Beware the Party Deck

Just a disappointing FYI for wheelchair users visiting Tropicana Field: sometimes they sell wheelchair seating that is not really wheelchair seating.

We bought tickets for a high attendance, but luckily for us, not sold-out, game, several days in advance, at the box office to make sure wheelchair seating would be squared away. The tickets were for section 353, seats 18 & 19. The seats there are folding chairs along a top row, and many of them are easy to wheel into. Others, there is a wall blocking wheelchair access, including everything from 15 or 16 to the end of the row, and yes, 18 and 19. So even though we arrived an hour before the game began, we actually missed the beginning of the game trying to get the tickets switched – which they eventually were, to where folks were already (mis)seated, so it took more fiddling (twice, actually, my husband left to get drinks and two other folks sat in the same wrong seats) to actually get us seated properly.

We were told that if the game had been sold out, there would’ve been nothing they could do. The only way I know to interpret that, is that we would’ve just be unable to watch the game.

I know you can’t expect much when you buy cheap seats, but surely you can expect tickets bought for wheelchair accessible seating to actually be wheelchair accessible? And that buying a ticket actually guarantees a seat at the game (barring misbehavior)?

Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case.