hi guys welcome to another episode of ultimate bucket list and on today's show
i'm here at the home of west ham united is it as bad as everyone says it is
let's find out the london stadium the main venue for
the 2012 london olympic games has now been
converted as the new home for east london giants west ham united
more commonly known as the hammers their proud football club
and long-suffering fans have experienced a sort of resurgence as of late
guided by my former gaffer david moyes they now have reasons to be cheerful
but the fans still complain about this brand new stadium
built in 2012 for the olympic games and currently holding 60 000 spectators
exactly what seems to be the problem after
exiting the tube station you'll see signs pointing you out to
queen elizabeth olympic park which is where the stadium is located
and a short walk past the shopping center
and whoop there it is you'll see remnants of the olympics
such as the london aquatic centre and this strange structure
which is the orbit the former media center of the olympics
that you can now pay to go up but i never bothered
anyway as soon as you walk closer and closer to the stadium
it gets bigger and wider and when you're right next to it
yeah this place is pretty massive now guys
let me just address the elephant in the room why
earth are you wearing a shirt and tie well i'm here in london for business
i had a meeting this morning i've got a meeting this afternoon at three o'clock
at youtube and i've got a lovely dinner date
tonight at six and the only time i can fit in a tour
here at the london stadium is 11 o'clock on a wednesday morning so that's why
i'm wearing this it's easier just to wear this the entire day
rather than swap out football shirts or wear a millboard shirt or a manchester
united shirt or whatever it's just easier to wear this so
what's it like let's find out so before you start your tour i highly
recommend that you have a walk around the perimeter of the stadium
firstly to kind of gauge its size and secondly because there's lots of cool
stuff that you can see around the stadium such as this wall of
famous former players this guy was a complete legend obviously
and this guy frank lampard he must have been rubbish i've never
heard of him you'll also get to see the athletics track
which i think they used as a warm-up track for the olympics and that you
could probably use right now but as you can imagine from a relatively
new stadium it's branded pretty much perfectly
you definitely can't miss this place they fade
and die oh what a strange company slogan pretty happy though your tour starts
right here at the stadium store which is located just outside
gate f you'll need to walk through the shop
past the gates that they stole from upton park their former stadium
and literally go downstairs and you'll need to check in with this chap right
here where it says london stadium tours
there's also a cafe coffee shop and you can also have your
shirt printed here you know if you want to after a bit of
waiting around you're led upstairs and you actually get to march
around the stadium and jesus this is a long walk
either that or i'm getting really out of shape
the entrance is via the main reception which is on the opposite side
of the stadium and once you're security checked
they'll give you this cool audio guide as you can imagine from a relatively new
stadium everything is pretty modern so if you're looking for a retro stadium
this definitely isn't it it's about as modern as it gets after a
bit of health and safety it's up this as we go and the first area
that you visit is the royal east suite this is by far
the most expensive suite that you can pay for
and has been frequented by the queen herself you get a short talk about what
goes on in here and who tends to sit in these seats
before being led around the suite to have a short talk
about west ham's history this is vicki by the way she's our tour
guide for today and she does an excellent job in giving
us a brief overview of west ham's history
enough of that it's time to walk out and get your first view of the pitch
and unfortunately this is not a camera trick this is how far you actually are
away in the fanciest suites in the whole
stadium the pitch is admittedly incredibly far away
i've actually been at pitch level at the old upton park
where the fans were literally on top of you but here
it's pretty much the complete opposite it looks like the fans
are a million miles away and i think i kind of understand now what the west ham
fans are complaining about our tour guide vicky is actually a
season ticket holder here and after asking her if it bothers her
she doesn't seem to mind but i believe that she's in the minority
a lot of fans here aren't too pleased about being so far away from the action
and i can understand that this is an olympic stadium
it was never really designed for football and as a result of that the
seats seem very very far away the audio guide gives you a cool video
on what it takes to transform this from a football to a baseball stadium
etc and whilst we're talking about baseball
they have these weird trampolines that separate huge sections of the seating
i've only ever seen that in baseball stadiums
even the nicest the cleric once here right in the middle of the pitch
they're pretty far away from the action i'm finally beginning to understand why
the west ham fans are complaining about a brand new stadium
anyway it's time to go back indoors learn about some more history especially
pertaining to the olympic games and this is the west ham trophy room no
seriously this is pretty much all they've won and rather than display
them they've actually just put a kind of war decoration up i'm not
joking a short talk about its olympic history
and you'll see some of the medal winners that have actually won
medals here mobot down the stairs we go and we walk
past the bowling suites which is one of the corporate hospitality facilities
that we don't actually get to see which is a shame past the main reception
we go and into the player's entrance now we
actually get to stay here a little bit more than the other places
and vicki tells us all about what happens here on a game day
and also gives us a little bit of a history talk of some of the former
heroes of west ham united okay now it's time to
walk into the changing room and i gotta admit for a relatively new
stadium this is actually of small and also kind of basic
i mean don't get me wrong it's still nicer than most of the changing rooms i
get to go in myself but compared to some of the other ones
that i've seen pretty pretty basic if you want to see information about
specific player that's what the audio guide is for
but generally in most stadium tours you get the shirts with the names on the
back and for some reason they've just put out
generic west ham away shirts which kind of defeats the whole object
of putting a shirt up in the first place well that's my opinion anyway but
fortunately these are the places the place actually
sit right here this is the only guy that's
worth taking the photo with obviously i'm biased we walk past the
place showers and the place called area very very quickly towards the
warm-up area so you're halfway through the video and
it's competition time i'm giving you the chance to win this
west ham swag bag that i just bought at the west ham club shop stick around
to the end of the video to find out more but in the meantime
back to the video this was the warm-up track for the 2012 london olympic games
that west ham united now use as a warm-up gym
but obviously they've put this out on display the running bars just in case
you want to run down the track and the london olympic mascot which kind
of looks like a dildo you get a short talk as to what goes on
in here and if you want to there's also a green
screen right at the back where you can have your picture taken and they'll sell
it to you afterwards next up is the tunnel area believe it or
not this is the largest tunnel in the
premier league it's pretty big and the audio guide is
meant to play you i'm forever blowing bubbles
the theme for west ham united but unfortunately mine flaked out
it actually stopped working so this is what my experience sounded like
yeah pretty much silence but let's play the music anyway
this carpet area is nice and all but it basically highlights the problem even
more that you're a million miles away from
the pitch even on the front row and you get some cool photo
opportunities in the dugout area on this west ham logo which i did and
you get to see the expansiveness of the stadium from down here
i mean imagine the players looking out into the stands
and not really seeing anybody because they're so far away
so you get plenty of time to take photos and take videos
around here and believe it or not this is probably the best view of the stadium
you're going to get all right back down the tunnel we go and
very briefly into the players media area there's plenty of media rooms but we
don't actually get to go in them instead you'll have to make do with this
media board right outside you're led out into the foyer where you
can take pictures of some memorabilia and oh wait is that it
believe it or not that is the end of the tour
you're led out of the door and basically away you go
you'll be walking past the shop anyway to get back to the shopping centre and
tube station so you might as well explore the club shop
you can buy retro shirts from yesteryear this was a much better logo than the one
they have now and you can buy a whole bunch of west
ham swag if you want to and there's no shortage of things you
can buy because it's a pretty expansive club shop
and this is probably the only shirt worth buying
so i've just completed the tour here at the london stadium
and whilst this is a very very very lovely stadium
admittedly you didn't get to see all that much especially compared to some of
the other stadium tours here in london that said if you are a
west ham fan or if you're a fan of olympic stadiums
and you want to see what a multi-purpose venue looks like
i highly recommend doing the tour here now i know what you're going to be
asking me because you're also unimaginative
what about me what about wembley well wembley is currently shot until
september so they're not currently doing any tours
especially seeing though yesterday they hosted the england germany game
come on england and millwall do do stadium tours but
only on match days and only to groups of over 15.
so it's fair to say that i won't be doing those two anytime soon
sonin where does this rack on the hierarchy of stadium tours
well somewhere here the only problem i have with this tour is that you don't
get to see all that much the audio video guide
seems a little bit redundant especially if you've got a tour guide
telling you that stuff anyway there's certainly things that they can
improve on but by no means is it a bad tour
if you're a west ham fan i highly recommend that you do this
okay nin i'm sold what do i need to do well you need to come here
to the london stadium it's situated in east london
and to get here you'll need to take either the train or the tube
to stratford once you exit the station you'll be met with a shopping centre and
the stadium is literally opposite the street
so it's really not that difficult to find
there's also plenty of places to eat and shop across the street
at the shopping centre so you definitely won't be bored if you come here
the cost to do the talk i think it was about
27 pounds and for that you get the full guided tour
and you get the audio guide which admittedly felt a little bit redundant
but it's nice to have if you want to see games here
the best thing to do is go to the west ham website or go to the ticket office
and purchase your tickets there as far as the price of tickets is concerned
it's actually very reasonable given that this place is in london
is there anything else i need to know yes because of current covered
regulations all tours are now completely fully
guided so you used to be able to walk yourself
around the stadium but they've ended that because of the covered rules
and because of that you need to book way way way in advance
they also get to fill out online a covered declaration
so if you do forget to fill it out online you could fill it out on paper
when you get here to the stadium the tour is very safe there's plenty of hand
sanitizers and social distancing so if you are worried about the kovid
don't be these guys have got you covered special thanks to vicky who did our
stadium tour she was very good and if you do get hurt on one of your
tours be sure to tell her she's internet famous so guys if
you've enjoyed this episode please be sure to like share and subscribe
comment on the comment section below and if you've got any other bucket list
ideas you know what to do tweet them at me and if i get enough
suggestions i'll go ahead and do that so guys
thank you very much for watching and we'll see you in the next episode
right it's competition time guys and i'm giving you the chance to win this west
ham goody bag which consists of this cool embroidered
scarf this double-sided kit keyring this cool
pin badge a giant fridge magnet this very nice
west ham shopping bag and if i get over 100 000 views by the
time the competition ends a west ham shirt in your size to enter
click on the link in the description below help me share my content to make
more of this stuff good luck
West Ham United London Stadium Tour Video
Video Tour by Ninh Ly - www.ninh.co.uk - @NinhLyUK