Doors open about an hour 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 Scotiabank Arena, home of the Toronto Raptors. 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 Toronto without game-day traffic (the optimistic number). In the app, set Scotiabank Arena 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 Scotiabank Arena). 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 Scotiabank Arena’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 arena is joined to Union Station, which is what makes the train the easy answer on a weeknight. Union is where the TTC subway, GO Transit’s trains and buses and the UP Express from the airport all meet, and the walk from the platforms to the doors runs indoors through Maple Leaf Square. Driving means the Gardiner and Lake Shore at the hour the rest of downtown is leaving, which makes the garage a worse deal than its price suggests.
Two levels of parking under the building belong to suite holders and office tenants. The arena’s own garage charges a flat fifty dollars, takes no cash, has a two-metre height limit that rules out a roof box, and opens an hour before the game unless you hold a restaurant booking; its four accessible spaces are reserved by phone.
For everyone else the nearest public garage is the one under 15 York Street, open around the clock and entered from York Street or Bremner Boulevard. Booking either ahead through SpotHero costs less than the drive-up rate.
About an hour before tip-off
Doors open at Scotiabank Arena
That is when you can get in, not when you have to. The official Scotiabank Arena 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.
Gates open an hour before tip-off and the arena states that for every game rather than varying it. The Premium Entrance opens earlier for suites and restaurants, at five for an evening game and two hours out for anything earlier. Screening is metal detection for everyone.
Bags are close to banned: nothing bigger than 16.5 by 11.5 centimetres, which is 6.5 by 4.5 inches, and no backpacks. A bag that fails can be checked for twenty-five dollars in the galleria across from Gate 1, and anything needed for medical reasons goes through x-ray at gates 1, 3 and 5. There is no re-entry once you have left.
Scotiabank Arena was previously called Air Canada Centre, 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 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 (30 minutes in the default plan). That puts leave-by at 6:12 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 late-afternoon game at 3:30 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 an hour before tip-off here. The official Scotiabank Arena 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.
“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.
