Successful Cancellation Ticket Story
Was visiting NYC from San Diego on Wednesday January 27th. Landed at 5am in JFK and made it to theater by 8:30am. There was a line formed to the right of the theatre doors (DON’T STAND HERE) I was about 12th in line. I was freaking out that I was already too late until I realized that all of the people in front of me knew each other. They said that they worked for a company that purchases advanced ticket through the American express pre-sale for their clients. This is happening because Hamilton just opened up a new block of tickets, so all of these people here are in line to buy tickets for October / November. Turns out that because of this, only 6 people were actually ahead of me, making me 7th in line for cancellations, my dad who was also with me would be 8th in line. We only need 2 tickets, but if we both get called we can get 4 so my Mom and Sister can get in, and then return the tickets they have for Thursday to broadway.com (they bought insurance).
When the box office opened at 10am, they split the line and told all cancellation people to stand by the left of the Hamilton doors. They were good at making sure that we kept our places in line. However, I believe if I had lined up at 8:30am in a separate line I would have been considered 1st in line, since the others were in the wrong spot.
2 people ahead of me were in line for “lotto tickets” there was confusion because the day before, the lottery was cancelled due to a huge pile of snow. On Tuesday night, these people were told that there would be no lottery on Wednesday and if they got here early enough they would be sold the $10 lottery tickets in the cancellation line. Well, on Wednesday morning the huge pile of snow was magically missing, and when the doors opened they announced they would in fact have a lottery that day. The 2 people for lotto tickets left the line, making me 5th in line.
10:45am, person #1 was offered two tickets for the evening performance at $177 each, he accepted. (He was in a sleeping bag)
11:15am found out I won the online lottery for Matilda. I’ve already seen the show so I decide that I’m not going and if we can’t get 4 tickets my mom and sister will go to Matilda.
11:55am, persons #2, and #3 only wanted 1 ticket each and were each offered a partial view seat for the matinee, they hesitated because they had just entered the lottery, but took them anyway.
12:15pm They pushed back the cancellation line about 20 feet back to allow theatre go-ers more space.
1:15pm Mom and Sister decide to go to Matilda, so now we only need 2 tickets.
1:20pm Person #4 (two tickets), and #5 (me) get called into the box office. They ask me how many, I say 2, and they say it’s $330. Give them the credit card, and they give me the tickets! It was very fast, they didn’t tell me where the seats were beforehand but I also didn’t ask. Seats ended up being Orchestra Row J Center.
Later on when we are in our seats, we see 3 more people from the line get in to see the show! So total, at least 11 cancellation seats were given away by 2pm on Wednesday January 27th. The show was AWESOME, although still freezing and not dressed for the theater, it was so worth it. When we get out of the show at 5pm, I don’t recognize anyone in the cancellation line so they must have either left, or gotten tickets for the 8pm show.
Hope you liked the story and it wasn’t confusing. If you have any questions shoot them my way!