Doors open about 90 minutes before tip-off here. Put in your tip-off time below and it works backward to when you need to leave the house.
Every row is editable. Tap the tip-off or any duration and the plan recomputes backward. The first travel row is your leave-by time.
NBA game night at United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls. For a concert here, start from the concert night plan instead: a support act sets the deadline rather than the anthem.
The 30-minute drive is a typical run from Chicago without game-day traffic (the optimistic number). In the app, set United 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 United 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 United 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.
From the Loop it is about three miles west on Madison, which at six in the evening is the tail of the commute rather than a clear run. The train gets closest: the arena is two blocks south and one block east of the Green Line’s Damen stop, two blocks south and three blocks west of Ashland/Lake on the Green and Pink Lines, and a few blocks south of the Blue Line’s Illinois Medical District station.
Buses #9 Ashland, #20 Madison, #50 Damen and #126 Jackson all stop in front of the building or within a few blocks. The #19 United Center Express is a way home rather than a way there: it runs after the game, every few minutes for about an hour, to Union Station, downtown and Michigan Avenue. Rideshare uses the Uber Zone at Madison and Wood.
The arena has its own lots on all sides and they open two hours before tip-off, along with the Uber lot. Prepaying through SpotHero or Ticketmaster costs less than paying at the gate.
The premium lots nearest the doors clear in twenty to thirty minutes afterwards and the standard ones can take an hour, which is the argument for the train on a weeknight. Accessible parking is in Lot G, at the southwest corner of the building. There is no alcohol in the lots or in parked cars, and once you leave a lot you are not let back into it.
About 90 minutes before tip-off
Doors open at United Center
That is when you can get in, not when you have to. The official United Center FAQ has the real time 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.
Doors open ninety minutes before tip-off, and the arena states that as its basketball and hockey rule rather than something that moves night to night. Screening is walk-through metal detectors at every gate, so the queue goes at the speed of people emptying their pockets.
Bags are the part to settle at home: a small purse or personal bag up to 10 by 6 by 2 inches goes in and nothing larger does, backpacks of any size included. Binbox lockers at the Uber Zone are the only approved place to leave one. There is no re-entry, and the whole campus including the lots is non-smoking.
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 90 minutes 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 (30 minutes in the default plan). That puts leave-by at 5:44 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 2:30 PM, a late-afternoon game at 4:00 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 90 minutes before tip-off here. The official United Center FAQ publishes the real time 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 and check the arena's own. 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.
“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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