Miami Heat Family Festival

Miami Heat Fanfare

As a die hard Heat fan, I never want to miss out on anything related to our noteworthy culture!

Though it’s been happening for 24 years, I only recently heard of the Heat Family Festival.

After calculating my season’s expenses on game tickets, merchandise & road travels, I thought the $265 (after fees and taxes) was too hefty. 

So I replaced this with attending as many “meet and greet” games as I could.

The thing with meet and greet games is that you don’t know the player in advance.

Recently, I ended up meeting a player for the second time.

It was still nice, but my objective was to meet a new one each time. 

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This season, I decided the price tag for the family day was worth it.

It was an “all men on deck” event and basically guaranteed fan interaction with players/coaches and owners.

When I think about it now, that was more “worth it” than a single meet and greet a few times a season. 

I also couldn’t control who the player would be. But to have access to all of them??? Now I see the “priceless” light! 

The cherry on top is that the Heat are one of the only sports team that has an event like this during the season.

So in the midst of pushing for a playoffs run, I get to meet my faves!!! 

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Meet and Greet

Since 2016, I’ve met my share of #heatnation players and legends, but recently decided I needed more.

You can see previous meet and greet pictures here.

At the top of my wish list is to meet The Godfather (Pat Riley), Coach Spo, Jimmy Butler & Bam. 

The festival is a three hour carnival style event featuring twenty local restaurants. The ticket includes unlimited food and drink. 

If you’ve read up to this point, everything was written before I attended.

I just returned home and sadly the festival was not worth it to me.

My city is not short on festivals, so if a basketball team throws one, food should not be its main act.

I am stuffed! I think I must have tried every restaurant there.

There was sushi, crab cake, spinach empanada, mini salads, rice and pork, pizza, egg rolls, doughnuts, cupcakes, gelato, cheesecake, tacos, and so much more.

I was expecting an alcoholic cocktail stand with Instagrammable drinks, but there wasn’t one.

Other than the unlimited food, the customizable caps were my fave!!!

Rain on my Parade

The festival is usually held indoors but forecasted rain moved it indoors (bad idea).

It was very cramped and hardly any room to move around (in the bowl) without bumping into a person, child, stroller or wheelchair.

Once you did get food, it was hard maneuvering with it since there were no sit-down areas.

The stands were available but that meant balancing plates on your lap.

I saw about seven players in total and Coach Spo. Each was assigned an employee to act as “bodyguard”.

Except for lesser known players, the former seemed deathly afraid (maybe of being rushed by a mob of people).

But I thought the purpose of the event was to be up close and personal with them.

There was one scheduled autograph/photo opp with a new player but the line was long and never moved so I left it.

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I left with ZERO photo opps!

Other local mascots were in attendance and some circus characters but I did not come for them!

There were no activities with fans interacting with the players/coach.

They just walked around being dangled in front of us. You can see, but no pictures or touching! Unless you begged and followed them around (which I wasn’t doing)!

This was my first time being let down by a Heat event!

Thankfully I have a meet and greet game coming up (it was purchased before I confirmed this event).

I will stick to those from now on!

Its a charity event but I’d rather donate to the cause and skip this altogether!

~Poof…Bee Gone

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