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 TD Garden, home of the Boston Celtics. For a concert here, start from the concert night plan instead: a support act sets the deadline rather than the anthem.
The 35-minute drive is a typical run from Boston without game-day traffic (the optimistic number). In the app, set TD Garden 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 TD Garden). 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 TD Garden’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 building sits on top of North Station, which is why the train wins on a weeknight in a way it rarely does at an arena. The Green and Orange Lines stop underneath and the commuter rail from the north ends here. Coming from South Station and the Red Line it is Park Street and three stops east on the Green; from the Blue Line, and so from Logan, it is Government Center and two stops; from Back Bay the Orange Line runs here direct.
The passageway under Causeway Street joins the commuter rail side to the subway without going outside, which is the whole argument in January. Driving in means the last mile of the Zakim or Storrow at the end of the working day.
Parking is one garage and it is underneath you: the North Station Garage, in off 121 Nashua Street or 140 Causeway Street, with a six-foot-eight ceiling that turns away anything with a box on the roof.
TD Garden charges a flat event rate if you are in three hours before the start, so the cheap way through the gate is the early one, and booking ahead is the other. Take the Causeway Street ramp if you need one of the chargers on levels 1 and 3. Rideshare does not run to the doors, and an evening pick-up is around the corner on Merrimac Street.
About 90 minutes before tip-off
Doors open at TD Garden
That is when you can get in, not when you have to. TD Garden’s know before you go page 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.
General doors open 90 minutes before tip-off, which TD Garden states for Celtics games on its own page, and members get in at two hours, so the queue you meet depends on the ticket you hold. Warmups are on the floor for most of that window. Every door has a walk-through metal detector, so empty your pockets before you reach it.
Bags are the thing to settle before you leave: nothing over 6 by 4 by 1.5 inches goes in, clear bags included, and the diaper and medical bags allowed as exceptions are still searched. A bag that fails has somewhere to go, which is rare: the Event Bag Check on level 1 opens two hours before and closes an hour after. There is no re-entry once you are in.
TD Garden was previously called FleetCenter and later TD Banknorth Garden, so older directions and tickets may still use that name.
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 (35 minutes in the default plan). That puts leave-by at 6:07 PM for a 7:30 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 7:30 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 90 minutes before tip-off here. TD Garden’s know before you go page 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.
“A key part of my planning process. Well worth the investment.”App Store review
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
