Red Sox fans entering Fenway Park Saturday morning for the opening of 2003 individual ticket sales were greeted by a ‘Fenway Winter Carnival,’ designed to alleviate suffering through long lines in the cold, wet weather on Yawkey Way.

Instead of the usual ‘first come, first serve’ ticketing process, the Red Sox issued numbered wristbands at 9 a.m. and ushered fans inside the park. In the .406 Club, the Red Sox Hall of Fame and the Player’s Club for the ‘Fenway Winter Carnival,’ the team’s management welcomed fans with free Dunkin’ Donuts food and coffee and discounted ballpark concessions.

At 10 a.m. officials randomly selected number 224 as a starting point and began selling tickets to those fans first. Throughout the day, they sold to everyone with higher numbered red wristbands — more than 1,400 – and then returned to numbers one through 223. After that, Sox officials called numbers from blue wristbands, issued later, which rose above 5,000.

In the meantime, fans were allowed to leave and come back if they wanted.

Those who stayed listened to General Manager Theo Epstein, pitcher Tim Wakefield, first base coach Dallas Williams, President and CEO Larry Lucchino and others answer fans’ questions.

With his back to the windows overlooking a snow-covered field, Vice President of Public Affairs Charles Steinberg welcomed the fans.

‘You’re welcome to stay,’ he said. ‘We are going to stay as long as you stay.’

‘We were reading [about the process in] the Globe and Herald online, learning about it, and we said ‘Yeah, we’ll do that,” said Ray Veroneau of Portland, Maine said, who drove down with his son Brian at 6:30 that morning.

The Veroneaus originally made the trip 10 years ago to Fenway for tickets and said they vowed never to do it again because of the difficult purchasing process.

‘Ever since that one experience we’d never come back,’ Brian said. ‘This is way better than when we did this 10 years ago.’

As for the long wait ahead of them, they just relaxed in the .406 Club until their numbers were called.

‘I’m here with my son all day today, playing cribbage, talking baseball … so it’s okay,’ Veroneau added. ‘You can get annoyed at anything you want in life. You just choose to focus on what’s good, and they’ve made a lot of things good about this process. Standing outside, we’d be miserable.’

Boston University Student Union Vice President of Financial Affairs and Red Sox fan Mike Bodek said he was impressed by the new process as he waited for tickets with his number 95 wristband.

‘The fact that they put everyone up in The 600 Club is incredible,’ Bodek said. ‘They never used to do that … To see that they are letting everybody into the club, having discounted food and having players and the general manager come up and speak is amazing.’

Not everyone was pleased with the change, however.

‘There were some people screaming about the whole process,’ said Jenna Monusky, a Yankees fan and junior in the School of Management, referring to fans who drove in early that morning and thought the Red Sox had ruined the process.

‘I feel, if you want to get out here at four or five in the morning, as long as there are police out there to prevent problems … why not?’ said Norwood resident Debbie Lawrence, who arrived at 8 a.m. and had wristband number 135.

‘If you are that enthused, I think you should be rewarded,’ she added.

Some even thought ordering over the internet was a better option.

‘It was nice being in the Player’s Club … The only problem is that I’ll probably have to wait about eight hours to get tickets,’ said Chris Wood of Somerville, who got to Fenway around 9:15 and received wristband number 1135. ‘[The old] process was probably better because it honored first come first serve.’

‘I think I’ll probably just go home and try to get them on the internet,’ he added, saying his friend had gotten Yankees tickets online at 10:30 a.m.

‘Coming here is more of an event, I think, than an effective way of getting tickets.’