Fenway Park help! (Boston: flat fee, sales, credit card)

[mj103]

I recently moved to Boston, and my dad (huge baseball fan) is coming to visit early this summer and would love to see a game at Fenway. We don't need great seats, but we're avoiding the bleachers (the old guy has some back problems) so we are looking at the outfield grandstand sections 1-5. How are these? I've heard some people speak of obstructed view. Does anyone know if we will have problems with these sections? If so, what do you suggest? As I said before, we don't want to spend much over 100 per ticket.

Any help is appreciated!

[ogre]

Welcome to Boston, and I hope you've enjoyed your time here so far. Here is a link to the seating plan and list of ticket prices at the Red Sox' website: Seating and Pricing Chart | redsox.com: Tickets. As you can see from the price list, you can get seats in the infield grandstand for under 100 dollars, so you might consider those if you are prepared to spend up to 100 per ticket.

If you'd like to try finding decent seats for less than that price if possible, you might consider the bleachers. The bleachers at Fenway are regular seats, not the benches without backs you'd find at a high school football field, so your dad's back trouble should not be a hinderance to sitting in the bleachers. What you might take into account, however is that you do lose some sense of being close to the action from that distance. Also, the bleacher crowd can get kind of rowdy. What you make of the rowdy crowd in the bleachers depends on your own tastes. Some find the bositerous activity in the bleachers annoying. Others find it to be fun and spirited. That really depends on you and the atmosphere you and your father prefer.

Of the sections you mentioned--1 through 5--the best seats there are in sections 1 and 2. As you can see from the seating plan at the website, in sections 1 and 2 you are facing straight in toward the infield. As you move to sections 3 and 4 you begin to face out more across the outfield, and have to turn your head some to look at the infield. It gets even worse if you move to roughly sections 5 through 10, which in my opinion are the worst seats in the park. In sections 5 through 10, you are facing straight out across right field toward center field, and you have to really turn your head, and look down between rows of spectators, to get a view of the infield.

As for your concern about obstructed view seats, if possible, it helps to buy your tickets in person at Fenway. The ticket office employees are usually pretty good about answering questions regarding your seat selection, and they can steer you away from the obstructed view seats. I would suggest making your plans, and buying your tickets, as soon as possible. Tickets for the upcoming season have been on sale for a month or so, and they go quickly, so if you want to have a reasonable shot at finding decent seats you need to buy your tickets as soon as feasible. Enjoy your game.

[mj103]

Thanks! My only question is about buying box office tickets. Is this different than buying them from mlb.com? I went there and the only tickets available were standing room only or something ridiculous. Is there a possibility of getting tickets to a May game from the box office at face value??

[ogre]

Any tickets you buy at the Fenway ticket office will sell for face value. I'm not sure what seats they still have available, but I would suggest looking there first. As I said in the earlier post, do this as soon as you can finalize your plans about when to see a game. The Sox sell out every game, and tickets go quickly from the time they go on sale in December.

If they don't have seats to your liking at the ticket office at Fenway, you probably have a better chance of finding good seats if you buy from a local ticket agency rather than mlb.com. I'm not very familiar with ticket agencies, so we'll have to hope that someone else chimes in here with info on the best ticket agencies and how much of a mark-up you'd be looking at if you bought from them, but based on a few experiences I've had over the years I'd say you're more likely to find decent tickets from a local agency than from mlb.com. Check in person at Fenway first, however, because you'll pay face value, and the staff tends to be helpful about finding you the closest seats to your liking they are able to from tickets still available.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. I've been to plenty of games with my father over the years, and it really is nice to share that experience. Your dad sounds like a man after my own heart as well, because I'm a huge baseball fan myself. So best of luck with this.

[mj103]

Thanks for being so helpful and friendly. I will check with them as soon as possible. The series we're looking at is either the Saturday or Sunday game of the Mets on May 23 or 24.

Otherwise I was just planning on going through something online like stubhub.com. You think local ticket vendors would be better? I'll have to look into that.

I know what you mean about going to baseball games with your dad. I was lucky enough to go to lots of games with him growing up, and while I remember them all with great fondness, as he gets older I've started to realize I took them for granted. Such a strange thing, getting older!

Anyhow, as I said before, thanks for all the great info and suggestions! Go Sox!

[smarty]

Buying Red Sox Tickets the Week of A Game
Even though all games are sold out well in advance, getting tickets a few days before the game of your choice (except the Yankees) is fairly easy. For example, if you want to go to a Saturday game try to buy tickets online at the Red Sox official website around Monday or Tuesday. Plenty of good single seats, plus some pairs, are available within a week of most games. One reason for this is that visiting teams are given a certain amount of tickets per MLB rules, but those teams rarely use all of their allotment and return the unused tickets to the home team shortly before the series is scheduled to begin. One of the best times to buy good seats at face value is within 24 hours of the first game of a series. This rule holds true for any ballpark.
For fans buying Red Sox tickets online the week of a game (within 7 days), your seats will be held for game-day pick up beginning 2 hours prior to game time. Tickets may be picked up at any ticket window at Gates A, B, or E. Remember to bring the credit card used for the purchase, your photo ID, and your confirmation number. The Red Sox sell their own tickets, bypassing the likes of Ticketmaster, and the team charges a convenience fee of $3.50 per ticket. Order processing, including delivery, is a flat fee of $7 no matter how many tickets or games you choose.


Game Day Ticket Sales at Fenway Park
On game days, a very limited number of tickets (usually 300) for that day's game are sold at Gate E (on Lansdowne Street beginning two hours prior to game time. Tickets are sold on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last. Fans may assemble in line beginning 5 hours prior to game time, but no earlier. Many times, they are excellent seats (that were saved for players and last-minute VIPs. Its all about timing.

Fans purchasing tickets at Gate E will be required to enter the ballpark immediately after the purchase and there is a one ticket limit (per person/per day) for Game Day walk-up sales.

For night games.... Call the automated line or the box office directly right at 10:00 am - often tickets are available only on the phone or from a rep and not online.

Go online around 10:15 and keep checking - they will often release tickets to the website soon after they open. Even for sold out games, tickets will be dropped and you can get lucky.

Check online again after lunch, like 1:00 or so. This is when the premium tickets get released. It happen any time between 12:00 and 3:00. They usually last only a couple minutes, the more persistent you are, the better your chances are.

Not many people know this, but Fenway Park has a scalp-free section behind the park next to the Ted Williams statue. This is where fans with extra tickets can sell their tickets at face value to other fans. It is regulated by Red Sox staff to ensure scalpers stay away. I know people who got World Series tickets waiting here, though a typical day at scalp free sees only about a dozen or so tickets exchange hands (at least for the more popular games).

Last but not least, wait out the scalpers. Once the game starts, prices drop. Take a stroll back to Kenmore station and then back to Fenway Park - at this point, they want to go home as much as you want to go to the game, and are often willing to dump the few remaining tickets they have for face value or less.

[lrfox]

I usually buy my tickets online the week of the game. It's the best bet. There are usually plenty available and you can pick them up at will-call (make sure you have a photo- ID and the card used to purchase them on you).

I'd also like to mention that at Fenway, the bleacher seats are more comfortable than grandstands (infield or out). The grandstands at Fenway are small wooden seats that get VERY uncomfortable after a few innings. The bleachers may not give the best view, but they are plastic and a bit more comfortable. See if you can pick up some right field box seats the week of the game. They are affordable and quite comfortable.

[doublea21]

I have to agree that the bleachers have backs on all the seats, although I warn you that the higher up you go (especially the upper bleachers, which are the cheapest seats if you can fin them) the rowdier the crowd gets. In december select seats for may and sept/oct went on sale. Usually at the end of jan the remainder of the home games go on sale for tickets through the box office for the remainder of the home games.

[ogre]

Pay close attention to the last three posts. These guys clearly know a lot about the nitty-gritty of buying tickets after the initial rush of sales in December.