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Doors open about an hour before tip-off here.
The first travel row is your leave-by time. Put in your tip-off time, tap any duration, and the plan recomputes backward.
NBA game night at Target Center, home of the Minnesota Timberwolves. For a concert here, start from the concert night plan instead: a support act sets the deadline rather than the anthem.
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 20-minute drive is a typical run from Minneapolis without game-day traffic (the optimistic number). In the app, set Target Center 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 Target Center). Change the row and every step before it moves.
The time on your ticket is when the ball goes up. Both teams warm up on the floor before that, and the introductions run right up to it. Aim for ten to fifteen minutes earlier if you want to be in your seat for any of it.
Screening at the doors usually decides it. Every NBA arena 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.
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 Target 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.
The Blue and Green lines both stop at Warehouse District/Hennepin Ave, which Metro Transit calls an easy walk from the arena, and several bus routes run past it too. SouthWest Transit’s SW Shuttle runs to games from Eden Prairie, Chanhassen and Chaska. Skyway hours are extended on game days, so you can usually walk back to a connected ramp without going outside.
General entry to Target Center is on the skyway level, so the easiest place to park is a ramp that connects to it. Ramps A and B and the Mayo Clinic Square ramp across the street all link to the arena by skyway, and the Timberwolves suggest the third level of Ramp A, when it has space, for a walk straight in. Target Center recommends booking a ramp ahead through SpotHero. The accessible drop-off and pick-up lane is on 1st Avenue in front of the building.
About an hour before tip-off
Doors open at Target Center
That is the earliest you can get in. Check Target Center’s know before you go guide for your game.
Bag rules are the arena's own here and they run from a wallet-sized clutch to a bag that fits under your seat. Getting it wrong usually means walking back to the car and re-entering the line. Check the arena's page for current sizes rather than a size you remember.
The Timberwolves open all gates an hour before game time unless they say otherwise, and general entry is on the skyway level. Bags are capped at 5 by 9 inches, so a small clutch at most; diaper bags and medical bags are allowed and get searched. There is no item check, so anything bigger stays in the car, and strollers are not allowed. Security can use metal detectors and search bags. No outside food or drink, every stand is cashless, and there is no re-entry once you leave.
Doors, 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 night.
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; 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 5:57 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 2:00 PM, an early-evening game at 6:00 PM, a night game at 7:00 PM, a later start at 8:30 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 Target Center’s know before you go 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.
Assume the limit is small. 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.
Ready Time keeps the plan and subtracts again when the tip-off 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.
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.
Live Activities are part of Premium, a one-time unlock.
“It has helped me tremendously to manage my timeblindness, and I tell people about it all the time.”Ready Time user, 2021
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
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