Get an alert on game night when it’s time to leave for Rocket Arena.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Doors open about 75 minutes before tip-off here.
Your leave-by time is the first travel row. Ready Time can alert you when it comes up. Put in your tip-off time, tap any duration, and the plan recomputes backward.
NBA game night at Rocket Arena, home of the Cleveland Cavaliers. For a concert here, start from the concert night plan instead: a support act sets the deadline rather than the anthem.
Get an alert on game night when it’s time to leave for Rocket Arena.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
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 Rocket 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 sits a quarter mile from I-90, I-77 and Route 2, and the downtown exits all lead you onto East 9th Street or Ontario Street for the last few blocks. Huron Road beside the arena now runs one way eastbound, but cars leaving the Great Day Improvements Garage after the game are still sent west on Huron to Ontario Street. The Rapid gets you around the traffic: the Red, Blue and Green Lines all run to Tower City, where RTA’s Walkway, an enclosed bridge, goes from the food court into the arena lobby.
The Walkway opens at least four hours before a Cavs game. RTA lets you park free at its rail stations, and the HealthLine and many bus routes stop at Public Square, above the station. Red and Blue Line trains run until after midnight, and the last eastbound Green Line train leaves Tower City at midnight. RTA sometimes swaps stretches of all three lines for buses for several days of track work, so check its rider alerts before you go.
Rocket Arena has two garages of its own: the Great Day Improvements Garage, formerly the Gateway East Garage, and the JACK Cleveland Casino Garage. The Great Day Improvements Garage has a bridge from its third level straight into the arena for people holding tickets, and it reads your license plate on the way in and bills you on the way out.
Event parking is limited, so the arena suggests buying a pass on SeatGeek before you leave, and on a night the Guardians also play at home that garage takes only passes bought in advance. More garages and lots sit five to ten minutes’ walk away, and LAZ Parking and ParkWhiz both sell spots ahead of time. Rideshare drop-off and pick-up have five marked spots: Huron at East 8th Street, Ontario Street, Prospect at East 4th Street, and West Huron and West Prospect at Tower City.
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 current sizes and door times on the Rocket Arena A–Z guide before you go, because the door time moves for a Friday, Saturday or Sunday game, when the doors open ninety minutes out.
Doors open 75 minutes before tip-off Monday through Thursday and 90 minutes before on Friday through Sunday, and the Atrium doors open earlier than the rest on both. Everyone goes through metal detectors, so keep your keys and phone in your pockets, and any bag bigger than 6 by 9 by 1 inches goes through a separate X-ray lane.
Purses and diaper bags up to 14 by 14 by 6 inches are allowed if they fit under your seat; backpacks of any size are not. No outside food or drink apart from medical needs, baby food and small snacks for children. The arena is cashless, so bring a card or a phone wallet. There is no re-entry, medical emergencies aside.
Rocket Arena was previously called Gund Arena, Quicken Loans Arena and later Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, so older directions and tickets may still use those names.
Doors, lots and bag rules change; the official site is the live source.
Doors open about 75 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 (25 minutes in the default plan). That puts leave-by at 5:47 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 1:00 PM, an early-evening game at 6:00 PM, a night game at 7:00 PM, a later start 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 75 minutes before tip-off here. It moves for a Friday, Saturday or Sunday game, when the doors open ninety minutes out. Check the Rocket Arena A–Z 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.
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.
Every step also gets its own alert, and sharing the plan gives whoever is driving the same leave time, with alerts on their phone.
Live Activities are part of Premium, a one-time unlock.
Ready Time
You know what you need to do. Ready Time helps you know when to start.
Other stadiums
More on being ready on time