Oriole Park at Camden Yards has been on my list to visit since it’s credited with starting the retro look craze and building distinct ballparks as we got away from the cookie-cutter multi-purpose stadium phase.

The ballpark is located to the west of the Inner Harbor in downtown Baltimore. We took the MTA Light RailLink from the BWI airport which is $2 one way per person and takes about 30 minutes to the Camden or Convention Center stations, which are both a block away from an entrance to the ballpark.

I’ve read online how people say the Light RailLink isn’t the best since it can have disruptions or delays often and Uber is cheap to the ballpark (I checked and it was about $20 on a Thursday around 2:30pm) but since we had some time, we figured we’d try it out. The ride was pretty smooth and easy and I would recommend it for those traveling light. That’s because it’s a 10-15 minute walk to the station on the bottom level of the airport and there isn’t room to store your luggage on the Light RailLink. We just held our carry-on suitcases in front of us and it wasn’t busy but I can see that being more difficult if you have large suitcases.

The ballpark is about half a mile north of the Baltimore Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium. Directly around the area isn’t much except a small area right in front with Pickles Pub (more on that later) so you have to go about half a mile to get to the Inner Harbor and/or the rest of downtown to find things to do. Otherwise, the area right around the ballpark itself is pretty quiet.

Incorporating the B&O Warehouse into the right field backdrop is a great touch. It gives the stadium skyline a nice look as otherwise you wouldn’t see much beyond the outfield:

They have gates on both ends of the warehouse on Eutaw Street to enter, with Gate H at the north end of Eutaw Street featuring the Orioles’ retired numbers outside as well as a statue of Babe Ruth. I didn’t know Babe Ruth was born in Baltimore until researching what to do in the city and seeing that the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum is a couple of blocks away. The museum is definitely worth a visit if you’re a baseball nut to see some of the Bambino’s artifacts.

Once we entered and walked around on the field level, I noticed the concourse was pretty wide, making it easy to walk around.

The negative is when you go into the part with an overhang (under the club level and upper deck seating so basically everywhere except most of the outfield), you don’t have a view of the field as you walk around and/or get food and beverages. To access the seats, you go through tunnels in between the stands such as this:

As a result, you don’t have the standing room areas behind the seating sections in the infield or down the line that many of the new ballparks have. They do have standing room only in the outfield, which includes left field above the bullpens, right field right next to the foul pole and you can stand behind two rows of reserved seating in the Coors Light Roof Deck above the batter’s eye:

The one interesting thing is I tried to take the escalator to the upper deck level (not the club level) to walk around and check it out but the ushers at the escalator wouldn’t let me go up there unless I had a ticket for those sections (and my ticket was in the field level). I know some ballparks restrict areas based on tickets (like the Bleachers at Wrigley Field) so Oriole Park is one of those. They actually didn’t check tickets in the actual sections as they had an usher at each section and when I walked in they just asked me if I knew where to find my seats (without looking at my tickets), most likely because I had Padres gear on so they assumed I wasn’t local.

Food-wise, the Orioles have locally known restaurants like Stuggy’s and Attman’s Deli as well as stands that were inspired by local cuisine and became fan favorites like Boog’s BBQ (a BBQ stand named after former Orioles All-Star first baseman Boog Powell). I will commend the Orioles in that they have self-serve soda stations all over the ballpark so if you get a souvenir cup (which is the only fountain soda option though some stands sell soda by the 20-ounce bottle), you can use it over and over again.

The food is decent but it may be better to eat outside around the area or even right in front of the ballpark at Pickles Pub, which along with the restaurants next door have a nice setup to eat before and after the game.

The Orioles also do a good job of capturing their history with various displays and statues around the ballpark, including having former players sign autographs for free:

In terms of the views around the outfield (since that’s really the only place you can go that is standing room only), the views themselves are pretty good as nothing feels too far away.

Once you sit down in your seats, the seats themselves are pretty small in width and the rows are extremely tight. We sat in section 44 row 8 which is four sections over from directly behind home plate and a couple of sections before you get to the sections behind the visitors dugout on the 3rd base side. So I would expect these seats to be the typical size of seats in the ballpark.

I’m not sure if the above pictures really capture how small the seats are or how tight the rows are. We were sitting next to a couple of season ticket holders who were normal-sized men and they decided to move to the row behind us as they said it would allow us all to have some space to breathe (and the row behind us had four open seats). As well, for the second game we went to, the mom sitting next to me mentioned to her young kids she didn’t want to get up until they had to go since we were “packed in like sardines”.

The seats are angled straight ahead in each section so if you are sitting down the line past 1st or 3rd base, you’ll be angled towards 2nd base and you’ll have to turn your head to face home plate. It does become difficult to watch a game in your seat this way and something newer ballparks have recognized and why they angled their seats towards home plate.

For 2026, the Orioles installed a new video board along with new ribbon boards and a sound system that puts it in line with other ballparks. For people like me who like the tech in ballparks, this does make it a more enjoyable experience and I found the technology to make it a good ballpark experience.

One minor nitpick is they do jam pack the video board with a lot of information, which made it hard to find all the information right away. In the first inning, I couldn’t find the pitcher’s total pitch count until I really looked for it and actually a person next to me commented the same thing a few innings later which I then pointed him to where it was.

In terms of in-game entertainment, they do things like their version of the hat shuffle (which is a crab shuffle that makes sense given its Baltimore), a hot dog race (similar to the big head races at other ballparks), the lookalike cam, t-shirt toss and scoreboard surprises. They don’t do things every half inning like they do at Petco as some innings they’re just playing music.

Overall Oriole Park is definitely a ballpark to visit and one I enjoyed visiting. Though it has some quirks and issues as mentioned above like the seats, no field view as you walked around the concourse, a decent (but not great) food selection and not as much directly around the ballpark, it’s still a great ballpark and one of the better ones out there. Not to mention it started the whole renaissance we’re in now with building great ballparks.

I’ll leave with this new skyline as the sun started setting: