As of last month, Inspirato members now have access to their own luxury suite at Staples Center. When I received the email announcement with this news from Inspirato, I was completely…well, not surprised. Inspirato seems to just keep making this Inspirato Pass thing better. They are not resting. They are pioneers in the luxury experience subscription space and know they need to keep evolving and improving. They’ve been doing that month after month after month since originally launching Inspirato Pass in July of 2019.
So, how does the luxury suite at Staples Center work? It’s quite simple. Inspirato has an events page listing all of the games/concerts/events that are available at Staples Center. All members have access and it’s first come, first serve. As soon at tickets for this game were released by Inspirato, I jumped on 4 of them, not knowing exactly who I’d end up taking. Fortunately, it’s not a tough sell to find a few friends to join you at a catered suite at Staples to watch the Lakers take on the Warriors. Lebron vs. Steph, Westbrook’s first game as a Laker, come on!
I happen to have three life-long friends who still happen to live fairly close by. And by life-long friends, I mean that three of us have been friends since we were two years old, and the fourth joined the squad a bit late when he moved down the block at age five. We’re all 48 years old now so that’s a lot of years of friendship.
Truth be told, we’re more like brothers. It would take years to tell all of our shared adventures. We know each other deeply. We have no skeletons hidden in closets from one another. Or more appropriately, our collective skeletons hang nicely together in a shared closet that only a limited few have access to. It’s a unique deal. And the four of us hadn’t hung out together since February of 2019 (actually together with our wives while we were staying at Pelican Hill with Inspirato the very first time!), just weeks before the world shut down with COVID. So, you can imagine who my first 3 phone calls were to once I landed these tickets. It was a long-shot that they could all make it. The three of them started having kids years after my wife and I, so they are still in the throes of parenting young ones. I’m a year and a half away from being an empty nester and one of my buddies still has a little guy in diapers. The stars basically have to align for us all to be able to be at the same place at the same time. And as it turns out, a luxury suite at a Lakers and Warriors game goes a long way in aligning the stars.
So, we’re all fully committed and our long dormant group text springs to life again. We start catching up somewhat via text, in between barbs and trash talking one another’s college football teams, etc. It’s like old times. It’s quite obvious how excited we are for a big night out together. Not only have we not seen each other in a long time, but we’ve done very little of this type of thing at all since COVID hit. We’re still stretching our social and sporting event muscles coming out of the pandemic.
On to game night…We meet up at my doctor buddy’s office and drive up to DTLA together. A 90-minute plus car ride in SoCal traffic and we’re already having a blast. It’s good to catch up on each other’s kids, spouses, etc. We’re all surprised at how much life has blown by since we were last together. COVID may have paused a lot of activity, but it sure didn’t pause our kids from growing up. I wish that would have been part of the program. 🙂
With it being such a rare occasion to have a night out together, we wanted to head up early and soak every minute we could out of the experience. And that we did! After parking in an easy access lot just across the street from Staples, we headed over to the stadium and directly to our dinner reservation at the Lexus Club. Inspirato was kind enough to provide us with access as part of the suite rental. The Lexus Club is a member’s only dinner club/bar that provides a wonderful pre-game buffet. It was spectacular. It was the first time the buffet had been open for a Lakers game in 18 months, so our timing was perfect. If you ever hit the Lexus Club, go directly towards the shrimp cocktail station. It was as good as any shrimp cocktail I’ve ever had at Mastro’s, or anywhere for that matter. All of the various food stations around the club were full of delicious offerings. I think it was around $80/person, a great value considering the spread and venue. Arriving early and getting dinner at the Lexus Club was well worth it. We enjoyed sitting out on the patio with a view across the street of Shaq, Charles and crew doing the TNT pre-game show. What a great start to our evening!
Tip-off is approaching so we make our way to the Inspirato suite. The suite hostess welcomes us and shows us the food and drink spread. We’re way too full to keep eating, but don’t seem to struggle too much in grabbing a few beers as we make our way to these amazing luxury suite seats. So fun, so comfortable, such a good time. We, for the most part, watched Lebron, AD, Russ and crew under perform on this night and take the unfortunate loss. However, it was an awesome thing to see Steph Curry drain three’s live and in-person for the first time. Overall, a great game. A bonus was being able to chat it up with a few of the other Inspirato members in the suite. It’s always fun to meet fellow members, get to know them a bit, and share about our favorite Inspirato destinations and trips.
After a special evening of connecting with life-long friends, we headed for the exits along with a host of disappointed Lakers fans. Regardless, this night was a huge win for my buddies and me. A big thanks to Inspirato for continually finding ways to add value for its members. I know that we’re only days away now from an announcement about the details of added suites in NYC, Dallas, and Atlanta, making the suite experience accessible for an even larger percentage of Inspirato members. I’m already looking at NYC events at Barclays Center to see what game or concert we might hit on our next Inspirato trip to Inspirato Soho. Dang, this Inspirato thing is a lot of fun.
And a request to all of my fellow Inspirato members, please don’t snap up all the Justin Bieber seats before I’m able to grab four for our family. I will be an absolute hero if I surprise my girls with suite tickets to a Bieber show in March. And it’s possible that my wife and I are Beliebers too! 🙂
UPDATE: Inspirato announced just today, November 8, 2021 (see below) that they have greatly expanded suite offerings and that you can now use Inspirato Pass days as a payment option. Just one more way Inspirato continues to add value and flexibility to Inspirato Pass.
This website and content my reference products or information from our sponsor. We may receive compensation from this content.
Leave a Reply