VenRoo

Tracking the venues you've visited – Poster of the NFL Stadiums on a Map of the United States

Tag Archives: Football

NFL Opening Day 2015

 

The sun rises on another NFL season.  It’s the calm before the storm.  The off-season drama is over and now the games that count start tonight.  On the NFL Opening Weekend, every team is in it.  Every team has a chance.  Every team has 12 guaranteed wins.  Every fan has optimism that this is their year.  Some fans are right, and for other fans, there’s always next year.

That’s the excitement the NFL brings.  You don’t know until you play the games.  So let’s get this started.

Whether your planning a road trip to go see your favorite team, or going to see a game in your favorite city, make sure you have fun.  That’s why we’ve all waited 9 months.  For. NFL. Football.

VenRoo is proud to support road trips for all NFL teams.  You can decide where to go, or track where you’ve been with our map of all NFL stadiums.

Visit VenRoo.com and get your road trip planning off on the right foot.  And enjoy the season!

Your friends at VenRoo….

Houston – Reliant Stadium

In 2004 we attended a Chargers / Texans game at Reliant Stadium in Houston.  The Astrodome was right next to it and the new stadium was huge compared to the Astrodome.

Two things that stick out while visiting the Houston stadium – how nice all the people were and the spacious interior of the stadium.

We got numerous “Welcome to Texas” greetings as we walked to the stadium.  Tailgaters were more than generous, even though we sported the visiting team colors.  And inside, the Houston fans were just as nice.

We were also very impressed by the openness of the concourses.  There was plenty of room to walk without getting in anyone’s way.  Concession lines were never long and there was plenty of room around the concession areas to move around.  The space inside the stadium was very impressive.

They say they do things bigger in Texas and Reliant Stadium in Houston is a testament to that.

Arizona Cardinals – Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe

Has anyone experienced the old home of the Arizona Cardinals?  Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe was the home of the Cardinals before they moved into their new stadium in Glendale.

Our first visit to Sun Devil Stadium coincided with a nice little heat wave.  The temperature was about 110 degrees.  That sounds bad enough, but as anyone who has been to a game there will certainly remember, they have aluminum bench seats.  It was definitely an adventure to try to sit on those seats in that heat.  Luckily the Cardinals had misters in all walkways so we could escape the heat and cool down a bit.

Besides the weather, Sun Devil Stadium is actually a great place to see a game.  The stadium is built between 2 mountains so the views are unbelievable.   Add to that the surrounding desert and you get a truly unique game day experience for an NFL game.

Trivia Note:  On October 27, 2003, Sun Devil Stadium hosted the Miami Dolphins and San Diego Chargers after the game was moved to Arizona due to the massive wildfires in San Diego.  The Chargers’ home, Qualcomm Stadium, was being used as an evacuation site.

Cincinnati Stadium

We went to Cincinnati several years ago, which was one of the first stadiums we visited. Four of us drove from Illinois, one flew from California, and two others lived in Cincinnati. We were so excited to experience tailgating at the stadium, but the local guys wanted nothing to do with tailgating. So, they planned to hang out at the local Hooters on the other side of the river and take the shuttle boat (giant ferry) over right at game time.

The rest of us, non-locals, crammed into the car in search of the best tailgating spot. We were a little upset with ourselves as we got a late start and didn’t get downtown, until 10am. For a 1:00pm game that wasn’t leaving much time for quality tailgating. Well, to our surprise, we found a great spot, but nobody was there. This photo says it all. Lot Full. People didn’t start to show up until 11:00am and after. We made the best of it, and immediately put a Red “X” in our book for Cincinnati tailgating (or lack of). We will say, in a future post, a few years later we did find some quality tailgating and just realized we were on the wrong side of the stadium the first time. Rookie mistake.

Number of Pro Football Stadiums Visited

Traveling to various stadiums and cities is a fun experience, which is why we started VenRoo.  We started out visiting a different football stadium within driving distance in the midwest, and one year when there wasn’t a location in the area with the teams we wanted to see, we decided to take to the air and fly to our first stadium:  Denver.

In fact, that year, we thought it would be fun to see the football game on Sunday and stay over Monday to catch a baseball game on Monday night.  That was a long weekend that wore us out.  We probably won’t try that again anytime soon.  Three days over a weekend for one football game is enough to keep us busy.

How many different cities have you visited to watch a pro football game?

[polldaddy poll=4050886]

Which football stadiums are shown on the poster

There are a lot of stadiums within the professional football and many have been replaced by newer ones over the years.  Which stadiums are shown on the VenRoo poster for professional football?  The current poster for 2010, displays the current stadiums, as of the 2010-2011 season.  New York is new for the year, Indianapolis was new in 2008 and others were replaced several years back.

The concept of VenRoo, is tracking where you’ve been, so we decided to include the current stadiums.  You can still show a date on the stadium even though you haven’t been to a newer one.  Unless you want to track the actual stadium, which is just fine too.  We may offer stickers, in the future, of all the older stadiums, if you want to see the image of those past stadiums.

Customizing your VenRoo poster

Tracking your visits

The venues on the VenRoo poster are inside a colorful ring, with a lighter shade on the bottom quarter of the ring.  You can use this lighter area to write anything you want about the venue.  Use it to write the date of the first time you visited, such as Sept 2005 or 9-24-2006.  Add the score of the game or the opponent played.  Be creative, add your on personal style.  Track the number of times you’ve been, wins or losses, or if it was a good or not so good venue.

What is VenRoo?

VenRoo is all about tracking the various venues you’ve visited.  Just as a kangaroo hops from one place to the next, you visit a variety of venues.  Venues could be stadiums, arenas, sporting events, amusement parks, concerts, or anything else that you visit.

People like to keep track of the places they’ve been and we are trying to make it fun and interesting to present those travels in a geographical format.

So, with the combination of Venue and Kangaroo, VenRoo was born.

Dallas Stadium

The new stadium in Dallas is over the top!  This is by far the best stadium experience we’ve seen.  There’s not much around the stadium as it’s next door to a Wal-mart, and among residential houses.  However, once you’re through the outside gate there’s plenty of entertainment before the game.

You’ll be impressed once you’re inside the stadium.  The first thing we noticed was the huge bathrooms with plenty of room.  Of course we realized why they had those, when the beer sales continued through the 4th quarter and after the game with music and dancing.  Concession stands are everywhere with no lines and getting to your seat, is as easy as catching an elevator to your level and only walking a few rows up, rather than hiking a mountain for 40 rows or so.

Of course the huge video screen is fantastic, but it does kinda take away from actually watching the field.

What do you think of this new stadium?  Leave some comments and answer the poll questions.

[polldaddy poll=3954154]