U.S. Bank Stadium shines in open house

If you’ve taken a trip to Minneapolis the past couple of years, you would have noticed that a certain trademark of the city skyline has been missing. Going down Interstate 94, it used to be a given to turn a corner and see the big, marshmellowy roof of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The way that the roof blended into the black and grey buildings generated a “Meh, look at the dome.” feeling from the bridge and only induced a smile when thinking about the memories that occurred inside that building.
Even the outside of the Metrodome screamed boredom as several struts wound up having to be painted just to make it look something more than the outside of a factory. But enough about the outside, the inside is what mattered and it was the home of the Minnesota Vikings...that is until a couple years ago. That’s when the state of Minnesota and the Vikings agreed to put together a $1.08 billion dollar stadium on the site of the Metrodome that would eventually be called U.S. Bank Stadium.
On paper, it seemed like a win, but so did the Metrodome when it opened in 1982. When U.S. Bank Stadium made its official dry run during an open house this weekend, it was the opportunity to see if it had the charm that its predecessor had lacked while also adding some of the newer amenities that many crave when going to a game.
It passed with flying colors. By colors I mean the yellow rays of sunlight beaming onto the field, the blue sky covering half of the ethylene-tetraflouroethylene (ETFE) roof and the gigantic, high definiton scoreboards on each end of the field that added up to 10 times the square footage as the video boards at the Metrodome.
Approaching the massive building is something to see itself. After building a pedestrian bridge to allow people to cross the street from the transit station, the climb up the stairs is completed by being in the massive shadow of the stadium. There’s glass everywhere and the building just looks like it’s something that was built about 20 years from now.
On the inside, the stadium is decked out in the color purple. There are purple seats as far as the eye can see and even purple end zones on the field. Even the Hyundai Club, which is located on one of the sides of the stadium, is decked out with a purple glow complete with their own bar and food stands.
In actuality, that’s one of the things that make it so neat. In the Metrodome, people were confined to tight concourses and a field that was surrounded in concrete. At U.S. Bank Stadium, everything just feels