The Journey To WrestleMania Begins
It soon got to the morning of Sunday 7th April, it was finally WrestleMania day! We were still not entirely sure on how to get to the MetLife from the city proper so our first port of call after breakfast was the aforementioned Tourist information; WrestleMania adorned its entire window so we thought that these guys would know what to do and where to go. Wrong! The lady inside tried to be as helpful as possible but had to inspect a Mania brochure in order to try and help. Needless to say she wasnt too helpful but she did direct us to the Port Authority bus terminal where shuttles would be departing after around 2pm. This was a little later than we really wished to get there as we still had to pick up our tickets and wanted to leave as much time as possible just to be on the safe side. But a trip through Times Square to the terminal was a plan just so we could way up all our options. If youve ever been to the Terminal and are not a New York native Im pretty sure you can relate to the sheer craziness of the place. Compounded by the fact that each information point we found was unmanned (NYC must still have Sunday operating hours I guess) and so a trek through the maze of the place was required. Eventually I was stood face to face with a guy who was more robot than man who answered my questions with no charm and a lot of robotic speech who told us which gate the buses would be departing from and also that they would not be departing by 2pm but instead would be leaving from 3pm. The bus was not for us it would seem. Cheers port Authority robo-man! We decided that the train was the way to go as we knew they operated at all times, so even if we got a little lost, given enough time we would be fine. Being a couple of Brits in NYC we decided to go back to the hotel, plan the journey and leave as soon as possible. Penn Station was the place to start to be at Mania. As soon as we entered the Subway to make our way to Penn we knew we were on the right track as right in front of us buying tickets was a girl with a green Cena bag along with two friends. We had a group to follow it would seem which set our minds at ease slightly. Arriving at Penn we tried to figure out which way to go to get tickets and to get across the river to New Jersey. Fortunately, the directions to the New Jersey Transit didnt follow the same theme as the rest of New York in that they were actually there and easily navigated. Well done NJTransit. But this was by far the busiest area of the entirety of Penn with a huge throng of people milling about, many of which in WWE merch, all with pretty glazed over faces. The Information booth was required once again but it would seem that the Port Authority was not the only place to hire robo-men as another was staring lifelessly at me as I asked how to get to WrestleMania. Do you have train tickets? No because I need to know what station im going to, what train I need and what platform you a**hole? Of course I didnt say that but that was the theme of my retort. Moments later after a friendly point to a row of windows, most of which had people in wrestling tees standing by them we were finally purchasing tickets to the Meadowlands Sports Complex but with little clue as to where we would get the train from. We thought that looking at the train times board would help; nope. Maybe asking a seemingly friendly looking couple in Rock T shirts: not friendly and still no clue (Rock fans, what did we expect?). Perhaps we should ask someone who works here who happened to be milling about. Take that door there, down the escalator and take that train came the reply of the friendliest info person we had found yet. With thanks we bolted to the train and jumped on moments before it left. We were on our way to New Jersey at last but we still had Secaucus station to contend with. After the nightmare of Penn, this should be a breeze! The train was pretty full but we did manage to sit down on separate seats but naturally I had found the fattest woman I had yet seen in the USA as my seat buddy. She was nice though bless her. Before long Secaucus reared into view and we departed the train and followed everybody else as we once again had no clue where we were going. (Theres a theme here, NYC and NJ must have known the amount of traffic that would be passing through this station from the city but any indication as to what to do was pretty pants from the outset) After a short problem with the wifes ticket to get out of the station where we needed assistance from a station worker we looked about for the next stage of the journey...