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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 2:55 pm 
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My wife and i will be in Canada, Toronto to be more specific, for a holiday from May 28th until June 9th and I've noticed that the NY Yankees will be playing the Toronto Blue Jays from June 1st through to June 4th, in Toronto.

Whilst neither of us can claim to be huge baseball fans i do enjoy watching it on the TV when it's shown over here (very rare without a massively overpriced premium TV subscription), add that the Yankees are a huge global brand that surely most of the world have at least heard of... I'm sorely tempted by the prospect of soaking up the atmosphere and experiencing what it has to offer.

(Fwiw, i haven't run this by my wife yet but as it's her birthday on the 2nd and we're doing the full Niagara Falls (helicopter & boat) experience i doubt she'll object to giving me this, plus i just know she'll love it when she's there even if it does involve "eye-rolls" in the meantime! LOL)

Now that said, never having a attended a MLB game before I'm somewhat bewildered by the choice of ticketing options available and hope that someone here can help point me in the right direction as to where in the stadium the best seats might be (assuming they'll still be available).

Money isn't really an option if the value is good, looking at the Blue Jays website it appears that circa $100CAD each ought to get us pretty good seats somewhere but as I'm clueless about where the best seats 'really' are I'm hesitant to go ahead and buy them... that also assumes that i can buy them from overseas, paying in Canadian dollars isn't an issue as i already have CAD's loaded onto a pre-paid travel credit card (MasterCard), but getting the tickets might be?
c.f. http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/ticketi ... t=gameflow

One last question, and possibly the most important, what happens if the game is rained off?

Oh, one final last question.... we're also taking a short hop for an overnight stay in Times Square, New York City on June 6th for no other reason than we can, we haven't really decided what we want to do there other than we both feel that as NYC is so close to Toronto it'd be a shame not to at least stand in downtown NY and "feel" what all the fuss is about... personally i want to drag my wife into Trump Tower but the look on her face said that that's never happening!! (apologies to Trump fans) ;)

One thing we would like to experience, if possible, is an authentic NY diner... preferably not one of the 'tourist diners' that is all herbs bling and over-priced but rather one that actual New Yorkers use, any thoughts/recommendations?


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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:42 pm 
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IMO You want seats down low and close to home plate so you can the see the entire field
The Yankees draw well on the road so get the tickets as soon as possible. Don't worry about rain. The roof would be closed.

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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 6:04 pm 
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chasbox wrote:
IMO You want seats down low and close to home plate so you can the see the entire field
The Yankees draw well on the road so get the tickets as soon as possible. Don't worry about rain. The roof would be closed.

Thanks for that... I've actually spent the last 30 minutes trying to buy tickets but i can't work out if it's my location that's stopping me or the traffic on the website, i keep getting told there is a problem with the map etc and to try later or another browser.

I've tried IE11 and Firefox with similar results so i'll give up for tonight and try again in the morning when most of North America should be asleep :)

I did notice that seats on the official MLB Blue Jays website were becoming very limited, when i got that far, but i also found 'other' websites apparently selling what appeared to be 'sold' tickets... StubHub being one example... never heard of them before but it was an interesting browse :)

I'm reluctant to use the later although it possibly is legitimate, the UK and EU have fairly strict laws about re-selling tickets online that makes me incredibly hesitant to do anything other than browse the website... for the most part when it comes to concerts or sporting events, in the UK, if you don't go to the official website you don't get what you paid for so it's best to avoid them.


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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 6:19 pm 
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Stub Hub and Ticketmaster are legit in the US Don't know about sites in Canada.
Good Luck

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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 9:20 pm 
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Looks like Chas has answered most and I totally agree that Stub Hub and/or Ticketmaster are fine in the US. I don't actually know if either actually operate outside of the US so I'd make sure to directly contact either or both outfits to be sure.

As to finding a diner in NYC I can't answer as I've never been there and have no desire to visit. I'm 'small town' and NYC is just too big for me. Still... If you want to find a good diner hail a taxi and ask where the driver eats. If you want an honest answer DO let the driver take you somewhere. Taxi drivers pretty much know anything and everything that is going on in a city.

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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 10:31 am 
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Thanks for your help guys, I've bought 2 aisle tickets 4 rows behind the home dugout for the Thursday night game on June 1st :)

I couldn't get the Ticketmaster website to work but the Stub Hub website worked without issue... i'll just need to find somewhere in Toronto to print the tickets because they apparently won't be available for printing until May 31st, but in this day and age that shouldn't be an issue, i hope! lol

As for what my wife thought of this idea, her face lit up when i suggested it :)

@Jay, for an honest answer I'd even buy the taxi driver his/her lunch/dinner lol


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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2017 2:57 pm 
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Great seats. Enjoy

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 4:38 pm 
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<rant mode on>
Stub Hub emailed me out of the blue today to say my tickets were available to be printed out, excellent i thought, but to say i wasn't massively impressed with what i found when i logged into my account to print them out would be an understatement... they were for cheaper seats in a completely different part of the stadium!

Their apparent saving grace (so far) was their online chat option that at least allowed me to contact them without protracted emails or expensive transatlantic phone calls... suffice to say, i was emailed amended tickets for the correct seats but it's not filled me with confidence that when we get to the stadium the tickets will pass validation... i mean, clearly i got someone else's tickets and someone else has mine, even allowing for the fact they've cancelled the barcode on my "original" tickets what's to say they don't make the same mistake again?

I will NOT be happy if we get turned away from the stadium but at least i decided to take the exchange rate hit (paying in USD rather then CAD for a game in Canada hurt especially when i already have CAD's preloaded onto a prepaid exchange rate free travel credit card, but hey-ho) and used my every day credit card to pay for the tickets so getting the money back will be a lot faster than Stub Hub's 'fan guarantee', or whatever they call it, if it does go pear shaped...

Call it naivety if you want, but i expected better from North America.
<rant mode off>


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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 8:39 pm 
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I've never used Stub Hub but do know that they are considered to be a good outfit. While I can't know it would be my guess that it was an honest mistake. I hope all works out at the stadium and believe that it will.

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2017 2:22 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
I've never used Stub Hub but do know that they are considered to be a good outfit. While I can't know it would be my guess that it was an honest mistake. I hope all works out at the stadium and believe that it will.

I don't for a second doubt it was an honest mistake and if you and Chas vouch for the company then that's good enough for me.

I'm just surprised that a mistake like than can happen in this day and age... I'd have thought their method for selling, billing, and assigning the tickets would've been fully automated but for a mistake like that to happen there must have surely been some human input.

My only concern really is what'll happen when we get to the stadium, if 'my tickets' have been sent to someone else and they use them to get into the stadium before us, it could be interesting to say the least... just in case that happens I've already copied over the confirmation emails etc to my mobile phone ;)


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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2017 4:08 pm 
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Sounds like a wise percaution. ;)

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 Post Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:28 am 
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You'll be fine.

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 Post Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:32 am 
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NYC is a fun place but expect to pay and have traffic nightmares. The theater is always nice and you can get tickets before or take your chance and get tickets on the day for considerably cheaper. There's a place there where that can happen but it's just what's left over and it might not be for the show you want.

The Tavern on the Green - http://www.tavernonthegreen.com/ - is a great place to eat with impeccable service and a pricey menu. At least it was when I was there last.

Nice places to visit, if you like this sort of stuff: Museum of Natural History, Freedom Tower, top of the Empire State Bldg, lots of art museums and just walking around places like Times Square is interesting. Keep your wallet safe!

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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:45 pm 
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Thanks for the tips Manny but I'm not sure we'll be able to squeeze very much in, it will very much be a flyby visit... we'll be flying into La Guardia at 10:25am on the 6th and returning to Toronto on the 7th at 18:55pm.

I didn't realise that NY was only a 90 minute flight from Toronto when i initially booked the holiday otherwise i'd have pre-planned a weekend stop-over at least, even though it's turned out to be incredibly expensive for us to stay for just one night it was too good an opportunity not to take because the chances of us being able to afford anything like a full-time vacation in the States any time soon is probably about zero... as things stand we'll probably be paying off this holiday for a while and then the wife has her heart set on going to New Zealand in two years time! :shock:

That said, there are a few things we hope to squeeze in while we're there that should be achievable, visiting Ground Zero is an absolute must for me... not because i have to or need to but because i feel it would be wrong to be in the City and not pay my respects.

Seeing, even if we can't actually visit, the Empire State building and Statue of Liberty are top of the list for both of us... anything else we can manage to squeeze in will be a bonus... things like a Broadway show would be nice but not essential, we get enough of that arty farty stuff in Edinburgh as it is! LOL

Primarily it'll be about soaking up the atmosphere while we're there, e.g. the skyscrapers i have no doubt will blow me away, we don't have anything like them in Edinburgh because the City Council here won't allow high-rise buildings due to the fact they block the view of Edinburgh castle... and then there's the New Yorkers, are they really as brash as they're made out to be???... i can't wait to find out ;)

We'll be staying on West 47th just off Broadway so distance and time to any of the above will hopefully be relatively painless.


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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:31 am 
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LOL! I've been to about every state west and south of Ohio but no further east than Philadelphia so I can't speak as to how people actually are in NYC. Still I have an opinion from reports from people that I know. The opinion is that NYC is the second largest open air mental facility in the U.S.A.. The number 1 facility would be Los Angeles. As to Los Angeles I can speak from experience even though the visit was way back in the 1970's. :mrgreen: If I actually visited NYC the 1-2 positions could possibly change. :rofl2:

Seriously expect what I would expect from any HUGE metropolis; You will meet people that will treat you as a guest and others that won't even talk to you as you are not local. I ran in to this in Quebec MANY years ago. Ask one person a question and get all the help that you need. Ask another and get nothing as they claim to not speak English yet, as you walk away, you hear them speaking English to the person they are with. ;) People are people. Realize the possibility of meeting good, bad and indifferent.

Somewhere in this thread there was advice given as to keep track of your wallet; take it seriously. Pickpocketing is an art well practiced in large metropolitan areas.

And thank you for wanting to pay respects at "Ground Zero".
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 Post Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 10:22 am 
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Doddie wrote:
Thanks for the tips Manny but I'm not sure we'll be able to squeeze very much in, it will very much be a flyby visit... we'll be flying into La Guardia at 10:25am on the 6th and returning to Toronto on the 7th at 18:55pm.


No, you won't have time for much. Just getting from La Guardia in Long Island to Manhattan will require a good amount of time even though it's not far away. Remember that you are going from one island to another so crossing a bridge or going through a tunnel is a must. Infrastructure is old in NYC so delays are common.

The Broadway area is a nice central place to stay. It's close to the Empire State Building but the Freedom Tower is in lower Manhattan. The quickest way around can be the subway. Typically, it's safe and reasonably cheap. A cab is quick but if you hit a traffic jam, walking is quicker. I've terminated cab rides half way there and gotten to my destination faster by walking. It just depends.

New Yorkers can be brusk but that's usually because they are in a hurry to get somewhere. Because it's such a large cosmopolitan city expect to see a lot of characters. However, it's been my experience that if you engage people politely they will respond in kind. In the many years I've gone there I have never had a bad experience. In fact, generally it's all been good.

NYC is a wonderful place to visit - never, in a million years would I live there - but with the short amount of time you have you will barely get a taste of that world.

Enjoy and have fun. Keep your wallet out of your back pocket.

I forgot to say. If you want to visit the Statue of Liberty and maybe even Freedom Tower and it's related museum try and buy tickets now. They are incredibly busy places and it would be a miracle if you can visit the Statue of Liberty without prior arrangements. I think it's booked weeks in advance. Remember the Statue is on an island and you can't walk to it.

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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2017 5:41 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
Remember the Statue is on an island and you can't walk to it.

Well, thank you! That's my bubble about my ability to walk on water well and truly burst! :rofl2: :hips3:

Seriously though, i know we won't have much time to visit anything but if we can see the main 'attractions' (even if we don't take in the tourist trap parts) then we'll be happy... our plan as it stands is to get down to the Battery Park area on the day of our arrival where hopefully we'll be able to at least see the Statue of Liberty from a distance and work our way back up through Manhattan on foot taking in as much of the atmosphere as we can... along the way stopping at the 9/11 Memorial and passing (but not entering) The Empire State Building etc.

The second day, before we head back to the airport, will likely be spent trying to find somewhere that really does sell your well famed outrageously large portions of food... not because we'll be hungry, but because neither of us truly believes what we see on the TV can be real! LOL... and shopping... :mad6:

Btw, all the warnings about pickpockets haven't gone unnoticed, we have plenty of them over here as well, especially during the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe in the summer :(


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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:41 am 
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Pickpockets are a problem wherever you go especially in the large cities, enjoy your trip and I hope you get to see as much as possible. :-D

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 Post Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 10:32 am 
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Enjoy your trip and please report back with your impressions.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2017 9:05 pm 
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OH MY GOD!!! NYC was completely off the scale of anything i'd expected to experience!!! :rofl2:

On arrival at La Guardia airport my wife and i were already thinking this place is bonkers... little did we know what we were about to encounter as we headed into the City proper!!!!
[As this is a family friendly website i'll restrain myself from using the expletives one would expect when entering a world this alien... use your imagination and feel free to enter your own as you read on ;) ]

Prior to travelling to the Americas i thought i had everything covered, i'd researched how much i thought i'd have to pay for a taxi from La Guardia to Times Square (in the region of $50-70 depending on traffic as there is no set flat fare, unlike from JFK) so i thought i'd ask at the information desk in the airport just in case i was opening up a can of worms... i was told it would likely cost over $110 and that she recommended the "NYC Airporter": https://www.nycairporter.com/

It was supposed to be a 30 minute trip but it took over an hour, presumably there was some sort of traffic delay somewhere because we ended up going through some of the most pothole ridden roads I've ever encountered (i felt like i was sitting on a pogo-stick on the highways!), on back roads through areas that in no stretch of the imagination could ever be considered "tourist" areas... i now understand why Trump wants $1tn to repair the US road networks!! LOL

On arrival at Times Square it became clear why we weren't allowed to take our small "airline carry-on bag" onto the "shuttle"... the overhead luggage racks on the bus roped off so nothing can be put on them!...
All bags had to be placed in the rear storage area of the bus... what we in the UK call, the boot.

Suffice to say it means if you don't give a big enough tip the driver will bang on a sign on the inside of the boot door about tipping until you tip him enough, and if they're not happy you don't get your bag!!!... i tried to apologise that i hadn't been to an ATM to withdraw USD because we'd been up since 4AM to catch our flight and just wanted to get to our hotel... this fell on deaf ears until i offered him $10CAD :evil:

Tuppenceworth: i get that many people in the US are massively underpaid and rely on tips to make up for the greed of their employers but that is not the way first time tourists into the US should be greeted... it certainly isn't the way to make sure other first time tourists in the US will use that service.

On a more positive note we were very happy with what we managed to get to see :D

We took one of the sightseeing tour buses to at least "see" the major attractions... Empire State Building etc... i now know why that building is so iconic :)

We got off the bus in the Battery Park Area to walk down and see the Statue of Liberty from the waterfront, the initial plan had been to jump on the Staten Island Ferry for a closer look at the Statue of Liberty as it sailed past the statue but by now rush hour was approaching so we decided against it and just wandered around the less crowded area and found the WWII memorial... i was gobsmacked that a memorial of such stature was so quiet yet just a few yards away there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people oblivious to its existence.

Ground Zero, i really hope I'm not offending anyone by calling it that... is definitely a once in a life time experience that anyone who cares about liberty should try and visit... that so many people died in that area is truly humbling when you stand there.

I tried to envisage what it must have been like to be a New Yorker and experience the shock of what happened that day but the magnitude of what happened was beyond my imagination.

The Wells with the names of everyone who died doesn't really hit home until you see it for yourself... personally i had a feeling of guilt... I'm not sure why... i think because standing in one place for too long just didn't feel right in case someone who had lost someone might approach and want that spot?

It is a very humbling place.

On a lighter note... because i could ramble on for hours about what i experienced in NYC...

On the flight back to Toronto there was apparently a problem with Air Canada boarding passes that were printed off from their website so they needed to be verified by a member of Air Canada staff at La Guardia... being asked to speak English was as sublime as NYC and in hindsight I'm not surprised it happened... after all, i was asked for ID to buy alcohol in a Toronto convenience store despite being the wrong side of 50!! :rofl2:

All in all definitely a once in a lifetime experience and one that I'm so very happy i made.

P.S. The Blu Jay game tickets were flawless, just a shame they lost 12-2 on the night but they made up for it the following night, and the next... ;)


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 Post Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2017 10:41 pm 
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Like I said in an earlier post... 2nd largest open air mental facility in the world. LA is number 1. :mrgreen:

I'm glad that you seem to have enjoyed yourself. :)

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 Post Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 4:37 pm 
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My husband went to New York when he was 16, his mother won a competition that allowed him and a friend to go. They stayed in the Waldorf, he actually went to the very top of the Statue of Liberty which we gather is not allowed anymore.

It was an experience he said but he wouldn't go back, even got a photo of him with a couple of bunny girls, :-)

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