UBS Arena: A Surprisingly Nice Time
Getting to the UBS Arena from Manhattan is generally a pretty seamless experience. The only difficult aspect is actually locating the train within Grand Central, as you seemingly have to traverse to the center of the Earth to find the damn thing. Countless escalators and stairs down plus a decent walk throughout the LIRR station and then a final set of stairs up to the train will take you around 10 minutes or so once you actually enter Grand Central. Though once you are actually on the train, it's a simple 35-40 minute ride to the Elmont/UBS Arena stop. Departing the train, you either have the option of taking a shuttle bus to the arena or doing a roughly 10 minute walk to the entrance. I’d recommend doing the walk if you can, as the lines were pretty long for the shuttles and didn’t seem worth it considering the not too bad walk.
Upon approaching the arena, you begin to appreciate the updated, yet classic design of the building. The heavy use of brick always looks good to me, and reminded me of certain parts of Citi Field, which I consider to be a pretty nice stadium. Compared to the old Islanders arena, this place felt like luxury. The interior felt pristine and had a very open feel to it, which is always nice to see in an arena/stadium. There was a wide range of food options, though some should come with a price warning alongside them. Despite the price, the food was pretty good, even considering I only ordered chicken fingers and fries. But compared to other stadiums, these were among the tastier I’ve had (also among the most expensive). There were also plenty of bar locations that maintained visibility with the rink in case someone wanted a change of pace from sitting in their seats.
That brings me to my only real critique of the entire arena, and that is the seating experience. While we were sitting in the 300 sections, the legroom can only be described as atrocious. I’m a pretty tall guy, but even for someone average height or smaller, the lack of legroom will be a problem. Trying to walk past people to get to my seat, I felt certain I was going to fall over as there was no space to walk properly. And once seated, my knees were essentially in the neck of the person sitting in front of me. This may not be as big a problem in the lower sections, but compared to the upper decks of other arenas/stadiums I’ve sat at, this was by far the worst legroom I’ve ever seen. At Madison Square Garden, even in the upper sections I can sit somewhat comfortably and not feel like my knees are driving into the chair in front of me. The only positive aspect of my seats for this game was that I ended up in a family section with a bunch of parents and kids that all knew each other, giving the whole experience a very wholesome feel that I appreciated, especially given the contrast to the violent display on the ice I was witnessing.
All in all, the UBS Arena experience is a mostly positive one, and I would’ve likely viewed my time there even better if it weren’t for the poor legroom. Everything else was great and rivaled other top level arenas/stadiums I’ve been to. Considering how easy it is to get to from NYC, I’m surprised people aren’t going to events there more often. I know I’ll likely be going there more now that I know how nice everything is.
