Check the banned list before you pack

Graduation families bring balloons, flowers, gift bags and handmade signs. At UNT most of that has to stay in the car.

The Coliseum and the Murchison Performing Arts Center enforce a clear bag policy at every entrance, and the list of banned items is long: balloons, gift bags, glass or plastic vases, signs, banners and flags, confetti and confetti cannons, glitter, bubbles, silly string, beach balls, Frisbees, air horns, bullhorns and whistles, laser pointers, tripods, monopods and selfie sticks. Anything on it has to be thrown away or taken back to the car, and staff will not hold items for you. UNT links a complete list, in English and Spanish, from its guest page.

Everyone, graduates included, also passes through a metal detector. Strollers are allowed for young children but cannot go into the seating area.

No tickets, so the doors decide

UNT does not issue guest tickets. Seating is first come, first served, saving seats is not allowed, and fire rules mean there is no standing room. When a ceremony reaches capacity, guests are directed to nearby rooms to watch it live on screens. For a family that wants to see the stage, arrival time matters more than anything else.

Doors open an hour before each ceremony. At the Coliseum, guests enter through Gates A and E on the upper level and sit in the middle and upper seats around the arena, while graduates sit on the floor. The Doctoral and Master of Fine Arts ceremony, where each candidate is hooded by their faculty mentor, has its own slot. The College of Music holds its ceremonies in the Winspear Performance Hall inside the Murchison, which also opens an hour ahead.

At the end, stay seated until the ceremony is over and meet your graduate outside; graduates leave the Coliseum through the South Tunnel.

Getting to the Coliseum

UNT’s advice is blunt: do not rely on satnav, which can send you to the wrong part of campus. Follow UNT’s own directions and the police officers directing traffic. The I-35 expansion has closed the North Texas Boulevard exit off southbound I-35E, so drivers from the north use the West Oak Street exit and continue east on West Hickory Street. Traffic builds from the first ceremony onwards, so leave early and carpool where you can.

Guests park in Lot 20, west of the Coliseum; graduates are asked to take its west side and leave the north and east sides to families. About half the spaces in that lot are a ten-minute walk from the Coliseum, or six minutes from the Murchison. Accessible parking is in Lots 26 and 27 on Highland Street, directly across from the Coliseum, and attendants do not check for placards: it is also meant for anyone who cannot manage a ten-minute walk on a hot day. The drop-off point is the circle drive off Avenue D on the Coliseum’s east side, reached by Maple Street.

Where to sleep

Denton is the place to stay. Its chain hotels sit along I-35 a couple of miles from campus: the Embassy Suites, the largest with 318 suites, about six minutes from the Coliseum, and the Hampton Inn, SpringHill Suites and Fairfield Inn about seven. The Square in downtown Denton, with its restaurants, is ten minutes away.

Dallas and Fort Worth look close on a map but are forty to fifty minutes away with clear roads. For a morning ceremony, where the doors open at 8 or even 7 a.m., a Denton room the night before gives you the best chance of a seat in the arena rather than in an overflow room.

We grade the pressure as low. Families come to one ceremony each, spread over three days in December and four in May, and Denton’s hotels are backed by the whole metro area. That is our judgement from the supply and the schedule, not a measured count of free rooms, which we have not taken for Denton.