Did others have issues with getting into stadium again yesterday?

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BilldGopher said:
Nope. In my seat with 41 minutes on the countdown clock till kickoff. Worked out just fine...:p
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We get that, but the U keeps dropping the ball year after year...like a 5-yard Kaliakmanis rifle-pass to BSF.

The security gates are a shit show. I put my phone, keys, etc. in the bin. I go through the detector. Alarm goes off. They say "stop" and ask if I have any other metal on me. I say no. Young girl walks over with wand and scans my entire body - head to toe. Nothing. "You're good to go". Same thing happens to my friend. This was all around 2:05. Now do this how many dozens (or hundreds?) of times for that line.

Side note, I went to the Columbus for the Minn-tOSU game. I was chatting with a couple of Buckeye fans in a tailgate lot about lines into their stadium. They both said it's no problem, and they tailgate as long as they can and usually walk right in. I told them about our issues and they laughed and asked why it takes so long for so few people to get into a tiny stadium. :LOL:
There were 105,000 people there for that game. Virtually everyone in their seat at kickoff.
 

this year seemed worse than prior years overall.

I don't mind getting in a little early as they now have gopher hour and you can at least get reasonable priced beer, but it shouldn't be as bad as it is

we made it in somehow despite getting in line at 2:25 or so and got first drive, but it was bad seeing lines still out to street midway through the 1st and stadium half empty
 

Got into the no-bag line at Gate E at 2:15, didn't scan tickets until 2:40.

Exact same problem as 4 years ago. Nothing has changed.
 


In a strange turn of events, we picked the right line. The one to the left of us wasn't moving at all at times. When I got through I took a look back to see one guy pulling people over and scanning them like it was the airport. He was the reason. That's all it takes sometimes. One person with a TSA fetish ruining it for many.
 

BilldGopher said:
Nope. In my seat with 41 minutes on the countdown clock till kickoff. Worked out just fine...:p
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Amazing how it works when you don't try to be one of 20,000 trying to get in 15 minutes before kickoff.

I was in line between 1:30 - 1:40 and we were in our seats with 40 minutes to kickoff. That being said, I took everything out of my pockets and still had to go through the detector 3 times. It still lit up but they let me through after I showed them my empty pockets. The 2 of the 3 people in front of me had the same problem. Additionally, there only 4 scanners at the gate. That is not sufficient (even if they were working correctly).
 

PMWinSTP said:
Great that you got a parking pass. Majority who didn't parked a long ways away unless they got there 4+ hours beforehand. We did the Gopher event with food a drink and got there 3+ hours before and had a good 15-20 minute walk from the parking lot to the event and stadium. Same walk back after plus waiting another 30 minutes to get out of the lot into a stream of stop and go traffic moving at maybe 5 mph.
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Actually we didn’t. I remembered wrong. We drove around and paid at a lot. Went to the Gopher party at Bryce Jordan too.
 

FredCoxRocks said:
We get that, but the U keeps dropping the ball year after year...like a 5-yard Kaliakmanis rifle-pass to BSF.

The security gates are a shit show. I put my phone, keys, etc. in the bin. I go through the detector. Alarm goes off. They say "stop" and ask if I have any other metal on me. I say no. Young girl walks over with wand and scans my entire body - head to toe. Nothing. "You're good to go". Same thing happens to my friend. This was all around 2:05. Now do this how many dozens (or hundreds?) of times for that line.

Side note, I went to the Columbus for the Minn-tOSU game. I was chatting with a couple of Buckeye fans in a tailgate lot about lines into their stadium. They both said it's no problem, and they tailgate as long as they can and usually walk right in. I told them about our issues and they laughed and asked why it takes so long for so few people to get into a tiny stadium. :LOL:
There were 105,000 people there for that game. Virtually everyone in their seat at kickoff.
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At PSU last year and tOSU this year. Breezed in both times, even making the mistake of entering by some of the tailgating lots at OSU.

As others have said, it's partly the U/security and party our fans wanting to roll in last second. At PSU and OSU, most people are in the stadium WAY before the teams take the field. It's impressive.

Rutgers actually had a decent wait and the stadium was pretty empty for Va Tech lol
 



pharmacygopher said:
At PSU last year and tOSU this year. Breezed in both times, even making the mistake of entering by some of the tailgating lots at OSU.

As others have said, it's partly the U/security and party our fans wanting to roll in last second. At PSU and OSU, most people are in the stadium WAY before the teams take the field. It's impressive.

Rutgers actually had a decent wait and the stadium was pretty empty for Va Tech lol
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Agree. It's surely a Minnesota thing. Gopher volleyball is the same way. And I have to say, Twins games too. I don't go to Vikings games anymore so I don't know about that, and I'll never step foot in an NBA arena, so....
 

The bottleneck is the metal detectors.

Yes, if people showed up earlier, or walk around the stadium to find the shortest line, it would help. However, you aren't going to change the behaviors of 50,000 people, especially during games when a non-negligible amount are visitors who may never have been to the stadium before.

I think the root cause of this is the number of entrances to the stadium for guests. Every other B1G stadium I've been to had far more entrances, which meant more metal detectors, and fans being more spread out around the stadium. This unfortunately can't be changed, but the number of detectors can.

I went in Gate B on Saturday, and waited in line for most of the 1st quarter. We walked over right about when the team ran out onto the field judging by the sounds coming from the stadium. The thing that struck me the most was there were a total of 4 metal detectors at the gate, which was the cause of the bottleneck. That area could fit at least twice that many detectors if you get creative with the layout.

Yes it will cost more to run, both from buying/renting more metal detectors and having more security staff, but the throughput of fans would be so much higher.

A think I noticed at UNC this year as well, they had security staff announcing which gates had shorter wait lines, and people listened. Perhaps just adding that would help distribute people. Among the gates more.
 

A big part of the bottleneck isn't just the metal detectors, it is people waiting to download, transfer and move tickets to their phone Gopher apps at the stadium. The WIFI at the Gophers stadium is awful and slow. Noticed quite a few people transferring tickets at the gate. I always try for 30 minutes to 45 minutes before game time to arrive but with the weather being cold a lot more people waited until last minute to arrive.
 

My daughter and son in law missed a substantial portion of the 1st quarter. They were using the student area entrance.... they indicated that the issue was students, of which a substantial portion were Wisconsin student aged fans rushing the entrance from the sides instead of waiting in line......
A side concern involving that entrance is that MN student tickets are supposed to be accompanied by a MN student ID. This was not being enforced and resulted in a large contingent of WI student fans in the MN student section.
 



I've said it a million times here before, but Gopher game day staff, please talk to the Twins.

BTW has anyone noticed the security is way different at Gopher hockey? Seems much quicker to get through. Why can't it be the same way at the football stadium?
 

FredCoxRocks said:
Agree. It's surely a Minnesota thing. Gopher volleyball is the same way. And I have to say, Twins games too. I don't go to Vikings games anymore so I don't know about that, and I'll never step foot in an NBA arena, so....
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I've found the Twins is always super fast to get into.

The Vikings last I went was a hellscape of fencing around the stadium and even when you get in it doesn't matter because the concourse is tiny as hell.

Wild, speedy to get in last I was there.

Timberwolves is really wonky because of the skyway but also because the security folks don't work together. Last t-wolves game I was at was hilarious:

Some security lady was shouting how "we're going to try a new thing" and put everyone in one line. Ok fine everyone did it.

Then they opened the doors and the security folks right at the gate were there confused why there was one line ... so they told everyone to come to the open security spots. Shortly after the lady started yelling about one line again. I have no clue what her deal was, it made no sense...

Oh and she also announced that you don't have to take out your phone now and so on, and as soon as you got there you had to, slowed everything down.
 

Vandy said:
My daughter and son in law missed a substantial portion of the 1st quarter. They were using the student area entrance.... they indicated that the issue was students, of which a substantial portion were Wisconsin student aged fans rushing the entrance from the sides instead of waiting in line......
A side concern involving that entrance is that MN student tickets are supposed to be accompanied by a MN student ID. This was not being enforced and resulted in a large contingent of WI student fans in the MN student section.
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My guess is they didn't want to delay things even more and decided not to do ID checks. Not saying it's right but that's probably what happened.
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
I've found the Twins is always super fast to get into.

The Vikings last I went was a hellscape of fencing around the stadium and even when you get in it doesn't matter because the concourse is tiny as hell.

Wild, speedy to get in last I was there.

Timberwolves is really wonky because of the skyway but also because the security folks don't work together. Last t-wolves game I was at was hilarious:

Some security lady was shouting how "we're going to try a new thing" and put everyone in one line. Ok fine everyone did it.

Then they opened the doors and the security folks right at the gate were there confused why there was one line ... so they told everyone to come to the open security spots. Shortly after the lady started yelling about one line again. I have no clue what her deal was, it made no sense...

Oh and she also announced that you don't have to take out your phone now and so on, and as soon as you got there you had to, slowed everything down.
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I would agree about the Wild (I mentioned the Twins just above your post). Wild games seem relatively good to get through, as well as MN United. Gopher football is by far the worst of any event I've ever been to. Even the airport is easier.
 

Word said:
I've said it a million times here before, but Gopher game day staff, please talk to the Twins.

BTW has anyone noticed the security is way different at Gopher hockey? Seems much quicker to get through. Why can't it be the same way at the football stadium?
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Twins and Gopher hockey are both 1000x better than at HBS. I know it's generally a larger crowd, but also more gates. There's no way the cost/benefit of the extra "security" is worth it at football games.
 

They have opened the large gates for at least one game that I remember.
 

Another thing the Twins are good at is their effort to limit the number of inconsiderate morons going up and down the stairways/aisle during play. I counted one idiot making 22 lingering trips in front of my view. One day before I pass on, I’m pushing someone down those stairs.
 

PMWinSTP said:
They have opened the large gates for at least one game that I remember.
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This needs to be standard. If all the gates are open and equiped with metal detectors you close to double the number of lines people can use to get in. Maybe make that a permanent "no bag" area and then all the other gates have a variable number of "bag" lines that increases as the weather gets cold and more people are bringing bags in.
 

FredCoxRocks said:
Agree. It's surely a Minnesota thing. Gopher volleyball is the same way. And I have to say, Twins games too. I don't go to Vikings games anymore so I don't know about that, and I'll never step foot in an NBA arena, so....
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Vikings games can b brutal unless U go in very early- like 1-2 hours b4 kickoff . Even then there’s a line of fans who know how long it takes who get in line b4 10 am to get in faster. Crazy !
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
I've found the Twins is always super fast to get into.
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Yes, the Twins have it down. I should have clarified in my post that its a Minnesota fan thing to show up at sporting events casually late...not a Minnesota Twins gate issue. As its been said before on here, the U needs to talk to them.
 

swelna said:
This needs to be standard. If all the gates are open and equiped with metal detectors you close to double the number of lines people can use to get in. Maybe make that a permanent "no bag" area and then all the other gates have a variable number of "bag" lines that increases as the weather gets cold and more people are bringing bags in.
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They decided to put all those specialty food vendors there in a semi-permanent way, so I think that is the current issue. They'd need to modify that so a couple of those gates could be opened.
 

GringaGopher said:
Vikings games can b brutal unless U go in very early- like 1-2 hours b4 kickoff . Even then there’s a line of fans who know how long it takes who get in line b4 10 am to get in faster. Crazy !
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That has been my experience. Last game I was entering from the north on street level, and it was a long wait. Also that skyway there coming over from the Wells Fargo parking ramp was completely backed up.
 

I suspect that the reason things don't change much is related to one primary issue: money. Could they buy or rent more metal detectors to improve the entrance rate? Sure. Could they hire twice as many security folks to screen people faster? Yes. Could they buy or rent a whole bunch of those kiosk scanners where you scan your own ticket? You bet. But all of those things cost a bunch of money with little to no return. They don't want you to be unhappy, but they also don't want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to decrease the chances that you will be unhappy.
 

2nd Degree Gopher said:
I suspect that the reason things don't change much is related to one primary issue: money. Could they buy or rent more metal detectors to improve the entrance rate? Sure. Could they hire twice as many security folks to screen people faster? Yes. Could they buy or rent a whole bunch of those kiosk scanners where you scan your own ticket? You bet. But all of those things cost a bunch of money with little to no return. They don't want you to be unhappy, but they also don't want to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to decrease the chances that you will be unhappy.
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Same with concessions staffing… :(
 

Yes, F’ing ridiculous!
I’ve only missed two games since the stadium open and never had the problem before…
 


A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
Same with concessions staffing… :(
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Went up top and got 4 beers in like 5 minutes. I've never had an issue but I never go when everyone else goes. With the number of TV breaks it's easy to hit the consessions or bathroom on off times and not miss much if any of the game.
 

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