Going to broadway for the first time - any tips?- Page 2

[zoran912]

Posted: 8/8/05 at 1:41am

Glad to hear it!

[Aigoo]

Posted: 8/8/05 at 2:05am

here you go...sorry for the cut-and-paste. Don't feel like paraphrasing much:

37. Why are Broadway tickets so expensive?!

This is unfortunate drag to theatre...it's very costly. Some tickets are even as much as $240 per. Meh, we gotta feed our performers, ya know...

Here are some of your options:

A) The most obvious one is lottery. Most shows hold a "lottery" in which you enter your name. The names are randomly selected and you have the option of buying up to 2 tickets at around $25 (they're usually very good tickets. Most commonly front row.) If you're alone at a show, you best find some stranger who is alone there as well..and enter both of your names in the lottery as preferring to buy two tickets and agree to give the other the extra ticket if one of you wins. If both of you win, then just sell off the extra tickets. Everyone wins yay. Be sure to bring along a photo ID in order to claim your tickets. Lottery tickets can only be paid by cash.

B ) Your second option is a discount code that can be used when purchasing through telecharge.com or ticketmaster.com, or some other online box office. Go to http://www.broadwaybox.com and you'll find a plethora of discount codes there. If it's not available, you're better off going with another option. If a show is EXTREMELY popular (Spamalot, Wicked), worry about getting TICKETS rather than discounted tickets.

C) Your third option is the TKTS booth in the middle of Times Square. It's quite big, and not very hard to miss (it's near the McDonald's and the Lunt-Fontanne theatre.) However, you'll have to wait quite a while for tickets, and although they're cheap, you have no way of determining where your seats will be located. But they offer tickets to several shows.

If you don't have an utter desire to see a show, you can maybe pop in TKTS around 7:30 PM (or around 1:30-2:00 PM for matinees) and avoid the big, long line. You also have a chance of getting the good tickets that were just released.

http://www.tdf.org/index_default.html
http://www.entertainment-link.com/tkts.asp Thank you Blucat!

D) Some shows offer student rush. As long as you carry your ID with you, you can usually score some cheap tickets at shows at their ticket booth. I recently nabbed a pair of tickets for $45 at Rent, normally $85 or $95. BRING YOUR STUDENT ID!

The most popular student program is LCT's Studentix. It's extremely useful and a great program: what it basically is a regular ticket for the price of $20. Several people have gotten great seats. The downside is, you can only use it once and it's ONLY for the Lincoln Center Theatre (currently the Light in the Piazza).
Register here:
StudentixStudentix

E) Don't really like sitting? Standing room patrons stand in numbered spaces that are the width of a regular seat. They are usually located at the back of the orchestra. SRO tickets are trickier to get because they are only available if the show is sold out. There’s no definite way to predict in advance whether a performance will sell out, without actually calling the box office a few hours before curtain time.

F) Regular old boring rush is for those of you that are out of school (good for you...). It all started with RENT, which at the peak of its run started selling $20 tickets for the first 2 front rows. Predictably, lines started forming at ungodly hours and thus Broadway theatres started to offer rushes, student rushes, SRO's to encourage cheap theatre viewing. Check the show's website to see if they offer rush or not.

Now that you know, here is a great link to the current prices of standing room only (SRO), rushes, discounts, rushes...etc.
http://www.nytix.com/Links/Broadway/listofcurrentshows.html

Updated On: 8/8/05 at 02:05 AM

[Jilani]

Posted: 8/8/05 at 2:27am

mermer, to answer your specific question about tkts and whether you can buy matinee and evening tickets at the same time, the answer is probably not. For the downtown location, you cannot buy Saturday matinee tickets on Saturday; you have to buy them on Friday. For the Times Square location, Saturday matinee tickets go on sale from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., whereas evening tickets don't go on sale until 3:00 p.m. (i.e., during your matinee show, which will likely start at 2:00).

[BluCat500]

Posted: 8/8/05 at 2:38am

However you can go get evening tickets after you've watchd a matinee, I've done it a couple of times as late as 7:30 P.M...Sometimes it can limit what you see based on what they have left, but other times tickets have just been released and you can wind up with better seats...

...I think this would be a fairly safe plan for as you haven't seen anything on Broadway yet so you are bound to find something you want to see...
(I've only done this at the timesquare location for clarification)

Oooh edit to say another plus in this plan is you avoid looong lines!

Updated On: 8/8/05 at 02:38 AM