Durham Bulls Athletic Park — Attraction in Durham

We used to love going to the DBAP multiple times each season. Since covid, things have changed for the worse in my opinion. DBAP has gone cashless.

My first minor issue was at the parking deck, getting slowed down by paying with a card because my card tap didn't work. When attempting to enter the park, we were close to an opening that we weren't allowed to enter through. We later exited though those gates. Would have been more convenient to have a ticket scanner there at the beginning. We had to walk halfway around to another entrance where there was a ticket scanner.

Moving on to food ordering..keep in mind that we are 36 & 43, so we are familiar with electronics and screens. Our tickets were preloaded with $5 so we attempted to order at one of the first few stations we saw. There are now screens to replace people. 👎 We selected our orders and tried scanning our tickets multiple times and it wouldn't work. My husband tried and still couldn't get it to scan. We ended up cancelling after being there several minutes and moving on to another area since no one was there to help. We actually found an area where a person took our orders, but we forgot to order a drink and were looking for the discounted Bull Durham beer (on Thursdays), which wasn't available at the normal food places. Wasted a few more minutes getting one soda and the tickets actually scanned there. Discount beer wasn't available there either. There was a little area with fridges on the opposite side as the food places (near a bar), which had the discounted canned Bull Durham beer. This was the 4th stop we made! Ridiculous.

Once you make it to the seats, everything was perfect. The opposing team (Jumbo Shrimp) would throw a ball over the net after each inning for the kids to catch. My son loved this, but wasn't able to catch one. He later walked up to their dugout and was handed a ball. Very nice guys! We noticed the the Durham Bulls quickly went inside, not allowing time for signatures, but the Jumbo Shrimp remained outside for a little while. If we had a marker, we would have asked them to sign the ball.

After we walked back the the parking deck, we saw that we were unable to exit. Parking deck was gridlocked at our location (level 5) and cars blocked us in. We decided to go back down the stairs and took some photos near the Lucky Strike towers and the water. There must have been some event at the neighboring DPAC, which led to an extremely congested exit. We took about 20 minutes down near the water and it was clear when we returned to the deck.

Overall, this is still a great family experience, but not cheap if you're on a limited budget. On discounted food Thursday, this was still about $120...

I love going to Bulls games. I've always had a great time and there's not a bad seat in the stadium. However, on my last trip on May 18, 2021 I had some not so great experiences with concessions and with the merchandise shop. The menu screens at the concession stands change so quickly that you don't get enough time to read them to see your options and pricing. When able to order, everything was ringing up at a higher price than was posted on the screens. Soda was only available in the plastic bottle, no fountain drinks. I asked how much and was told $5 for a 20oz Pepsi. The screen said $4 for bottled soda. When I asked why, I received an extremely rude "ain't my fault the sign's wrong" and she than yelled NEXT with a move along gesture towards me. Also, at another stand I went to get a beer. The sign said draft beers were $5-$12. I asked what what the $5 draft was only to be told they don't have that. They only have the $9 and up beers. The hot dogs were also not what I've always gotten here. It was like an inch short of the bun length on each end. Also, the food and beer concessions were credit card only, no cash. To top it all off, I wanted a new Bulls hat so I looked through the selection and found the one I wanted. It had a price tag of $24.99. I bought it and didn't pay attention, I guess. When I got home, I looked at my receipt and found that they charged me $28.99. How many people have been paying more than what they thought??? If I hadn't checked my receipt, I wouldn't have ever noticed. I can accept one pricing error, but for it to happen on 3 out of the 5 things I purchased seems almost intentional. I couldn't find a phone number to call to address my overcharge and experience in general, so I had to actually go back to the stadium store and get my refund. Fortunately, I had to go into Durham anyway so it wasn't that inconvenient, but I live in Cary and it's a 30 minute drive to the stadium. Still can't find anyone to answer the phone or respond to email. Anyway, love the Bulls and love watching games there, but I think from now on I will bring all my own food and sodas and just won't...

We went to see the Savannah Banana Ball game Saturday July 15th. We arrived to the park at 5 pm, parking was a breeze in the convenient deck just across the street and it only cost $7.00. Once parked we walked over to the Athletic Park where our tickets were scanned, the park itself is clean and nicely laid out although the elevators are very slow and hot. Seating for the event was poorly planned as seating was not assigned and young kid tickets were free and expected to sit on parents lap rather than take up a seat or more. We and others walked around the whole park twice asking people about empty seats & were always told someone was sitting there that had gone to the snack bar. There were also whole sections roped off the park had reserved that no one sat in the entire game! Anyway we got fed up of not being able to find an open seat and went to guest services. The employees were all standing around and when we told them our problem and asked if they could help they told us " it's not my job". At that point we demanded a refund for all our tickets. They then called someone from the Bananas to come assist us who then went out and asked people about vacant seats and of course they got a different response than we had gotten so we finally got some seats. The park is well lit. There are plenty of places to get food although all of the places I saw were privately owned & none were operated by the Athletic Park. The staff of the park is lazy and rude and will go out of their way not to help. Everyone associated with the park made a point to tell us how it was someone else's responsibility to help but they could not get that person for us. It was a poor first impression...