South Bend welcomes fans ahead of IU-Notre Dame playoff game

On December 21, 2024By Littum

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – At a time when the city is usually awash in holiday lights, South Bend is lit up with playoff lights.

We’re less than a day away from the College Football Playoff game between Notre Dame and Indiana, and there’s plenty of green downtown.

There are countless places around the city with lights and decorations up, but a big destination is the local hotels. Over at the Aloft Hotel on Main Street, they’re fully booked for the weekend, and guests get a nice warm Irish welcome.

Now, Aloft typically welcomes fans to Notre Dame home games, but of course this game looks different. This time the hotel has koozies for your cold drinks, pom-poms and big green shamrock balloons.

Esmeralda Cervantes, front desk supervisor at Aloft, says the energy has been high lately with fans coming to the game regardless of who they’re rooting for.

“There’s never a dull moment. As soon as they hit the door, you’re already feeding off the energy you’re coming in,” Cervantes says. “It doesn’t matter what team they’re going up against or what they’re going for, everyone comes in a way in unity, everyone is celebrating and having the same feelings in these times.”

When it comes to people flying in or driving in, staying at the hotel, Cervantes says most of the crowd is expected to be here before game day.

“We’re actually expecting them to come in today. There’s a lot of them coming in today,” she says. “There’s a few individuals that want to come in tomorrow, they actually want to come in early, check in, so we kind of see how it goes, but for the most part they all arrive today.”

The Aloft Hotel has bus route information for incoming fans, but this bus information is different for this rare Friday night home game.

For the free “Game Day Express” bus, the first stop is right at the Aloft Hotel, then the Century Center, the DoubleTree, followed by the final destination: McKenna Hall on the Notre Dame campus.

If you’re headed to the big game, you’ll find pretty much everything you need to know about parking, tailgating and stadium policies. by clicking here.

For more information about bus services, click here. And if you’re looking for traffic tips, click here.