Cardinals Game

On January 3rd, I was hired to work with Gameday Management Group for the Cardinals game. My area of focus was transportation. After the pre-con meeting, we were assigned to work in partners. My responsibilities were to direct fans to the shuttles, make them aware of bus/stadium rules, count the number of individuals loading the bus, and keep a log of bus departure times and the number of fans on the bus.

Fans were excited! Some fans tried to sneak their beers on the bus. Many of the ladies got upset at us, because we returned them to their vehicles to leave their big purses behind. The stadium has this rule that states a ladies' purse has to be within 12 inches tall and wide. I handled these grumbles by stating that it'd be best to be on the safe side rather than having to come back. We greeted and transported way over 600 fans. There were fans complimenting our good and fast service. I recall one fan stated that other stadiums need to take a look at how we organize and execute our transportation system for these types of events.

After transporting the fans to the stadium, we all headed over to the brown lot for our break. It was so boring waiting for everyone to get out. I didn't bring any reading material. We couldn't go to the restaurants around the Jobing.com Arena. However, we did get to enjoy a couple of slices of cold pizza. We simply sat in the cold weather hoping for the time to fly by.

Soon we were gathered once again for a briefing. We were told to quickly load as many people onto the bus at the same time. In order to make loading a smooth process, we had to pay attention to the staff in front of us. Once they signaled to stop allowing individuals from boarding, everyone was to do the same and close the doors so that the bus can be on its merry way. The purpose of this was to have all busses leave at the same time and have 6 new busses line up at the same time. The same amount of people, if not even more, were taken back to their vehicles in less than an hour. We then began to break down the barriers and grouped them together.

It was a long night, and I was ready to go home. My feet were killing me and I was a bit cold. It was great to learn some of the logistics invovled in transportation. I would never had guessed one would save time by loading at the same time. We were no longer concerned with filling up the busses. Although this strategy may not be the greenest, fans were happy to make it to their vehicles fast.