Fort Erie Meteors
Rink: Fort Erie Leisureplex
Capacity: 1,600
Built: 1996
League: GOHL
City: Fort Erie, Ontario
Home Of: Fort Erie Meteors
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: December 6, 2025 vs Port Colborne
Unique Arena: #117
GOHL Arena: #5
The Fort Erie Leisureplex is located on the western outskirts of Fort Erie on the edge of a neighbourhood. It is set back a tad from the main road, tucked in behind the town hall and another smaller community centre with some ponds and tree-lined pathways leading to the Leisureplex’s main entrance. The Leisureplex itself has two arenas, the main spectator bowl where the GOHL’s Meteors play (which has an Olympic sized ice surface) as well as another NHL regulation sized ice pad. There is also a banquet hall and a town sports hall of fame. Upon entering the building, the banquet hall is off to your right while the hall of fame is on your immediate left. If you are a spectator for either ice surface you head straight up a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs straight ahead is the box office and the main arena. To the left is a snack bar/lounge area which has windows overlooking the secondary ice pad.
Upon entering the main arena, you find yourself on a wide concourse that rings around the top of the seating bowl and is unobstructed to the on-ice action. There are 1,600 maroon seats that surround the entire ice surface while the concourse has a bar behind the last row of seats that you can use for standing room if you so choose, except in one corner of the rink so as not to block the view from the people operating the scoreboard.
At centre ice on the concourse there is a small window to the snack bar from the lobby area. There are actually a pair of suites as well in two of the corners that are totally glassed in and set back behind the walkway of the concourse but raised a bit as well. The roof gives off a warehouse vibe but is low enough that the rink doesn’t feel larger than it needs to be like in the GOHL rink in Brantford. In addition to the fact the game is played on the wider Olympic ice surface, the most notable unique feature of the arena is the fact the penalty boxes and both team benches are on the same side of the ice with the penalty boxes in between each team bench. That means on the opposite side row 1 is an uninterrupted row of seats down the entire side. You could have the rare view of dead centre ice row 1 if you so choose. The only other rink I’ve ever seen this is the old Prince George Coliseum, but I have not actually seen a game there. So, with that in mind we actually sat row 1 at centre ice for the first period for a rare view of the game. However by the first intermission we found it very cold and took up a standing room spot for the remainder of the game, which thankfully has heating lamps above the concourse. Sitting down in row 1 you’ll also notice that the glass in Fort Erie is much lower than in most arenas these days.
The Meteors game we attended had just under 500 people in attendance. I’ve been told that especially come playoff time the crowds tend to be larger and can get pretty rowdy. While the crowd at our game wasn’t rowdy, they were definitely into the game, which was a nice change from the family and friends only crowd we experienced earlier in the day in Brantford.
If you need a bathroom during the game you have to leave the arena bowl completely and go back out to the lobby, which would be quite inconvenient if you are sitting at the far side of the building. Earlier I mentioned we had heating lamps above the standing room area but even still we found the rink quite cold, and we spent our intermissions out in the lobby which was thankfully much warmer. The far side of the ice also has some great murals of great hockey players who hail from the area painted onto the wall, which spruces up an otherwise plan and drab interior of off white/cream coloured walls with forest green accents.
In our travels of seeing games in GOHL and OJHL rinks so far we’ve had some great experiences where the game is THE thing to do in town and the people are firmly behind their team. We’ve also seen games like the aforementioned one in Brantford where barely anyone is there and it almost feels like more of an obligation. Our experience in Fort Erie was somewhere in between. It felt like a decent Jr B experience, and I don’t doubt the stories that games here can have a great atmosphere. That said, we left Fort Erie that night wondering if we really wanted to continue knocking off just any old provincial junior game or if we could do something better with our Saturday night(s). There are more that we want to do, but we might be a bit more selective in picking which rinks to go to in the future.
