On the way back from our holiday in Scotland, our overnight stop was in Liverpool as we had booked a stadium tour of Goodison Park without Ben, Aaron or Coby knowing about it! 😉 We didn’t tell them until we were literally parked up in the car park next to the stadium when Ben said ‘are we able to go inside?’ so we said ‘yes, we are having a proper tour of the stadium’. At which point, they all got extremely excited!
The tour was brilliant though and I could easily have paid for another one straight after! Everyone thought it was really good and enjoyed it, even Kelly! Coby was a little bit naughty when we were in the lounge being told about the history of the trophies on show and didn’t like the brightness outside (it was clear blue sky, very sunny and really hot!) but overall they were very well behaved.
The tour started in reception before heading to the lounge where members pay £3000 per season to be allowed in. Here the guides explained the history of the lounge and the trophies that were in a large cabinet there. We then walked out into the main stand, in the area where all the directors sat and were told more information about the club and how it was the first club to do this and that. Then it was down to the dressing rooms where we had a good look around and I managed to find a programme from the friendly the previous day against Valencia, which was Marco Silva’s first home game in charge (lost 2-1 though) and had a good look at the players shirts that were all hung around the dressing room. We then walked out through the corridor and out on to the side of the pitch next to the dug outs to the Z Cars theme that is played when the team walks out onto the pitch. This was the favourite part for me, Ben and Aaron! The pitch looked in great condition and the boys sat in the dug out before we walked along the middle of the stand and into the media room, where the manager does his press conferences. We were allowed to sit on the chairs where the manager sat and had a photo with a life size cut out figure of Marco Silva. Unfortunately, this was the end of the tour but it was very awesome. It lasted about an hour but it could have done with being a bit longer to be able to soak the atmosphere in of the different areas that we visited.
As part of the tour, we got 20% of in the Everton shop so after taking a full walk around the stadium, we went in the shop and spent too much money! I bought the new home shirt and a mug, Ben bout the new away shirt and a key ring, Aaron bout a training top and a key ring and Coby had a full training kit and a key ring. I/we could have spent much more in there though as there was loads of stuff that was awesome! 😉
We then went back to the car and started the drive home. The tour had been amazing and was one of the things that I wanted to do since I started to support Everton in 1988 so I was extremely glad that we did it and the boys really enjoyed it as well. Everton will be moving to a new stadium in a few years, so we will have to do it at the new stadium as well! 😉