I did the cancellation over the weekend (6/2-6/4) with my husband, sister, and a friend (we were looking for 4 tickets total). We had quite the 48 hour line waiting experience and hopefully this information will help some of you in your own cancellation line planning.
Quick and dirty timeline of events for those of you who want the short version:
Thursday 6/2 – Got on line at approximately 9pm. I think we were tickets 15-18 at the time.
Friday 6/3 – 5 premiums released and taken ahead of us throughout the day, which moves us up to tickets 10-13 in line. At 7:50pm, standard tickets start being released. 7 standard tickets are released, so we don’t get in for Friday.
Saturday 6/4 2pm matinee – We are now tickets 3-6 on line. 4 premium tickets are released for the 2pm show; the couple in front of us pass on them and so do we. The group immediately behind us takes them. Around 1:55pm, 2 standard tickets were released. The couple in front of us takes them and we move up to the front of the line. After that, 8 standing room only (SRO) tickets are offered. My sister and her friend take two of them and go into the show. My husband and I pass on SRO and decided to stay in line for the 8pm show (as do a couple of people behind us), so the remaining SRO tickets go to people further back in the line.
Saturday 6/4 8pm show – My husband and I are now tickets 1-2 for the evening show. No premiums were released for the evening show. At about 7:30pm, 4 tickets are released, so my husband and I are called into the box office along with the father and daughter pair behind us. We get 4 front row seats (aka unclaimed lottery tickets). From what we could tell, after us at least another 6 standard tickets got released. I also heard that some SRO tickets were given out, for a total of approximately 10-14 tickets released for the Saturday 8pm show.
So yes, you read that correctly – we waited 48 hours in the cancellation line for Hamilton tickets, and we weren’t the only ones. The line was at least 30 people long at all times Friday afternoon through Saturday night. Onto the details for those of you who care to read them…
When we got in line 9pm Thursday, the line was made up of (in ticket order) a woman looking for 2 standard tickets, two line sitters both looking for 2 premium tickets (4 premiums total), a family of 5 looking for 5 tickets anyway they could get them (premium or standard), a woman looking for 2 standard tickets, and a woman looking for a single standard ticket. We heard from that group that approximately 14 tickets had been released for the Thursday night show, so we thought there might be a chance we’d get in Friday night, but fully expected to be in line until the Saturday matinee show. As Thursday night progressed, more and more people got on line. A man looking for a single premium ticket showed up behind us around 11pm. A family of 5 (who flew in from Missouri just to do the cancellation line – kudos to them!) looking for any kind of tickets arrived at about 1am. Behind them I know there was a continued mixture of line sitters and patrons that continued to show up throughout the night and into Friday and Saturday.
Things to know – the line no longer goes to the left of the theater towards the Marriott Marquis hotel; it now lines up to the right of the theater under the awning towards the stage door. During show times, the line gets moved across the street under the Edison hotel sign. So if you show up to get in line when a show is going on, look across the street to figure out where to line up. I am pretty sure that the line will continue to be one line and not split into two for the different days for the foreseeable future (at least, that was the vibe we got over the weekend). Most people in line seemed very adamant about keeping it one line because they weren’t interested in a particular day. Rather, they planned to stay in line until they got tickets regardless of what day that meant they were waiting for. Also, the RTT staff comes out around 6-7am and takes a picture of the line, so make sure you are there and not at the bathroom when they take that picture; if there is any question over who was in line where etc. that is the picture they use as a reference.
Overall, the line self polices itself. While people are friendly and it is fun to form a community with those near you, people are definitely extremely aware of where they are in line and sometimes it can get a bit tense. We were towards the front of the line for the majority of our 48 our wait, and we had people further back in line regularly coming up and counting us, asking us over and over again how many tickets and what ticket type we planned on purchasing, and sometimes even questioning if we had actually been there the whole time (which is why the picture they take comes in handy), etc. People were generally fine with people getting out of line briefly to use the bathroom or go grab food, but my advice is to leave for no longer than you have to. We had a woman further back in line who tried to get two men in front of her thrown out of the line because she thought they were gone too long getting dinner (despite the fact that the line had previously agreed to letting people go get food). The issue resolved itself amicably, but it was a tense moment. My group made sure we kept our breaks to an absolute minimum and that we always had 2 out of the 4 of us in line because no one would advocate for us better than ourselves. That being said, in general everyone was friendly and it was a positive experience (well, as positive an experience as sitting on the streets of NYC for 48 hours can be). We bonded with those nearest to us in the line, kept checking in with each other to make sure people were doing okay, and we were all genuinely happy for one another and cheered when people got their tickets.
Pre-planning tips: We planned to get down to the city on Thursday 6/2 and stay in line until we got tickets. We booked a room at The Row hotel for Thursday through Sunday. It was a good location for cancellation line purposes. The Row is right around the corner on 8th Ave and cheaper than The Paramount (the hotel right across the street from RRT). If you are from out of town, we highly suggest booking a hotel room nearby. That way you have a bathroom/shower/bed to use on your quick breaks and a place to keep supplies. We packed enough supplies to be online all weekend if necessary (which it turns out it was). We highly suggest you bring some kind of mat/pillow to sit on since chairs are no longer allowed (side note – there were one or two people on line who pulled chairs out and used them and they were only reprimanded by the theater once as far as I can tell. I really think the enforcement of that rule depends on the RTT staff who happens to be in charge that day). We also suggest snacks, bug spray (we got SO many bug bites), sunscreen (depending on time of day and where you are you might be in direct sunlight sometimes), cleansing wipes (it can get hot and grimy sitting on the sidewalk), external phone charger, and some form of entertainment (books, cards, etc.).
Good luck to everyone who braves the cancellation line before Lin leaves! I imagine it will continue to be crazy on the weekends. I genuinely never thought I would actually have to wait in line 48 hours to get in, but I guess the joke is on me. I also think this past weekend was unusually low on ticket releases (especially for the Sat. matinee), which didn’t help things. The show was, of course, amazing, and therefore I don’t regret the 48 hour wait at all. We ended up having the entire cast with no understudies for our Sat. evening show (and the matinee also had the entire cast), so that was the icing on the cake.
Updated On: 6/7/16 at 11:02 AM
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