As part of Cub Scouts, one of my sons earned us 2 tickets to a Cincinnati Reds game, as well as discounted vouchers for additional tickets. As it turned out, the team I’m on at work also went to a Reds game this week as part of a work celebration, so I ended up going to see 2 games in a week (after not having seen a game all season!)
While I was doing a bit of research figuring out where the best places to park were, I stumbled across a post from BallparkSavvy.com. Not only was it useful in finding a good parking place (we ended up at Fountain Square), but it let me in on the “secret” $1 concession stand!
Now taking a family of 8 to a ballgame is fun, but how do you do it without breaking the bank? The MLB “Fan Cost Index” says that a family of 4, even to Cincinnati which is among the cheaper options, still “should” cost you $165.39. For general tips, the BallparkSavvy article I linked to above has some good ones, but I wanted to touch base on the secret $1 concession stand I found out about.
The “secret” $1 concession stand
It’s located behind sections 433/533, which is on the right field side, all the way up.
And yes, hot dogs, peanuts and pop really do only cost $1 each!
Thanks to the Scouts, our seats were actually down on the lower level, so rather than take everything all the way down there (READ: spill everything several times on the way down there), we just found an empty spot a little further down on the river side and just ate there.
We were there a little early (maybe 6pm for a 7:10 game) so there wasn’t a problem with that and the lines for the $1 concessions were not long at all. Contrasting that to when I went for work, the lines were very long. PROTIP – there are actually 4 lines for the concessions, and due to the way that they wrap, the inside 2 lines are usually much shorter. Still, even in the middle of the game, I’d say I was gone from my seats only 15-20 minutes which isn’t too bad considering.
Free pizza!
Still, what’s better than $1 hot dogs? Free pizza, of course!!!! 🙂 The Reds have a season-long promotion where if Reds pitchers strike out 11 opposing batters, everyone in the park gets a free pizza at a local pizza place. This was all the kids were talking about the whole game pretty much, and we made it to 8 Ks through the 8th inning.
Normally we have Aroldis Chapman, who is one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball, but since the Reds were losing, he didn’t come in to pitch the 9th – instead we got JJ Hoover. He went 0-2 on the first batter before giving up a single and then striking out the next 2 batters.
Next up was Giancarlo Stanton, who is probably the Marlins best player. You know something is messed up when I was actively rooting for him to hit a home run rather than “just” fly out or ground out :-). Then, as the entire stadium was chanting “PIZ-ZA! PIZ-ZA!” he watched strike 3 go by!
Sorry for my thumb on the bottom half of the video 🙂
I realize that most of you probably don’t live in Cincinnati, but I hope this was useful for some folks!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
They used to have two locations, one of which was by the Fan Zone playground/big yellow slide/kids baseball field. We are frequent users of the last remaining location, and big fans.
The cheapest way to eat hot dogs there though is to bring them yourself. GABP allows you to bring in food & drinks. Pack a ball park picnic and save the money for that trip to *place points enabled destination here*.
I don’t go to thattt many Reds games, but I will definitely be taking advantage of these $1 offerings. Too bad it doesn’t include Rhinegeist beer!
Yes the food quality isn’t quite THAT good, but it’s not bad. Just remember to either get there early or plan to be in line awhile