Super Bowl Mistakes to Avoid

Good morning, Live Better than a Billionaire-a-Holics!

Are you feeling motivated this morning? I certainly hope so.

There must be a lot of football fans out there. Yesterday's post was the most widely read one to date. Thanks for your interest!

Sometimes I may make it sound too easy to succeed. That's because I have usually learned the hard way what mistakes to avoid, and usually don't share those mistakes with you.

There's a lot that can go wrong in attending Super Bowls, and I thought that perhaps you would like some ideas of what to avoid.

I thought of this subject when I saw that the next Super Bowl (XL) is scheduled for Detroit, Michigan. That reminded me of the very first Super Bowl I ever attended, Super Bowl XVI, in Pontiac, Michigan on January 24, 1982.

My wife and I had enjoyed watching Super Bowls on television from the time we were dating beginning with Super Bowl II (It didn't yet have the name of Super Bowl -- it was the AFL-NFL Championship in those days). We had two young sons who both loved to watch the games too. I decided it would be fun to take the whole family to the game.

Not knowing how to buy tickets, I decided that the best thing to do was to buy a packaged deal from a tour operator. The best one I could find required a minimum of an 8 night stay in the Detroit area. But we were guaranteed a deluxe room, a ride to and from the game and four seats together. It sounded great.

Then we arrived at the Detroit airport. No one met us so we took a taxi to the hotel. This turned out to be expensive because we were going to Ann Arbor rather than Detroit. The tour operator promised to reimburse us, and he did about the 47th time we reminded him.

When we got to the hotel, it was a dump. We may have had a deluxe room, but Motel 6 would have been an upgrade from this place.

Michigan was in the throes of a recession, and few people had any money. There was a poor guy who shined shoes in the lobby all day, and usually got only 3 customers a day. I asked him if the hotel paid him anything . . . and he said "no." Panhandlers immediately accosted you if you left the hotel. It was pitiful.

The weather was great too. It only got to be over 10 degrees one day while we were there. We felt like breaking out the Bermuda shorts that day. So we mostly holed up in the room between excursions to Chuck E Cheese.

Finally, it got to be the day of the game. We went down to the bus and asked the tour operator for our tickets. He hemmed and hawed and allowed as how he didn't have our tickets yet. But he said he would be sure to buy some before the game started. Right.

Having boarded the bus with a total lack of confidence, we next discovered that our tour operator had decided to pick up a few bucks by renting out his bus to others. So we spent the next four hours picking up other fans at other hotels in about a 150 mile radius. In one parking lot, we sat for almost 2 hours without any heat.

Finally, the bus was loaded . . . with the most obnoxious, drunken fans I had ever seen. They cursed, they spat on the floors and they insulted my wife. Her solution was to threaten the fans that I would beat them up. I weighed about 130 pounds dripping wet. Right.

Finally, we were on our way . . . for awhile. As we neared the stadium, it was total gridlock. We didn't move for over an hour and a half. The game was supposed to start in 20 minutes.

Finally, the tour operator told us to bail out and he would meet us at the stadium with our tickets. Now, this meant crossing a freeway. About 20 of us raised up a chain link fence so we could wriggle under. Then we dodged cars going 60 miles an hour to get across the freeway. We repeated the chain link fence routine on the other side. We sprinted up to the stadium. Why? Well, we didn't want to miss the game . . . and we had two little boys with us who were freezing to death. The game time temperature was about 6 degrees.

But where were the tickets? The tour operator showed up just then and proudly handed us four tickets, two pairs at opposite ends of the stadium. We asked what happened to our seats together. He said, "Sorry." My wife took one son and I took the other and off we headed for our "family time together."

Fortunately, it was a domed stadium and we thawed out by about half time. The game was a good one. Joe Montana led the 49ers to a 26-21 victory over the Bengals (many of whose fans had been on our bus).

Now, how would I find my wife . . . and the bus?

We had arranged a meeting place and found each other within about an hour after the game. Then, we found the tour operator. But the other fans didn't do so well. So we waited for over 3 hours for the last drunk to arrive.

If we thought the fans on the bus were obnoxious before the game, it was nothing compared to after the game. About 7 hours after the game was over, we finally made it back to our hotel.

The tour operator had also cheated us on the quality of tickets. We had paid for better seats. After we fussed with him for the next two days, he finally gave us a little money back for the difference. It was the highlight of his "tour package."

Believe me when I say, don't take a tour to a Super Bowl. We could have flown first class, rented a home, gone to and from the game by limousine and had better seats for less money than the tour cost. In fact, that's what we did the next year when we went to Super Bowl XVII in Pasadena, California at the Rose Bowl.

In tomorrow's blog, I'll share with you the 10 worst mistakes I have ever made or seen others make in going to Super Bowls.

Donald W. Mitchell, Your Dream Concierge

Copyright 2005 Donald W. Mitchell