Final Four-Phoenix

[azfan]

So my dreams of checking off the number one item on my bucking list have dimmed considerably. Perhaps I'm late to the party but in checking ticket prices for the final four I was tahen back, although I shouldn't have been. The cheapest all session tickets are $600 plus.

In the context of other collegiate championship weekends this is a bargain. In the context of my budget and my Scottish ancestry this is a non-starter.

While my wife is encouraging me to pull the trigger I'm really having trouble. I can go to Vegas in March and watch the entire WCC and Mountain West tournaments for under $100.

If I knew that ASU or Grand Canyon or NAU were playing that weekend it would be a no-brainer but....

 

[critterfxr]

Might be worth waiting til October 24 when the Final Four tickets officially go on sale, exclusive of the Fan Experience package. Maybe they won't be so pricey? We went to the Women's Softball World Series this year and had the Fan Experience package and found it worth it because the softball field is isolated from other places and you might be at the field anywhere between 4-8 hours/day (it gets HOT there, especially if you are delicate Northeasterners like us LOL). But we've been going to the women's basketball regionals for the past 7-8 years (not including 2020, obviously) with one Final Four stuffed in there, and I can't see where the Fan Experience would be worth it for basketball since most of the arenas are close to restaurants, etc if you wanted to eat something other than arena food, etc.

 

[Bone Dog]

Might be worth waiting til October 24 when the Final Four tickets officially go on sale, exclusive of the Fan Experience package. Maybe they won't be so pricey?

Thanks for the tip. Since we live in Santa Fe, I’m really hoping to be able to go this time around. It’s just a 7-8 hour drive (yikes!) from here.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Might be worth waiting til October 24 when the Final Four tickets officially go on sale, exclusive of the Fan Experience package. Maybe they won't be so pricey? We went to the Women's Softball World Series this year and had the Fan Experience package and found it worth it because the softball field is isolated from other places and you might be at the field anywhere between 4-8 hours/day (it gets HOT there, especially if you are delicate Northeasterners like us LOL). But we've been going to the women's basketball regionals for the past 7-8 years (not including 2020, obviously) with one Final Four stuffed in there, and I can't see where the Fan Experience would be worth it for basketball since most of the arenas are close to restaurants, etc if you wanted to eat something other than arena food, etc.

Just curious - we went to 2 World Series (both a while back, in fact one was the last year before the championship series was instituted), and were in Devon Park for the Big 12 Tournament this season - what did you get for the fan experience package? Oh, and yes, it certainly gets hot. The threat of tornados discourages us from attending.

In general, we tend to do a lot of "special" things - in depth or individual tours of stadiums, for example, if available and affordable. I do agree that I don't quite see it for the Final Four - lots of eating options both in the arena area and also easily accessible. Never forget how large a city Phoenix and environs is. They are around the 6th largest city in the US and 10th largest metropolitan area (or were). Much smaller than NY, Chicago, et al, but substantial.

 

[critterfxr]

I believe you can choose between individual session fan experiences and the all-session fan experience. We got the all-sessions fan experience.

Included:

• A hotel room for 9 nights (the hotel was nice, and had a fantastic breakfast that was part of the package)
• Tickets to all games (except for the last, "if necessary" game - so we missed the championship game, which I am still a bit salty about). You do get notification fairly quickly that the "if necessary" has become necessary and tickets are for sale, but my husband was not interested in either preemptively getting an extra night in the hotel and staying an extra day just in case, or trying to extend things once it became apparent an extra game would occur. Also, those championship game tickets went FAST. With two Texas teams in the finals there were a lot of fans within driving distance and they showed up and showed out.
• Better choice of seats (we were lower tier and had a great view of the infield). I had tried purchasing tickets for the 2024 CWS and it was awful. I logged in 2 hours after they went live, and was only able to get tickets for not great seats for one day because the platform the NCAA was using required you to pay for one set of tickets, log out, log in, and then buy tickets for additional days, rinse and repeat. We live in upstate NY. It didn't make sense to fly out to Oklahoma for 1 day.
• Access to an air conditioned tent during the tournament, which was really nice for meals and in-between games
• Access to "separate" bathrooms. Although these were just trailer bathrooms behind the tent, they were air conditioned and a little less congested than the stadium bathrooms.
• Early access to the merchandise tent one of the days, which we didn't know and I'm sad we missed, because the lines were LONG.
• $50 credit each for merchandise at the field
• Meals (it depended on the schedule, some days you got breakfast/lunch/dinner, other days lunch/dinner, other days just dinner). The meals were catered by a local BBQ place that did a decent job of avoiding repetition.
• Snacks (generally little bags of popcorn, snack packs of Oreos, Rice Krispie treats, etc)
• Drinks (cans of Coke products, small bottles of Powerade). Given how hot it gets there, I wish they offered fountain drinks instead, but they were cold and readily available.
• College World Series branded handouts daily (trying to remember what all we got: foam hands (I used mine to pad my bench seat the whole week, so I ended up being glad to have it), a small fan that mists water, a cooling towel, a handheld fan, see-through/plastic bag, nice stone coasters, and 1-2 other things we didn't pick up because we didn't want them - think keychains and bandannas)
• The opportunity to have your picture taken with the trophy
• The opportunity to meet previous softball players (we didn't participate in this, so I do not know who the players were)

There might be other things I am forgetting, but that was the bulk of it. We had a great time: the softball was incredible, and the Devon Park staff and volunteers were great. I'd love to go again even without the benefit of the fan experience package, but it did make things a bit easier to navigate.