After a month or so of reading this very helpful board, we gave up on the cancellation line idea and got our Hamilton tickets through StubHub for yesterday's show (June 12th matinee). We didn't want to live on 46th Street for 2 days.
I was stunned, then, when we got into New York on Sunday morning, went straight to the theater, and saw only 20 people in the cancellation line at 10:00 am.
I asked the last person, "where is the rest of the line?" and she said "this is it. They cut it off here". The entire line didn't even make it to the stage door. There was a pole and black rope to mark the end of the line.
The last person said she had arrived at 6 am that morning, only a few hours before we got there. Later on, closer to showtime, we saw her again and she was no longer in line and had a premium ticket. She said that most of the people in the line ahead of her had turned down the premium tickets so she got one. Only waited 6 hours.
Even more stunning, we also met some Hamilton fans that were in NY for breakfast and decided just to go by and check out the scene and ended up with premium tickets too. They didn't get to the theater until after 11:30 am. Unfortunately, we had briefly left and gone to get lunch after watching some of the cast get on the bus for Tonys rehearsal. Had we stuck around that could have been us. We got back in time to see them walking out of the box office in tears with their tickets. Essentially zero time in the line.
I guess the two caveats are that these were expensive premium tickets and that Javier Munoz was singing Hamilton, but otherwise we could have had the whole original broadway cast on Tony Sunday for the price of two premium tickets.
Regrets aside, the show was everything promised and more. Diggs and Odom steal the show, but Soo's voice is as pure live as on the record. The onlly surprise was that Jackson's voice is so strong. One Last Time is a vocal triumph. It was all worth it.