Get an alert on game night when it’s time to leave for Smoothie King Center.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Doors open about an hour before tip-off here.
Your leave-by time is the first travel row. Ready Time can alert you when it comes up. Put in your tip-off time, tap any duration, and the plan recomputes backward.
NBA game night at Smoothie King Center, home of the New Orleans Pelicans. For a concert here, start from the concert night plan instead: a support act sets the deadline rather than the anthem.
Get an alert on game night when it’s time to leave for Smoothie King Center.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Start times here are the team's own. The NBA sells no national window, so a game goes on when the building and the market suit and there is nothing to convert from Eastern. These are the slots this team plays most often.
These are Smoothie King Center’s own times. The team publishes start times with the schedule in the summer and a few move again for television during the season, so take the time on your ticket over the one you remember.
Cup group games, Christmas Day, the Martin Luther King Jr. Day afternoon and a nationally televised night run their own times. Type those in on the tip-off row.
Several of the garages are reached by a U-turn on Poydras Street, and on game nights traffic police direct cars into each garage. The Rampart–Loyola streetcar runs along Loyola Avenue from Canal Street and stops at Poydras Street. Free bike racks are in Lot 3 by Champions Garage, reached from the pedestrian gates at Dave Dixon Drive and Le Rouge Lane.
The arena shares its parking with the Superdome next door: seven garages and two surface lots around the two buildings. For Pelicans games Garage 2, Garage 5 and Lots 3 and 3A take passes only, and Garage 1, Garage 6 and Champions Garage take payment at the entrance, by card only. Passes are sold ahead through JustPark, and the arena encourages anyone driving to buy one before the game.
Parking has no re-entry, and tailgating is not allowed in any of it. Rideshare drops off and picks up in a geo-fenced zone on Poydras Street between Clara Street and Loyola Avenue, about a five-minute walk away; signs lead through Champions Square to the arena and back again afterwards. On select dates the Pelicans hold a free pre-game happy hour on Dave Dixon Drive that starts ninety minutes before tip-off.
Smoothie King Center allows only a clear bag, a gallon Ziploc or a small clutch at Pelicans games. Getting it wrong usually means walking back to the car and re-entering the line.
Check current sizes and door times on the Pelicans A–Z fan guide before you go.
Doors open an hour before tip-off, which the Pelicans state as the rule for every game. Premium seat holders get in ninety minutes out: suite, HUB Club, loge, floor and lower sideline tickets through the East VIP Entrance, and suite and club tickets also through the Elevator 1 & 2 Entrance. A clear bag can be up to 14 by 14 by 6 inches and a clutch up to 4.5 by 6.5 inches, and diaper bags that are not clear are turned away.
The Pelicans’ own guide lists the size limit without the clear rule, so a clear bag is the safe choice. Every bag goes through an X-ray, with separate lines for people carrying bags and people carrying nothing, and the arena cannot store anything that fails. Strollers are not allowed at NBA games. No outside food or drink, the building is cashless, and there is no re-entry.
Smoothie King Center was previously called New Orleans Arena, so older directions and tickets may still use that name.
Doors, lots and bag rules change; the official site is the live source.
Doors open about an hour before tip-off here; that is when the crowd starts arriving, not when you have to. Being through the doors about half an hour before tip-off covers screening, the walk to your section, and a stop on the concourse.
Work backward from tip-off: minutes in your seat beforehand, walk to your section, security screening, walk from the lot, parking, then the drive (20 minutes in the default plan). That puts leave-by at 5:54 PM for a 7:00 PM tip-off. Change the tip-off time and every row moves.
It is whatever the team has scheduled, and these are local times rather than a converted national window. On this arena's clock: a weekend matinee tips off at 1:00 PM, an early-evening game at 6:00 PM, a night game at 7:00 PM. This example uses the night game window. Cup games, holiday afternoons and nationally televised nights run their own times; the tip-off row is editable for those.
The plan allows 10 minutes for a normal walk-through queue. It runs longer in the twenty minutes before tip-off. Arriving fifteen minutes off that peak is usually enough.
About an hour before tip-off here. Check the Pelicans A–Z fan guide for your game.
Not in the lots here. If you are meeting people somewhere else, add that as a step and everything before it moves earlier.
Plan on a clear bag or a small clutch. Check the arena's own page for current sizes. The timing risk is being turned around at the door and walking back to the car: the walk twice and a second trip through the queue.
Flying in? The airport pages. Taking Amtrak? The station pages. No stadium listed? The tailgate timeline is the same plan without a particular lot.
Start the plan in the app, and the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island show the time left, with a bar that fills as each step passes.
Glance at it on the walk in without opening the app.
Every step also gets its own alert, and sharing the plan gives whoever is driving the same leave time, with alerts on their phone.
Live Activities are part of Premium, a one-time unlock.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
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