City of Denver/Rockies Baseball

Last week after NTD, I was thinking about a trip with our singles group from church. The Rockies stadium is next door to the Amtrak station. So if we would come in on a Saturday morning, have a hotel for Saturday night and then leave Sunday evening, I was needing to ask this: A, is there a budget priced hotel near Coors Field or B., With the "light rail", is there a budget priced hotel on the RTD route that can get us to Denver Union Station with complete ease. The hotel type I have in mind is 1 or 2 star hotels. We don't need fancy. Thanks! It has to be simple to get a large amount of folks from A to B with the least amount of trouble. I even thought about doing this trip some time this year, but I have a feeling it will be next season. I would like to attempt it and have a one day trip next NTD, but if the #6 is on time, we would miss part of the Rockies game.

Al

Al, I don't know Denver well enough to be of any assistance on the lodging/transit front, but if next season looks right, and the Dodgers would be in town, I might be tempted to tag along - a good excuse for riding the Zephyr over the Sierras again. (You can avoid that imposition by scheduling when the Dodgers are NOT in town )

In any case, I think one of the first things to do when you get to serious planning is talk to the Rockies about group ticket prices. Even though MLB schedules, and Rockies prices, are obviously not set for 2009, it couldn't hurt to get a ballpark figure (pun intended) to get a general idea of costs.

Are you nuts? The City of Denver died with the birth of Amtrak!

Green Maned Lion said:

Are you nuts? The City of Denver died with the birth of Amtrak!

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We visited Denver last summer. I always look for a good priced hotels near light rail stations, and I did not find one.

printman2000 said:

We visited Denver last summer. I always look for a good priced hotels near light rail stations, and I did not find one.

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There's always the Oxford Hotel... right across the Street from Union Station.

All I can say about lodging in Denver is that I stayed at the Ramada Midtown, about a half mile from Union Station across I-25. You could walk to it in a pinch (there's a pedestrian-only bridge across the freeway right behind Union Station), but they do have a shuttle van, too (they'd need advance notice to handle your entire singles group in their 12-passenger vans, though!).

It wasn't the greatest place (older and in need of refurbishment), but it was the cheapest thing in a reasonable distance to downtown Denver and Union Station. If I didn't have a car and needed to stay in the area again, I probably would stay there again, although my standards aren't too high (I'm perfectly fine with the $29.95/night Galaxie Motel in Brigham City, UT...). Some of the members of your singles group might have more exacting standards than I.

Interestingly, for $10 less I got a MUCH nicer room the next night at the Plaza Hotel in SLC on the 13th floor looking directly down onto the Mormon Tabernacle and Salt Lake City Temple (quite a contrast). Great place--I highly recommend it for anyone traveling through SLC! (It's also literally across the street from the light rail stop, making access from the new intermodal transit station/Amtrak station a cinch.)

The best economy location in relation to the Rockies and Union Station involves a lot of walking. That is La Quinta at 3500 Park Avenue West, which is on the end of a long bridge that leads directly to Coors Field. It is served by RTD bus Rtes 8 and 38 to and from Downtown Denver, but they don't go to Union Station. Your group could split into several cabs and have a pretty low fare on a per person basis. Union Station has a good cab turn-out at train time.

I have heard good reports from economy groups that have stayed at the Ramada Inn at 1150 East Colfax Avenue, including the recent national convention of the Motor Bus Society. East Colfax itself bothers people who are not used to big cities, but the trade-off is that it has 24-hr a day bus service, and the Rte 15Ltd provides Limited stop service between this location and LoDo (Lower Downtown) with its many restaurants and Coors Field. The last Rte 15Ltd sets out from its LoDo terminal stop (Market/16th Streets) at 12:14 a.m. every night. Market/16th Streets is three short blocks and one long block from Union Station.

Bus routes serving 1150 E. Colfax (Colfax & Downing area) = 7, 12, 15, 15Ltd. If you prefer to play the odds from Coors Field back to this site, take the 16th Street Free Mall Ride from LoDo to the Civic Center Station end of the line, then walk half a block to the big bus stop on East Colfax eastbound. Rtes 7, 15 and 15Ltd all stop there. One-way fare is $1.75 cash.

There are some economy hotels/motor hotels on the newest Light Rail lines in the southeast suburbs, although they tend toward extended stay places. Few of these are within wallking distance of the stations. Some of them have a van for rides to and fro, but you'd have to check with them. The best-situated one is Extended Stay Hotels, Inc. at 4885 S. Quebec St., Greenwood Village, located immediately south of the Belleview Station. The E-Line runs directly there from Union Station every day of the week. Last nightly train from Union Station departs at 1:42 a.m. An additional train departs at 2:12 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Union Station is in fare zone A and Belleview Station is in fare zone C, so it's a three-zone ride costing $6.00 for a round-trip ticket from the vending machines.

Hope this helps. I don't usually check this, but you can get more info from www.rtd-denver.com .