Whether you’re making a pilgrimage to all 30 MLB parks or merely looking to catch a game while you’re in another city, checking out a new ballpark is more popular than ever with fans. Some teams like the Braves, Cardinals and Rangers host an extraordinary number of out of town fans. Truist Park draws from a vast geographical area for the team’s own fan base. Many Braves fans live hundreds of miles away across state lines. Other teams’ fans have moved into the South in large numbers, eager to see their favorite teams on the road.
With schedules released well in advance it is not difficult for fans anywhere to circle a weekend series on the calendar months in advance and use a tool like Skyscanner to book flights and hotels while they’re still cheap. If you’re planning a trip to see the Braves this season here is what you can expect.
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Getting to Truist Park
Truist Park is not in Atlanta. It is not even particularly close to Atlanta. You’ve probably heard that it’s in the suburbs. The location is far out in Cobb County. There’s no way to reach Truist without making at least part of the trip by car. The subway won’t even get you close. A bus requires finding a stop in midtown and taking a 12 mile ride to a mall. Here riders disembark and board a shuttle to the park. This would be ridiculously long and inconvenient.
The airport is even further away from the stadium. Theoretically you can take MARTA from the airport to Medical Center and hail a 10 minute rideshare from there. I can’t say how easy or difficult this is in practice. If you’re flying and your trip is entirely baseball focused it’ll be easiest to rent a car. (Check Prices.) If you want to see more of Atlanta, stay in the city and use the rental car to get from your hotel to the park and back.
Many fans will arrive in their own cars. They should plan to deal with a lot of traffic. Coming for a weekend series means not just stadium traffic but also Atlanta’s Friday rush hour. Even if you’re not driving through the city, traffic will be slow and you should plan to arrive several hours early. If you have more time to spend at the park during pregame that’s a bonus. Fans going west on I-24 after a Sunday game can count on a traffic jam in Chattanooga. I’ve passed through there several times on Sundays and it’s a chokepoint, always crowded with traffic.
Parking Near Truist Park
Do not buy a Braves parking pass on StubHub. Those passes for the team-owned lots start at $25-30 on the secondary market and the lots closer than a mile are much more expensive. I made the mistake of buying parking passes and couldn’t even find the lot when I approached the area. You can’t just ask Siri for directions to Lot number 47. I didn’t even use the passes I bought. Never found the lot.
When you drive past Truist Park and reach Cobb Parkway every business offers paid parking on its lot. The highest price I saw was $30 (cash, no added fees at checkout) and the least was $10 in a shopping center anchored by a Goodwill. This spot is a 15 minute walk to the gates and I would absolutely park here again in the future. As you can see in the photo the walk is along a large highway but the sidewalks are fine. The photo faces away from the stadium so driving any further will mean walking up that very long hill.
If you’re lucky enough to stay in one of the hotels within the ballpark complex game parking won’t be a concern. These hotels are expensive and are probably charge daily for parking. For fans driving to Atlanta the ideal solution is to stay at a hotel from which you can walk to Truist, but not actually in the ballpark village. I’m not going to name any specifically but you can look at a map and find them. Just be realistic about your walking abilities if you have kids or seniors with you. The whole area is rolling hills with some steep grades.
Background: The Death of Retro and the Next Generation of MLB Ballparks
A few years ago every major league owner took a look at Wrigleyville in Chicago and assessed how much money was being made there. They all decided they wanted to capture that revenue for themselves. Owners who could, like in Atlanta and Arlington Texas, built brand new ballparks from scratch with their own dedicated entertainment villages attached. Others like Saint Louis and Denver modified their existing parks with multimillion dollar additions outside the gates. Still more clubs are making the provision of these areas a key point in long-term lease negotiations or considering moves to new cities where complexes like this can take shape.
The problem with this approach is that Wrigleyville evolved organically over generations. When Camden Yards kicked off the trend of the downtown retro ballpark 30 years ago the whole idea was that stadiums would be a boon to the city. Areas akin to Wrigleyville would be able to develop organically as fans walking on foot in city centers would create a lot of demand for hospitality businesses.
The trend of building ballparks that way has ended now. The economic boom that was meant to arrive in Baltimore has gone bust as Harborplace sits vacant and large employers continue to move away from downtown. While many of the same things outside Truist Park are easily walkable from Camden Yards, the attendance in Baltimore is only half as many fans and the ones who do show up are not spending time or money outside the stadium’s gates.
Truist Park Entertainment Complex: Bland and Generic
The shift in style of ballpark construction is similar to the demise of shopping malls in the changing retail landscape. Some malls closed simply to be replaced by an “Avenue” style shopping complex which is meant to evoke the experience of shopping on a city street. In reality these are just a shopping mall with no roof. These masterplanned corporate monstrosities could never be mistaken for a real city boulevard. There is nothing interesting about walking circles past Rack Room Shoes and Grills Galore.
The sense of ennui and disenchantment one feels standing in the middle of a Buc-ees is exactly how I felt walking around outside Truist Park. It is almost as if this place was intentionally made as generic as possible. I got the impression they didn’t bother changing the names from the architect’s drawings. They just ordered signs that said “Eat Drink Social” and ran with it. If you want to meet friends before the game or have a beer and a bite to eat you might as well just look for the least crowded restaurant because the experience and quality will be precisely the same in all of them.
There’s no need for these places to compete on price or offer beer specials. You won’t find any interesting characters inside: just other Braves fans. The whole place is designed so that this is the only option that makes any sense before or after the game. They know they have a captive crowd and the prices and service reflect that.
I feel badly for Braves fans who go to games often. There is only one type of gameday experience you can have. Going to Truist Park is the same routine each time with no room for variance.
Inside Truist Park
Just like shopping mall developers build the same malls in several states, the experience of attending an MLB game has become standardized to a high degree. Having visited about a dozen stadiums I can tell you it’s very noticeable how similar the production is at every game. All parks play the same diversions between innings. The same cheering cues happen everywhere. Each team has the same music and if they win at home you’re going to hear the DJ Khaled “All I Do is Win” song. What good is being in Cobb County on a Sunday afternoon if they’re not going to play Chattahoochie? Or Outkast! The B-52’s! For God’s sake!
Truist Park is a fine venue to see a game. I give it a lot of credit for having copious standing room in areas all around the park on every level. Don’t miss the Coca Cola Corner in LF. That area doesn’t get crowded and features rubber matting under artificial grass. It’s comfortable to stand on. You can also find great sight lines by standing along the baselines on the first level concourse. A kid themed area in centerfield is popular with young families.
The one noticeable problem is that the concourses are not very wide. The Braves sell a lot of tickets and the concourses on each level are crowded at all times throughout the game. There are four levels stacked up vertically in Truist and the MLB park it reminds me of most is Nationals Park in DC, which is at the top of no one’s list for the best or prettiest stadium in the league. It’s fine, but if you’re going to spend more than a billion dollars and design your ballpark from scratch it should be better than fine.
Truist Park Food and Beverage
The food options at Truist Park are bad. There isn’t much to choose from and what is there is the most basic plain-jane ballpark fare you can imagine. Just as the Braves fail to lean into their Georgia roots musically, you won’t find any catfish here. There are no boiled peanuts. Pimiento cheese is conspicuously absent. No barbecue or sides. The lack of Southern food or local brand names is a disappointment.
I suppose they want you to eat outside the gates before first pitch. If you don’t you can still get a full meal at the Chop House in right field. That area is partially a walk-up bar but mostly it is an actual sit-down restaurant. I’m not sure about the reservation situation or what the menu is. Honestly I think it is a little weird to buy a baseball ticket (they ain’t cheap) and then sit down for dinner inside the stadium. The big pizza slices look pretty good though.
The beer situation is this: They have any kind of beer you want as long as it’s Miller Lite or Coors Light. That’s about all they have. You can find Terrapin if you want craft beer but nothing beyond that. It is 2023. We all expect to get hammered on price with ballpark beers but at least they should have decent variety for what they charge.
One Thing Not to Miss
The entrances to all three of the Braves’ corporate clubs are clustered together at the home plate gate. Owing to the lounges’ design there are no traditional seats behind home plate. While the concourse is open down the lines, it’s entirely walled off behind home.This creates an empty gulf between the 1B/3B sides. The Braves filled this empty space with retrospective artifacts from the franchise’s very long history.
Without seats in this area few fans have any cause to walk through it during the course of the game. The Braves monument garden is seldom crowded. It’s nice to be able to take your time and enjoy the displays. I attended two games over a weekend and it wasn’t until the second that I wandered into this area. If you don’t know it’s there it is easy to overlook it but this would be a mistake.
Overall Impression…
The Braves continue to do the Chop in 2023. The people in charge of A/V production at the ballpark cue the fans to do it. It is not a spontaneous display of the fans’ energy. The team should dispense with it. Stopping play on the field would effectively stop any spontaneous fan protest.
The Indians and Redskins have changed their name and left these tired gimmicks behind. Nobody cares at all except maybe a few cranks calling in to AM radio. It doesn’t affect the bottom line.
I’m glad I got a chance to see some games here. I wouldn’t rule out coming back again. But I’m not dying to get back. If I really wanted to get to a couple of MLB games a year I’d prefer do it in a real city. Being in the middle of Atlanta, Saint Louis and Cincinnati, I prefer going to see the Reds. After two days of watching the Braves I didn’t feel in any way that I had visited Atlanta, because I hadn’t.
