{"id":226,"date":"2026-09-17T11:15:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/?p=226"},"modified":"2026-09-17T11:15:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:15:36","slug":"turning-a-game-into-a-full-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/turning-a-game-into-a-full-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"From Seattle to the Sun: How Sports Fans Can Turn a Game Into a Full Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Seattle Mariners fan heading to Arizona for spring training has an interesting choice to make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can fly into Phoenix, see the Mariners in Peoria, stay near the ballpark and fly home. Or you can look at the same airfare as the starting cost of an Arizona vacation: baseball in Peoria one afternoon, Scottsdale the next day, a morning on a desert trail and perhaps another Cactus League game before heading home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game has not changed. What has changed is the way the trip is built around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That distinction matters when you are planning your weekend getaway in Seattle<\/a>. Getting to many of the country’s major sports markets means committing several hours to a flight each way. Once that time and airfare are already part of the plan, a two-night turnaround is not necessarily the best use of either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For families in particular, there is a better question to ask when the NFL, MLB, MLS or college schedule comes out: where could this game take us for five days rather than two?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Start with the destinationent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A good road game is not automatically a good vacation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The useful test is what you could do with the destination on the days when there is no game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arizona works particularly well for Mariners fans because spring training is spread across the Phoenix metropolitan area rather than concentrated in one stadium. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cactus League has 15 MLB teams playing at 10 ballparks, and the league says its ballparks are within about an hour of one another. The Mariners share Peoria Sports Complex with the San Diego Padres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That geography changes what a baseball trip can look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could watch the Mariners in Peoria without making Peoria the center of the entire vacation. Depending on what the family wants to do during the rest of the stay, you might choose a base closer to Scottsdale or another part of the Valley and drive to the ballpark on game day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could also see more than one team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Mariners game in Peoria can be followed by a Cubs game in Mesa or a Giants game in Scottsdale on another day. The point is not to pack the schedule with baseball, but to take advantage of a sports destination where you have choices once you arrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same test works elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a Seahawks road game takes you to Nashville, the city has enough going on beyond football to justify arriving before game day or staying afterward. If a game brings the family to Florida, Orlando’s theme parks or the Gulf Coast can occupy the non-game portion of the trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Diego gives you beaches, neighborhoods such as Little Italy and La Jolla, and the San Diego Zoo without requiring the sports schedule to fill every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best candidate is therefore not necessarily the biggest game on the schedule. It is the game being played somewhere your family would have considered visiting anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t automatically stay beside the stadium<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For a one-night sports trip, a hotel within walking distance of the venue can be extremely convenient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For five nights, the calculation changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine spending one afternoon at a stadium but four other days exploring Phoenix and Scottsdale. Paying a premium to stay beside the ballpark may put the family in the wrong location for most of the trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at a map before looking at hotel rankings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark the stadium first. Then mark what everyone wants to do during the rest of the vacation: restaurants, beaches, museums, hiking areas, theme parks or whatever else has made the destination worth extending the trip for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your accommodation should make sense for that larger map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is especially important for families. A room that feels perfectly adequate when you arrive at 10 p.m. and leave at 7 a.m. can feel very different when it becomes your base for five days. Pool access, usable communal areas, food nearby and enough room to spend a slower morning start carrying more weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, choose where you stay according to the four days that are not<\/strong> game day as well as the one that is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give game day its own space<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

There is another reason to extend the trip: it allows you to stop treating game day as a travel day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flying into a city on the morning of an event introduces a problem that has nothing to do with sports. A delayed departure from Sea-Tac, a missed connection or a slow rental-car counter can suddenly put your tickets at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving the previous day removes most of that pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also lets you approach the event differently. You can get to the stadium early enough to walk around it, eat nearby or see whatever pre-game activity is taking place instead of calculating whether you can make kickoff after checking into the hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day after the game deserves some space too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stadium departures are rarely elegant. Tens of thousands of people are trying to reach parking lots, rideshares and public transport at roughly the same time. Following that with an early flight the next morning turns the final hours of the trip into another logistics exercise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Monday is already part of the vacation, there is no reason to race anywhere Sunday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Build around one fixed day<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Once the game is treated as the fixed point rather than the entire itinerary, planning becomes much simpler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suppose the Mariners are playing in Peoria on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arrive in Arizona on Thursday. Friday can belong to Scottsdale or a desert hike. Saturday is baseball. Sunday is deliberately left open rather than being filled in advance. Monday might be another part of the Valley, another spring-training game if everyone wants one, or simply a pool day before flying home Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That open day is useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sports schedules already create structure. Vacations do not need another hour-by-hour itinerary layered on top of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This becomes even more important when children are travelling. A family that has already spent several hours at a stadium may not want a dinner reservation across town immediately afterward. And after two active sightseeing days, a resort afternoon may be more welcome than another attraction booked because there happened to be an empty box on the itinerary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan the things that need reservations. Leave some of the rest alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your accommodation can be part of the sports decision<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a second way to approach the hotel question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of asking only which property is closest to the stadium, sports travelers can look for accommodations that understand why they are travelling in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That does not mean putting a few framed jerseys in a hotel bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can mean having somewhere useful to watch the other game that evening, being able to arrange tickets or activities through the same travel ecosystem, or staying somewhere that does not make the sports fan in the family choose between their interests and everyone else’s vacation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the territory Sports Illustrated Resorts is moving into with its premium sports lifestyle resorts<\/a> concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its properties incorporate sports into spaces guests would ordinarily use anyway. The brand describes concepts including the Trophy Room, with television screens and social space; The Stadium, built around food, drinks and big-screen viewing; SI Fit training areas; and an Outfield Pool where available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Sports Illustrated Resorts Club members, the proposition extends beyond what happens inside a particular resort. Current club benefits include a VIP ticket concierge, access to 45 destinations through Varsity Pass and a broader resort network through RCI Exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That distinction is useful when planning a sports-led vacation. The resort does not need to compete with the game for attention. It needs to work on the days around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A parent might care about getting tickets to an event. Someone else in the family might care much more about the pool, where to eat or what they can do the following morning. A property designed around both sides of that equation has a practical advantage over one chosen solely because it appears first when you search “hotels near stadium.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t assume the cheapest sports trip is the shortest one <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Adding nights sounds as though it must make the vacation substantially more expensive. Sometimes it will. But the comparison is more complicated than multiplying the nightly hotel rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sports weekends concentrate demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before booking, compare the cost of different combinations rather than automatically choosing Friday-to-Sunday dates. Look at Thursday-to-Monday or Wednesday-to-Tuesday as well. Compare airfare and accommodation together rather than optimizing each one independently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The location of the hotel can matter just as much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the family is renting a car anyway, staying away from the stadium may open up properties that make more sense for the rest of the vacation. Conversely, in a city where parking around the venue is difficult or expensive, paying more for a well-connected location may save both time and transportation costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tickets require their own strategy. Check the team’s official ticket channel first and then compare reputable resale options. Secondary-market prices do not move in only one direction; matchup demand, team performance, weather and remaining inventory can all affect them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no universal “book exactly six weeks ahead” rule that works for a Mariners spring-training game, a Seahawks playoff game and a college bowl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Treat each as a different trip.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Keep one eye on what can change<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The game is also the least flexible part of the vacation \u2014 and occasionally it is not as fixed as it appears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Start times can move. Weather can disrupt outdoor events. Flights can be delayed. Postseason plans can depend on results that have not happened yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is why the game should sit comfortably inside the itinerary rather than at its edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If kickoff is Sunday afternoon, arriving Sunday morning gives a flight delay too much power over the trip. If the entire family is flying home immediately after an event, an overtime game or slow stadium exit can create another unnecessary deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Give the event a buffer on both sides whenever the cost and schedule allow it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a trip involving substantial non-refundable spending, travel insurance may also be worth examining, but read the policy rather than assuming “sports trip” means the event itself is protected. Coverage for flight disruption, trip interruption and non-refundable reservations can vary, and a postponed or rescheduled game is not automatically covered by every policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The game should decide the date, not the whole vacation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The most useful change is also the simplest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the schedule comes out, do not look only for the opponent you want to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at the city next to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Mariners spring-training game can put you in the Arizona desert in March. A Seahawks road fixture can provide a reason to finally spend several days in a city you have only passed through. A tournament or bowl game can settle the one question families often spend weeks debating: where should we go?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once that question has been answered, let the destination do some of the work. Book enough time to see it when the stadium lights are off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Seattle Mariners fan heading to Arizona for spring training has an interesting choice to make. You can fly into Phoenix, see the Mariners in Peoria, stay near the ballpark and fly home. Or you can look at the same airfare as the starting cost of an Arizona vacation: baseball in Peoria one afternoon, Scottsdale…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-destinations"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":1,"label":"Travel & Destinations"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/How-Sports-Fans-Can-Turn-a-Game-Into-a-Full-Vacation-1024x576.webp",1024,576,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/author\/admin\/"},"comment_info":1,"category_info":[{"term_id":1,"name":"Travel & Destinations","slug":"travel-destinations","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":37,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":1,"category_count":37,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Travel & Destinations","category_nicename":"travel-destinations","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seeingwashington.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}