Here are some travel tips for fans heading to the Rose Bowl and Rose Parade in Pasadena. Inventory for hotels and tickets is shrinking by the day, but if you act now it’s not too late to have an incredible Rose Bowl Experience:
Flights
For fans traveling from Detroit to California, the picture is getting pricey. Fares to airports in LAX, Burbank, Long Beach or Santa Ana airports have filled up for the most part. Booking this late during a holiday week means paying at least $1,800 or more for a round-trip flight, even with multiple stops.
Hotels
Deals on hotel rooms near the Rose Bowl are about as scarce as game tickets — Pasadena has only 4,000 rooms, and most were booked a long time ago. Luckily, the huge sprawl of Los Angeles has almost 97,000 hotel rooms — approximately one room for every seat in the Rose Bowl. Closest metropolitan areas to Pasadena with large numbers of hotel rooms are downtown Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley (Burbank, Universal City, Studio City).
Rose Parade Tickets
The parade typically (varies slightly year to year) kicks off at 8 a.m. on New Year’s Day. About 70,000 grandstand seats will be constructed and tickets are still available. You can look for a free curbside spot along the 5 ½-mile parade route but this can be very difficult since people start claiming spots days before the parade. The 2014 parade will have 42 floats (plus 20 bands and 16 equestrian units).
Transportation & Parking
If you can line up transportation on gameday, you should. It’s very difficulty to find a place to park at the Rose Bowl and traffic in the LA area is legendary.