Cincinnati Reds Field Trip

Last week, we got to go on a behind the scenes tour of the Cincinnati Reds stadium. It was probably the most in-depth tour I’ve ever been on, and it was an experience for all of us!

Our school does monthly field trips- our field trip coordinator does an awesome job mixing up the field trips and making sure that there is something for everyone. This month 179 of our school friends ended up going on this field trip! We were split into several different groups with about 20 people in each group. The tour was 1.5 hours long and it went alllll over the stadium- to the seats, on the field, into some VIP lounges, the dug outs, the restaurants, and everywhere in between! If you do the tour in the off-season, you also get to go into the locker rooms, but since the season is on and the Reds were playing that night, they close off the locker rooms.

I am going to just recap the actual “facts” of the tour first, and then later in the blog post I’ll take you behind the scenes of the behind the scenes and share my *experience* on this tour.

We started in the seating area and then headed inside to some of the private lounges. I had no idea how many rooms and restaurants and areas there are under the seats!

Our tour guide was fantastic and you could tell that he had a lot of baseball/Reds/stadium knowledge. He had a microphone which was really helpful because they were doing a lot of stuff out on the field- mowing, spraying, and Ludacris was warming up for his half time show. I honestly don’t know if it was Lucadris himself making a lot of noise in the microphone, or just someone on his team.

The tour continued by showing us the VIP seats and some of the really nice restaurant views. We also briefly got to go out onto the field and into the dugout! The dugout was probably my favorite part- did you know that behind the bench seat is an AC/heater unit? I didn’t know that!

We eventually made our way back to the main causeway and got to eat our packed lunch in the stadium seats (and the SHADE!).

After lunch, we gathered back up in our groups and went to the indoor hall of fame museum, and got a full tour of that! Here is Tera trying out her hand at being a sports announcer.

Now, for my personal behind the scenes of this field trip: it was AWFUL.

Haha. Listen.

This is no fault of the tour or the field trip or the Reds or anyone – it was 100% my own fault. If you are a baseball fan, this would have been EPIC. The tour guides were so knowledgeable, so helpful, and so sweet! I highly recommend this tour if you enjoy baseball and enjoy learning behind the scenes facts- I have zero complaints about the tour itself!

We, however, are not baseball people, so half of the information went way over my head- ALL of the information went over my younger kids heads. Had it been a soccer stadium, I probably would have been way more interested, you know?

I made the mistake of taking all four kids so that Theo could get some work done. This was a mutual decision and it seemed like a good one at the time! It was not. This would have been better as a family, or leaving some of the younger kids home and dividing and conquering. Again, totally my mistake on that one.

Through no fault of anyone’s, it was also hitting 100 degrees out and we were just ROASTING. I mean- dripping with sweat. It was SO hot. Heat doesn’t usually bother me, but it was gettin’ to me this day.

I think that since we had so many people, they really wanted the tours to move quickly and efficiently. I felt really rushed from most of our spots, and I had wanted to take more pictures in each spot once the tour guide finished talking, but as soon as he finished talking, we were on to the next spot. I bet it’s not like that when there aren’t as many groups, though! It didn’t help that I had a 3 year old going at his own pace and a stroller to manage through each spot.

Ok, and then there was a stroller issue. We had two 3 year olds in our group, and we both had umbrella strollers and we both asked before the tour began if it was stroller accessible. They all assured us that it was- and they made every effort to make it so. But…it just wasn’t. The option was either take the stroller up and down hundreds of steps, take our whole tour group around a back way, or split from our tour group and find the elevator. Our tour guides were so sweet and accommodating, but it was SUCH a headache for me dealing with the stroller. It stressed me out the entire 1.5 hours. And I didn’t even need it! Had I known just a little bit of what this entailed, I would have left the stroller with our lunches and the tour would have been SO SO SO much easier for me. Instead, I corralled a 3 year old AND manhandled a stroller in the heat and it was beyond stressful. There were other groups from our school who had strollers and a wheelchair and they said that their tours were great and totally supportive of the stroller so I am not sure if my stress was just totally disproportionate to the situation, if my tour group was a little less accommodating, or maybe something in between. ANYWAYS, if you do this tour and you have the *option* to not bring a stroller, don’t! But please know that if you are doing this tour and you have a stroller, the tour guides were very sweet and tried their absolute best to accommodate whenever they could.

And honestly, if you have the *option* of not bringing a 3 year old, that would also probably be my recommendation hahaha.

So, here is where I get really vulnerable. I had a hard week. It was my Dad’s chemo week, the emotions from that are often high. After we ate lunch, I decided that I could not possibly do another tour in the museum and that I needed to leave and go home with at least my younger two kids. My older two kids still wanted to stay, so I was asking some friends if they could bring them home from the field trip (it’s about an hour drive). Right at that moment, the guides started corralling everyone out of the stadium to head over to the hall of fame tour. There was NO TIME to arrange rides for my kids or make decisions about what to do- the tour was leaving RIGHT NOW, two kids are hanging on me asking to stay, two kids are hanging on me asking to leave, I am dripping with sweat and I just got so OVERWHELMED. And when I’m overwhelmed, what do I do? I cry. Because, of course…that is helpful arg. So then a couple of other Moms rush over to me and are doing the Mom huddle and being so supportive but I’m dying of embarrassment (I can just see the headlines: “Executive Directors Wife has a Public Meltdown at School Field Trip”) and also still overwhelmed and also our TOUR IS LEAVING AND YOU WILL BE LOCKED IN THE STADIUM, MA’AM. So real quick two Moms volunteer to take my two older kids and another Mom volunteers to leave with me and walk me to my van and alls well that ends well.

I cried half the way home and then when I got home Theo goes “so who has the other kids?” and I said “I don’t know!!” and he was about to commit me to the insane asylum. I just LEFT my kids in Cincinnati? Well, no- I knew someone had them, and I knew it was a person that I trusted, I just didn’t know who it was because the decision making moment had been so chaotic.

I don’t know if I think it’s funny YET, but I bet in a few years I will be able to look back and laugh. I vowed that I will NEVER do this field trip again, but now I wonder if I need to do it again and redeem the situation?

I know I could have made this a blog post with a cute review of all the highlights and mentioned how hot it was and that it probably wasn’t best for younger kids, but I also wanted to share vulnerably about having a Mom meltdown. I was so embarrassed and felt so foolish that plenty of other Moms were handling the field trip just fine. I feel a lot of unspoken pressure in our school community to be “put together” because my husband is in top leadership. That may be a whole post for another time- our community is SO loving and SO supportive, and I know that none of them are watching my every move and waiting for me to fail, but there is also a legitimate pressure that those in leadership need to have a certain lifestyle that meets standards, if that makes sense. I think I just put the standards SO HIGH on myself when no one else necessarily expects that from me.

Phew. Ok, if you made it through all of that, congratulations. That was a lot. Please let me know if you’ve ever had a Mom meltdown or if you have ever regretted taking your three year old in public hahahaha. I am also open to encouraging comments and reminders that I’m not doing as terrible of a job that I think I am.