The Atlanta Fan Fest takes place in Centennial Olympic Park, a park that takes up five city blocks in downtown Atlanta. The park was developed for the 1996 Olympics, and it is now a central tourist destination ringed by the Georgia Aquarium, World of Coca-Cola museum, College Football Hall of Fame, Children’s Museum of Atlanta, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. It is also across the street from the former CNN Center which is currently being redeveloped, and it is a few minutes’ walk from Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the venue for the FIFA games, as well as State Farm Arena, the basketball arena.
Perhaps most importantly for me, Centennial Park is a 5-minute walk from my office. I have an annual pass for Georgia Aquarium, so it’s easy for me to pop over there during my lunch hour or after work to watch the underwater animals. It also meant it was easy for me to walk over there during lunch on my first week back in the office. I wanted to see what the deal was with Fan Fest and see the global visitors in downtown Atlanta.
At the end of that week on Saturday, Chad and I went to Fan Fest to watch the Croatia-Ghana game. We got there at 4pm, the game started at 5pm, and we left at half-time at 6pm because it was so hot.
We did walk all around Fan Fest. All of the corporate sponsors had booths/tents. One thing that was cool was that there were water-bottle-filling stations for free, which was important since it’s July in Georgia. The England game was playing on the biggest screen, and the Croatia games was on the smaller screens.
Then on July 1, we went back to Fan Fest for the USA game. I told Chad that I wanted to watch the American team play in America and watch with a bunch of Americans. Check. For this game, the free tickets for the general admission area were “sold out,” so I splurged and bought tickets to the GA+ area, and I’m so glad I did. The general admission area was packed like sardines, standing-room only. And while our paid area was full, we still had room to move around and sit down during the breaks and we had a perfect central view to the main screen.
The USA won the game that night. And as we walked out, the DJ played “All I Do Is Win” by DJ Khalid and everyone sang along which was perfect.
Through all three of these perspectives of the Fan Fest – walking around during my lunch hour, the free admission, and the GA+ special admission – it’s been amazingly cool to see so many people from around the world. And honestly, the most obnoxious experience was the USA game – the screaming and obscenities and people throwing things, it was disappointing. But I’m glad we’ve been able to experience the World Cup for these weeks in Atlanta.