A little late, but as this thread was so helpful for me I thought I’d share my experience with the cancellation line on Friday October 13, 2017. My girlfriend and I wanted to guarantee we’d get tickets, so we got there around 8am and were the first people there. A very nice usher chatted with us and told us we were guaranteed to get tickets, and that they usually start selling any unclaimed lottery tickets around 1pm. He also said that usually the first 10-15 people get in.
Around 11ish someone from the box office came out and said they had two individual premium tickets for $850 each, predictably we all declined, lol. Around 1:30 they came out and said they had two individual premium tickets for $229 if my girlfriend and I wanted them. We of course said yes, and went in to pay. The seats were B3 (3rd row, orchestra left, one seat in from the aisle) and K104 (orchestra centre, one seat off from dead centre). After we got our tickets we chatted with the super nice usher again, and he told us that unclaimed lottery tickets get sold first, that if you’re off to the side the left side of the theatre is better than the right (not sure why), and that row J is the best row in the house, that’s what they reserve for the big celebrities. By this time there were probably around 8-10 people in line.
When we came back in the evening for the show, we stopped to chat with everyone still in the cancellation line. We got there around 7:30 and at that point only the two people behind has had gotten tickets yet. As we filed in two other people from the cancellation line got in, and by the time the show started as far as we could tell everyone else in line got in too! They were all sitting in the same area, around rows H-J centre, and they all got to sit with their partners. So happy that everyone got in!
SUMMARY AND MUSINGS
1. There’s a Pret A Manger just down the street, we got coffee there in the morning and used their washroom for the rest of the day, made bathroom breaks really easy!
2. If you don’t want to stand around all day, get there early. It seems likely that they sell lottery tickets first (around 1pm according to the usher), probably followed by unsold seats in house (quite possibly singles, as it was in our case).
3. Row J, orchestra centre is the best view in the house (as per the usher), although my girlfriend will contend that row K was pretty awesome too!
4. If you don’t mind standing all day, from reading over all the threads and our guesses, it seems you are more likely to get “better” seats (ie. centre orchestra), if you come a little later, and plan to be roughly fourth/fifth in line (would have been arriving about 10:30/11 the day we went (no matinee), although we walked by previous days and there was still no one there at that time middle of the week). Our guess (and this is 100% A GUESS), is that they reserve a certain number of good orchestra centre seats in case any celebrities/people who are willing to pay $850/ticket want to get in last minute. Hence why they wait until the very last minute to sell them, and why most of the cancellation tickets are in the same vicinity (except for lotto tickets from the very front, or actual cancellations). On our day no one else got tickets early in the day except for us, although it seems likely if they have cancellations called in, they would sell them as they became available. Although maybe this is just the case on Fridays?
5. All the tickets from our group were $229 each, no one got obstructed view on our day that I saw (although where I was sitting (B3), actors often had their backs to me so I missed some facial expressions, but it was pretty cool being that close)!
6. According to the usher orchestra left is better than orchestra right (not sure why).
7. The first 10-15 people usually get in (also re: usher).
8. The usher told us flat out that there weren’t any SRO tickets that day when we first got there, so not sure if they always know that first thing or not, or if he was just guessing. Definitely confirmed that they are rare though!
9. All in all it was actually pretty fun, and I would definitely do it again!
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