Rush to Super Bowl Becomes a Crush as Big Day Approaches

So you’ve had it up to here with all the Super Bowl hype, eh?

Well, San Diego, brace yourself for reality.

Beginning today, a crush of celebrities, revelers, football fans and party-goers will descend on the city with a vengeance, straining Lindbergh Field and taxing local restaurants, streets and hotels.

On Thursday, the hordes could be seen at the airport and the San Diego Marriott, where the National Football League and a multitude of sportswriters have set up shop.

At Lindbergh, 40 to 60 chartered buses clogged traffic while waiting in front of the terminals for special tour groups to arrive. Eventually, exasperated airport officials were forced to herd the buses into a roped-off area of the western parking lot so cars and taxis could circulate more freely in the traffic lanes.

‘Bit of a Zoo’

“It’s a little bit of a zoo today,” said Gerald Reas, manager of the airport’s land operations. “So far, they (tour buses) are coming in willy-nilly.”

Reas said he was disappointed in the Super Bowl Task Force for not following through on its promises to cut down on the problems with the buses. Originally, the task force had promised to send the buses out only when its tour group had arrived, and to provide a separate parking area for the buses off the airport property.

But, Reas said, those promises were never realized, leading to Thursday’s problems.

Still, he said the worst was yet to come on Sunday night and Monday morning, when all of the visitors try to get out of San Diego at once.

“You might be looking at an hour, an hour-and-a-half delay on the ground, with the worst case being three hours,” said Reas. “In other words, that’s how long it will take to get your body into the airport and to the gate.”

Leaving, however, was the last thing on anybody’s mind Thursday. In addition to the normal 176 landings at Lindbergh, there were four Super Bowl charter flights and another 50 private planes carrying football fans.

Besides the flock of private planes, there are eight chartered planes expected to land today, said airport manager M. A. McDonald.

Typical among the visitors on Thursday was one tour group from the Midwest, 24 color-coordinated football fans flown in by GTE Inc.

The GTE entourage included some of the company’s biggest customers--such as representatives from Illinois Western University--and each had been given a light blue and pink shirt that said Super Bowl XXII, “California Dreamin’ ”

“This is an appreciation for their business type of trip,” said Andre B.A. Duhaime, a GTE marketing and communications administrator from Carmel, Ind.

“We want to get to know these people on a social basis, as well as a business basis,” said Duhaime as he walked to an idling bus ready to whisk him away to the Hotel del Coronado. “We just came in and we had a ball.”

While the visitors were oohing about the San Diego sun, airport skycaps were working up an extra sweat in their scramble to accommodate the Super Bowl rush.

Thomas Burgess, one of the skycaps, estimated that business in tips had tripled on Thursday.

Under normal circumstances, he said, there would be seven to 10 porters working the luggage return conveyors and another two or three at each gate.

Thursday, however, there were 20 to 25 skycaps at the conveyors and four to five porters at each gate.

A short drive away, employees of the Marriott were bracing themselves for the expected crush as the crowd became thicker in the hotel’s lobbies and hallways.

By Thursday, comedian Bob Hope had checked into his room, as had trumpeter Herb Alpert. Former football player Dan Dierdorf, now an ABC television sports commentator, walked in and shook hands and signed an autograph for a little boy.

Tickets Wanted

A short, dark-haired man strode through the crowd conspicuously, with a sign hung from his neck, “I NEED TWO TIKETS SUPER BOWL.” Newsweek and ESPN sports personality Pete Axthelm was being interviewed by Boston’s WHDH, one of the many radio stations that have set up temporary broadcasting booths on table tops along the Marriott’s hallways and lobbies.

From the standpoint of sheer numbers, the crowd at the Marriott on Thursday could be considered just another heavy convention, said Harrold Queisser, the hotel’s director of marketing.

But the 1,155 rooms taken on Thursday represented a healthy increase from the 949 rooms occupied on Wednesday. And all of the hotel’s 1,355 rooms will be sold out when top executives and guests of the Ford Motor Co. roll into town today, Queisser said.

That’s when the frenzy of activity will reach a high pitch, said Queisser.

“The real crush is when the people in San Diego have taken the day off or half the day off to start becoming part of the downtown festivities,” said Queisser. “San Diegans want to enjoy the party just as much as someone from Denver, Seattle or Washington, D.C.”

The partying will start in earnest for the general public tonight, with a fireworks show at Seaport Village, which is located next to the Marriott. Queisser said a crowd of 80,000 is expected.

Faced with those numbers, he said the Marriott has brought down at least 150 hotel employees from Los Angeles and Orange counties to help at the front desk, restaurants, lounges and with room service.