<p>Biddle Hotel full already :( Super 8 in Bloomington still has reasonable rooms, everything else in Bloomington - expensive!! Nashville and Martinsville have rooms for less, 40 min. away.
Book now :)</p>
<p>Indianapolis airport is always a good option as well. </p>
<p>Staying up in Indy and driving down (or in Nashville, Columbus, Martinsville) is much, much easier. </p>
<p>Much easier than what? I’m confused.</p>
<p>My daughter is planning to attend Indiana University this fall. We attended a Red Carpet Day a few weeks ago and she fell in love with the school. We stayed in Bloomington, at the Hilton Garden. Decent hotel.</p>
<p>This November weekend will be our first parents weekend. I booked a hotel room in Bloomington at the Marriott Courtyard for a ridiculous amount of money. The Hilton Garden was sold out. I do have free cancellation at the Marriott and was planning to look into Martinsville and Nashville for better rates. Questions are I did not notice a lot of parking on campus, nor in Bloomington. How is the traffic going into Bloomington and parking during parents visiting weekend? Is it a nightmare with families of thousands of students driving into town/campus?</p>
<p>Also, how do I arrange for tickets to the Penn State game? Does the University (or Parents Association) sell tickets directly to families or do families go through typical channels such as Ticketmaster or Stub Hub?</p>
<p>Any help is appreciated. </p>
<p>Generally speaking, staying IN Bloomington for Parents Weekend is a nightmare. It’s expensive and there are limited hotels, most of which book up extremely quickly. Since you have free cancellation, I’d look elsewhere for better rates–even Indianapolis. Indianapolis is an easy 45 minute drive down, and you have a wide range of hotels to choose from. </p>
<p>In terms of parking, it’s kind of a nightmare on normal days, especially football weekends. My recommendation is to park in one of the big parking garages close to where you want to be (i.e., if you want to be downtown, park at the Henderson garage or the Poplars garage) as they are FREE from Friday 6 pm to Monday 7 am. You can then walk to where you want to go. The link to the map of garages is here: <a href=“http://www.enforcement.indiana.edu/parking_operations/locations_campus.aspx”>http://www.enforcement.indiana.edu/parking_operations/locations_campus.aspx</a></p>
<p>You can buy single game tickets at this link (<a href=“http://www.iuhoosiers.com/tickets/ind-tickets.html#football”>http://www.iuhoosiers.com/tickets/ind-tickets.html#football</a>) when they go on sale–it looks like only season tickets are online at this point. You should have no problems getting tickets to a game (even though PSU fans do travel well) since we are kind of awful. </p>
<p>soccergurl7988, thank you for the helpful information.</p>
<p>There is also a brand new Springhill Suites (Marriott) that opened this week. They still have rooms available–also at a ridiculous price. I’m starting to think my husband and I should start renting out our fully finished basement and one of the extra bedrooms. </p>