstairs to the field level. The Los Angeles Dodgers had a hefty lead by this point, so it seemed like the bottom of the ninth would not be played and the Dodgers had basically secured a win already.

The reason we came all the way down? Because we heard that there would be a One Piece drone show after the game ended, and they would be letting fans onto the field to watch the show from there so they can get a better view. It seems like other people were aware of this as well, because field level was packed with people waiting (with their straw hats on, of course) for the gates to open.

After the game was fully wrapped up, they opened the gates and a flood of fans entered the field.

They soon dimmed the lights in preparation for the drone show.

In an ultimate bait-and-switch, the drone show started… far in the distance. The view was blocked by the structure of the stadium. I’m pretty sure we would’ve gotten a better view just by staying in our seats.

Regardless, it was neat to be able to go on the field, and I’m glad I was able to get that opportunity. I didn’t even get to do that when I went on the paid tour last time, so it was nice that they let fans have that experience for free after the game.

In an effort to try and get a better view, we walked out of the stadium, but then we had some issues with tall trees blocking a portion of the drone show instead.

On our way out into the parking lot, I saw a jumbo replica of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2025 World Series Championship ring.

I didn’t wear the straw hat at all during the game, but I figured I should probably at least get a goofy picture with it at the end, for the memories. So, here I am with the Luffy straw hat. … I look like a rice farmer.

Overall, I had quite a fun and pleasant experience this time around. The type of seats you buy absolutely matters at Dodger Stadium, and I think the premium price of executive club seats was beyond worth it for the money. It was a perfect balance of getting both a public and private experience—public in the sense that you still feel like you’re in the middle of the action, but private in the sense that you have your own special floor with far fewer other people to deal with.