Majestic Theatre Question

I attended tonight's performance of The Phantom of the Opera (loved it) and prior to the show I experienced something that in my opinion is a little odd. Just about every show I have been to, the theatre opens 30 minutes until the show starts. Tonight however, they opened up the theatre an hour before and opened up the house 30 minutes before. This caused a flood of people into a confined lobby for 30 minutes. You could barely move and the people just kept coming.To add on top of that (besides the point) the women's bathroom had a leak and I overheard a lady saying that there was water everywhere. So what I am just curious of is, do they open that early and have that situation of a large amount of people in a smaller area every day? I don't see why they cant just open 30 mins before like every other theatre. If I had to think of a reason I'd say its because its so close to an avenue on one side and another theatre (broadhurst) on the other side. They dont want their line interfering. If anyone happens to work there or just knows why they do this I would appreciate if you could let me know. Fantastic show!

I worked FOH there from 1995-2007. Back then they opened the theatre at half hour and the house at 7:35. Sometimes that would create a backlog where it became hard to move, but most of the time the house opened before it became obvious that there was nowhere left for arriving patrons to go. I think the idea was that patrons could get started taking care of whatever other business they had (bathroom, drinks, headsets, merch) while waiting to sit down.

As for the speculation about keeping the line outside shorter, I don't know, but in the '90s the line often went past the doors of the Shubert. On the one hand, that looks awesome if you're trying to make your show look popular, but it's also annoying to two other Shubert theatres, so maybe that had something to do with it.

AEA AGMA SM said: "Last time I saw the show a few years back I seem to recall that they had the line going the opposite way towards 8th Ave, probably to avoid the situation with it going past and potentially blocking traffic into the Broadhurst and Shubert."

I've been several times in the past few months and the line has not consistently formed in either direction (toward 8th and toward the Broadhurst). Not sure what dictates this for any given performance.