Anyways, the day came (28th Dec...Yes, I know. Told ya it's a backdated post :P) and we arrived about an hour before the game started. Thank God we had prepaid parking. It was such a cold night, it would have been sheer madness to walk all the way from the other parking garages. Our prepaid parking spot was just across the street from Prudential Center :D
Since Prudential Center is a relatively new arena, the concourse area was nice and modern looking. There were all kinds of stalls, from those selling team merchandise to pop corn and cotton candy! You definitely can feel the buzz of excitement, just by walking around the concourse area.
The first thing we did was to go check out our seats. My my my...check out our seats!! Section 7, Row 7! We were sooo close to the ice. How cool is that?
After that, we headed up to the Ice Lounge for some dinner. Club Seat tickets holder could help themselves to free food and drinks 90 minutes before the game, during the game and also after the game. There was quite a large spread of food available. You could help yourselves to the carving station, a hot buffet, the pasta station and a dessert section before the game. The carving station, hot buffet and pasta station stops serving food after the first period.
You can also help yourself to all kinds of concession stand food like pretzels, pizzas, hot dogs, burgers, chicken tenders & fries throughout the game. There is quite a large selection of drinks too...all types of Pepsi products and the ever so yummy Boylan Birch Beer.
Of course if you are looking for some alcoholic beverages, there is a cash bar available too. It's nice to have a cash bar in the lounge, then you do not need to stand in line for the longest time with the other people, just to buy a mug of beer. Another good thing about getting club seat tickets is that there are private restrooms at the lounge. No mad crowds lining up to use the restrooms during intermission...woohoo!!
Checkout the layout of the Ice Lounge. There is a main section with bar stools, another section with booths and a chillout lounge section with funky furniture :P I guess you can choose whichever you are comfortable at...lots of space for everybody.
This is my personal favorite section. We can just stand there with our food and drinks, while watching the teams warm up. A nice full view of the entire rink!
Alrighty, 5 minutes before the game started, we loaded up with more free snacks (pretzels and chicken tenders) and went back to our seats. Note the size of the chairs...club seats are way wider and have more legroom than regular seats. Nice!
Woohoo!! Let the game begin! The energy throughout the game was out of this world! Watching a NHL game live is so awesome! What more being so close to the ice.
Of course there were fights. I think there were at least 4 big ones. Cool!
We went to the sushi bar to get some makis during the first intermission. Yup, there is a sushi bar in the Ice Lounge too! Free unlimited sushi....drooool.
We didn't get up for the next intermission. We just sat there and watched the Zamboni machine do it's thing. Also, there were some games and entertainment throughout the intermission. We even spotted the N.J. Devil..Woohoo!
Ahhhh the final score. The Devils beat the Thrashers 3-2!! Yay! What an amazing night! My first NHL game, having the opportunity to watch it from great seats, unlimited food and drinks...boy, we are truly blessed! Now, anybody feel like giving us free Steelers tickets for next season? Anybody? :D
The rest of the buffet was split up into various cuisines. There is the Italian -where you can try out many different types of pasta and pizzas, the Asian - a selection of dim sum, sushis, makis and quite a number of different Chinese dishes, the Bar-B-Que - there were all kinds of roasted meats and a carving station and the American - some good ol American comfort food like mashed sweet potato, green bean casseroles, creamed spinach, basically all the popular traditional American Christmas food :D There is also a huge Dessert bar with all kinds of Christmas goodies.
Oh, there is also a Mongolian section. You just pick the type of noodles and vegetables that you want, choose the sauce that you like and the type of meat ( you get to choice of beef, chicken, pork, shrimp and/or scallops). I chose yellow noodles, some mushrooms, a few different kinds of vegetables, teriyaki sauce with scallops and shrimps. Then the guy will fry it up for you on the traditional Mongolian hot plate. Pretty cool eh? The guy was so liberal on the scallops, I swear, he dumped in more than 30 pieces of bay scallops! Don't get me wrong, I love scallops...but this is wayyyyyyyy too much :P
After filling up on the buffet, we just walked around (to digest all those food) and took photos of the nice decorations. We could also enjoy the amazing view from various parts of the casino. We then headed down to the the casino floor to check it out. It's not really that interesting, since there were only machine games (PA doesn't allow table games). After losing 10 buckaroos on the slots, we decided to call it a night and headed home. We had a great Christmas dinner and my mother in law even said " Hmmm, maybe this can be a new Christmas tradition..." :D