Want this on your phone? Ready Time sends an alert when it’s time to start each step.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Gates open about 90 minutes before kickoff here.
The first travel row is your leave-by time. Put in your kickoff time, tap any duration, and the plan recomputes backward.
College football game day at Camp Randall Stadium, home of the Wisconsin Badgers. For a concert here, start from the concert night plan instead: doors and a support act, not gates and kickoff.
Want this on your phone? Ready Time sends an alert when it’s time to start each step.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
The 10-minute drive is a typical run from Madison without game-day traffic (the optimistic number). In the app, set Camp Randall Stadium as the destination and Apple Maps fills in the time from where you’re leaving.
Then add for game day: thousands aiming at the same exit and lots (real drive to Camp Randall Stadium). Change the row and every step before it moves.
The time on your ticket is when the ball is kicked. The anthem and coin toss run before that. Aim for ten to fifteen minutes earlier if you want to be in your seat for any of it.
Gate screening usually decides it. Every big-program college stadium runs walk-through detectors, and the queue is the gap between arriving and being inside. People who miss the start rarely misjudge the drive; they misjudge the lot walk and the line.
Kickoff times are TV windows, and which one a given Saturday lands in is usually announced only six to twelve days before the game. Pick yours once it is announced and every step before it moves.
Windows are published in Eastern Time. Camp Randall Stadium is on Central time, an hour behind, so a noon game does not kick off at noon here:
Weeknight games, season openers and neutral-site games run their own times. Type those in on the kickoff row.
Monroe Street closes around the stadium hours before kickoff, so the last stretch is Regent Street and the surface streets whichever way you come off the Beltline or John Nolen Drive. There is no special game day bus, though the regular Metro rapid line stops a few blocks north; the athletics shuttle serves its own remote lots. And the famous pregame is not in a parking lot at all: it is the Regent Street bars and the free Badger Bash at Union South.
The stadium sits in a neighborhood, so parking is scattered: five dollar remote lots with a shuttle, twenty dollar lots closer in, driveways near the gates for about fifty, and the State Street Campus Garage a walk of fifteen to twenty minutes out that the closures never touch. Regulars park far and walk in through the crowd.
About 90 minutes before kickoff
Gates open at Camp Randall Stadium
That is when you can get in, not when you have to. The official Camp Randall Stadium site has the real time, which moves for a night game or a TV switch.
Clear-bag policy at most college stadiums, and a few ban bags outright, clear ones included. Getting it wrong usually means walking back to the car and re-entering the line. Check the stadium's page for current sizes rather than a size you remember.
Gates open 90 minutes before kickoff and the ticket is mobile only. Two exit notes worth planning around: Jump Around comes between the third and fourth quarters, so leaving early means missing the thing everyone came for, and staying twenty minutes for the Fifth Quarter lets the crush on Regent Street clear before you join it.
A tailgate feels open-ended until it isn't: grill, food, lock the car, walk to the gate with the whole lot. Add one and those steps go in, which means leaving earlier.
Gates, lots and bag rules change; the official site is the live source.
Save this plan in Ready Time and every step gets its own alert on game day.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Gates open about 90 minutes before kickoff here; that is when the crowd starts arriving, not when you have to. Without a tailgate, being through a gate about an hour before kickoff covers screening, the walk to your section, and a stop on the concourse.
Work backward from kickoff: minutes in your seat beforehand, walk to your section, gate screening, walk from the lot, parking, then the drive (10 minutes in the default plan). That puts leave-by at 9:48 AM for a 11:00 AM kickoff. Change the kickoff time and every row moves.
It depends on the TV window, which is usually announced six to twelve days before the game. On this stadium's clock: a noon game kicks off at 11:00 AM, the mid-afternoon window at 2:30 PM, a night game at 6:30 PM. This example uses the Saturday noon window. Weeknight and neutral-site games run their own times; the kickoff row is editable for those.
The plan allows 12 minutes for a normal walk-through queue. It runs longer in the twenty minutes before kickoff. Arriving fifteen minutes off that peak is usually enough.
About 90 minutes before kickoff here, rather than the two hours that is the common practice at big college stadiums. It moves for a night game or a rescheduled kickoff. The official Camp Randall Stadium site publishes the real time for your game.
A short tailgate adds about an hour and a half; a full one closer to three. For a 11:00 AM kickoff that already means leaving well before lunch. Watch packing up and the walk to the gate. Those get squeezed when the lot is having a good time.
Assume a clear bag or no bag. Check the stadium's own page for current sizes. The timing risk is being turned around at the gate 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.
Ready Time keeps the plan and subtracts again when kickoff changes. Put in next week's game and the same steps land on new times, with an alert on each one.
Get a nudge at the right moment, while there's still time to act.
Each step gets its own alert, so you know what's next and how long you have.
“I tend to be overly optimistic when estimating how long things take, and this app has really helped me get it right.”App Store review
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Other stadiums