Guess who's going to see Equus???? Pt II
Apr. 27th, 2008 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grrgoylI couldn't say more about this yesterday as it all came together rather suddenly after a long day of trying to make it come together, and then it was time to nap and onto my second job -- and napping was no mean feat considering how excited I was.
I apologize to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minikitkatgirl for subjecting her to an anxiety attack over the phone. As well I apologize to swankyfunk for doubting her.
Once we all got in touch,minikitkatgirl very quickly found us three seats together, Orchestra, Row D (which is actually six rows from the stage thanks to stupid rows AAA and BBB. But ask me if I'm worried about two rows when I was prepared to sit in the mezzanine before this find). "Oh my god!" sister Amy exclaimed. "You'll be able to see the sweat on his..." "Balls?" I helpfully supplied. "I was going to say 'upper lip' but I suppose that's true too," she finished.
I've decided to embrace my inner perv. I want to see Harry Potter naked (or the "Potter peen" asminikitkatgirl put it). Think less of me if you will, I don't care. The only thing that could make the play better would be if Rickman played the psychiatrist (or better still, Rickman as Alan Strang, though I think that might be pushing the age envelope way past breaking point).
If people are wondering about my change of heart after all my whinging about poverty before, well, it's the difference between $150 for a seat at the back of the theater and $116 for a seat six rows from the stage. That's a difference I simply couldn't ignore, impending dentist appointments be damned.
I can relax now that we have the tickets. Now it's the simple matter of a plane ticket to New York, not nearly as challenging. But if you click below, you'll get to read my account of waiting in line for Lion King tickets when the show toured in Denver, and why I felt such unbearable pressure to buy Equus as soon as possible. (In my eyes at least) Lion King on tour was huge. Equus, with Dan Radcliffe, on Broadway, is COLOSSAL.
Email tolizzieloudotcom dated November 26, 2001:
I'M GOING TO SEE THE LION KING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ahem.....glad I got that out. I just can't control my enthusiasm. Ever since I first learned this play existed, I have been dying to see it.....when I found out it was finally going on tour and starting in Denver, well, I am so THERE.
MyFriendDeb and I planned to go downtown together to wait on line for tickets (there was confusion if they were available online, however, I fucking hate Ticketmaster anyway, so had two reasons to do this.) We arrived at 8 a.m., two hours before the box office opened....and the line already had easily 300-500 people in it. We gamely settled in for the long wait, not anticipating how long of a wait we eventually ended up with..... (<------a bit of foreshadowing there, thanks UCONN English Dept.)
At about 9 a.m. the line inexplicably took a big jump forward (the only one of the day.) Just as we got excited that perhaps they opened early, the rumor got back to us that they had made the overnight campers pick up their blankets and make room. So the wait began. We made friends fairly quickly with our fellow line-waiters immediately around us, who were very cool about holding the spot for the singletons among us, etc. The true bonding moment came when the line made the first big move. When we had settled down again, we all noticed a huge gap in the line behind us and across the plaza as it snaked around the edges. Creating this gap were a couple of uppity, chi-chi-poo-poo women in showy fur coats who were refusing to move up. When some people asked why they weren't moving, they insisted that they didn't want to move closer to the railing at the end of the plaza because it would be colder there. The entire space was a huge, open-air plaza, so this idea was ludicrous enough without taking into account that they were holding back probably another 1,000 people for their own personal illusions of comfort. The people behind them started getting restless, having seen the front of the line moving so rapidly with nothing to show for it at their end, until the folks directly behind them simply walked past them, trailing I don't know how many more before the women thought better of their plan. I imagine they didn't have many friends in their section of line after that. Deb and I (and our newfound friends) all gloated because we were in front of them, no matter how special they thought they were in their gruesome fur coats.
Sadly, this was the extent of the entertainment for many more hours, spent for the most part standing in one place on cold, hard concrete for 20-30 minutes, moving up two or three feet, then back to the standing in one place, etc. etc. etc. The sun showed its face for about 30 minutes, then uncaringly disappeared for the rest of the day, making for quite chilly conditions. I had my cell phone with me and amused myself by calling Tery at home twice, but she was sleeping so wasn't much fun. The rest of the time I spent endlessly redialing the box office number, hoping perhaps to get through and cut any amount of time off the grueling wait, unsuccessfully. We began in good spirits, reassured by people passing out seating charts that there were more people behind us than in front of us, a promise that quickly proved pretty meaningless as the hours dragged by and we performed the procedure described above of standing a lot, moving a little, etc. etc. etc.
Then, the rumors started. One guy in front of us who couldn't stand still for more than a minute was constantly running back and forth, trying to get information, which was oftentimes conflicting. First he heard not to waste time calling the box office, they had sold out of their ticket allotment. He told us there were only 7 windows open selling tickets (it turned out this was a generous number by the time we got close enough to see for ourselves.) Then he heard an employee estimate that at our current line position, we should have nothing to worry about. But he also heard that practically everyone in front of us were buying 8 tickets at a time (the maximum allowed per "household", not necessarily per party). The rest of us, I'm sure, were frantically making calculations: 10 weeks of shows x an uncertain (and constantly dwindling) number of decent (i.e. orchestra section) seats = get this fucking line moving, I'm cold and I want to get the hell out of here, but I also want my tickets godammit. As soon as the guy came back with the phoneline rumor, I shut off my phone to save the battery. But then at noontime Deb and I were so hungry that I went to forage for food, ending up in a coffee house in another line in front of a box office employee on a short break, who told us that the phone lines still had plenty of tickets left. But she also told us that 80% of the seats were sold before the box office even opened (to corporate groups, radio stations, season ticket holders, etc.) On went my phone again and back to the futile redialing routine (which at least kept me occupied.)
By the time I triumphantly returned with scones and hot chocolate for Deb (practically frozen solid even with six layers of clothes on) the rumors had taken an ugly turn....they were starting to sell out, by the time we got there all that would be available would be balcony seats, which according to Deb were worse than not being there at all. We decided easily that if that were the case, we would rather go home empty-handed and wait for the show's return someday. But we then had the dilemma....if this rumor were true, was it worth wasting another 2-? hours waiting for balcony seats? When I pointed out that the guy was wrong about the phone lines selling out, he got a little miffed and suddenly stopped sharing the (dubious) fruits of his frequent reconnaisance missions. There was a rumor that someone had offered a guy near the front of the line $200 for his spot in line....we all speculated that perhaps we might take the offer if we had nothing to look forward to but balcony seats anyway. Humorously, the guy behind us offered us $10 for our spot in line.
We had finally made some real progress....we had reached the first of the heat lamps set on tall light posts, they had about ten of them set at intervals to warm the lucky first 1/8 of the line (not giving two figs, evidently, for the freezing throngs at the back of the line, whose lives were already miserable enough, being at the back of the line.) As we neared the first lamp, the soundtrack (which had been blaring over speakers repeatedly the entire day) was playing the inspirational, uplifting chorus of "Circle of Life".....as we all stretched our hands into the sky to get closer to the heat, we laughed because it looked like we were paying homage to Mufasa himself. We all grew more excited to have come so far, while at the same time bleakly realizing we probably still had at least 2 more hours to go to travel that last, pathetic, 100 feet or so.
Then.......another rumor came, this one as good as verified when the family behind us left the line because of it. There was a second, smaller (smaller is not good enough a word.....infinitesimal is better) line around the corner selling tickets for everything else but Lion King...however, if you bought tickets to one of those shows, you could also get Lion King tickets at the same time. I again left Deb to verify this information, as coincidentally there is another show that Tery is dying to go to (Blast! an onstage drum and bugle corp with Stomp! influences.) There was a haughty woman on the sidewalk answering questions, and when I asked if the buy one, get Lion King tickets rumor was true, she only answered "It's possible." ??????? It was obvious she felt that we were cheating by getting tickets that way, (but hell, she hadn't been freezing HER ass off on the cement since before the sun came up) as when she later started manning a booth she would annouce her availability by loudly exclaiming "Next person buying anything BUT Lion King", causing some people to actually hesitate before proceeding, as it seemed that she might even refuse to sell them the Lion King too.
I waited in this line for probably 45 minutes (after going back for Deb, who was in the bathroom, but our newfound friends promised to tell her the news.) I also got to see firsthand why the line was so fucking slow. Poor staffing was the least of their problems....the root of the delay was illustrated by a couple who literally took 15-20 minutes to buy their tickets. As I listened with growing disgust, they attempted to buy 10 seats, together, and they weren't going to leave until they were seated on the fucking STAGE. They had to see what seats were available for practically all 78 shows, weighing them against each other for desirability, etc. They finally settled for two blocks of five, and I don't even know how close they ended up getting. The man selling the tickets was so exhausted after they left he got up and took a break. My new-newfound friends in line shared my derision for people like that who didn't care how many others were freezing outside who would probably not even get tickets after waiting for so long, as well as uncomprehension why the promoters, if they couldn't get more people selling tickets, didn't at least try to time limit this kind of behavior. Things were getting ugly, there ain't no denying that.
This included people who weren't even IN line. Just before I entered the building in the home stretch, I heard another chi-chi-poo-poo woman behind me approach the "It's possible" bitch with THIS attitude: "I've been trying to get through on the phone since 10:00 this morning (she emphasized "10:00" as if that was a really impressive time to start.....we heard some of the campers arrived in line at 5 pm the night before.) and I am NOT waiting in that line. How am I supposed to get tickets?" I didn't hear the answer, but I was tempted to suggest she go ask the fur coated-gap-ladies for cuts, they sounded like they might get along.
Anyway, AT LAST my turn came. Deb had turned up at this point (she was saving our spot just in case something fell through, but when someone from our original posse (most of whom had defected to the new line) saw my progress they offered to go collect her. I thought of inviting them all to Christmas, since we were so close now.....) The woman offered us three semi-decent seats in the orchestra section, and I said, "Fine, great, I'll take them!" The Blast! seats were even better, front row of the first balcony, right in our price range. "Excellent, where do I sign?" I was anxious to be the exact opposite of that damn couple and every other fucking customer who had held us up the entire damn day, if for no other reason than for the sake of my poor posse still waiting in line behind me (shout-outs to you, my bruthas.)
All told, we stood in that damn line for 7 and 1/2 hours. I thought I would never feel my feet again, and Deb swore never to go outside again. Ever. But we had our Lion King tickets, and we walked back out again six inches above the ground. I so wanted to hunt down the fur-coat-ladies, or better yet, the "poor-me-I've-been-sitting-on-the-phone-all-day-now-I-have-to-go-back-to-the-hairdresser" woman and inspire them, show them that it could be done, or more precisely, that I was done and I was going home now. But we made lifelong friends and have a great story to tell our grandchildren......if either of us didn't hate children.
Further interesting statistics: the total ticket sales for the day were 25,377, a Denver record (previously 8,300 in one day when Phantom of the Opera and Riverdance went on sale simultaneously.) 13,000 of them were in the first two hours. There were around 1,500 of us in line.
I'm going to see The Lion King.........:)
I'm going to see Equus..........: )
I apologize to
minikitkatgirl for subjecting her to an anxiety attack over the phone. As well I apologize to swankyfunk for doubting her.Once we all got in touch,
minikitkatgirl very quickly found us three seats together, Orchestra, Row D (which is actually six rows from the stage thanks to stupid rows AAA and BBB. But ask me if I'm worried about two rows when I was prepared to sit in the mezzanine before this find). "Oh my god!" sister Amy exclaimed. "You'll be able to see the sweat on his..." "Balls?" I helpfully supplied. "I was going to say 'upper lip' but I suppose that's true too," she finished.I've decided to embrace my inner perv. I want to see Harry Potter naked (or the "Potter peen" as
minikitkatgirl put it). Think less of me if you will, I don't care. The only thing that could make the play better would be if Rickman played the psychiatrist (or better still, Rickman as Alan Strang, though I think that might be pushing the age envelope way past breaking point). If people are wondering about my change of heart after all my whinging about poverty before, well, it's the difference between $150 for a seat at the back of the theater and $116 for a seat six rows from the stage. That's a difference I simply couldn't ignore, impending dentist appointments be damned.
I can relax now that we have the tickets. Now it's the simple matter of a plane ticket to New York, not nearly as challenging. But if you click below, you'll get to read my account of waiting in line for Lion King tickets when the show toured in Denver, and why I felt such unbearable pressure to buy Equus as soon as possible. (In my eyes at least) Lion King on tour was huge. Equus, with Dan Radcliffe, on Broadway, is COLOSSAL.
Email to
lizzieloudotcom dated November 26, 2001:I'M GOING TO SEE THE LION KING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ahem.....glad I got that out. I just can't control my enthusiasm. Ever since I first learned this play existed, I have been dying to see it.....when I found out it was finally going on tour and starting in Denver, well, I am so THERE.
MyFriendDeb and I planned to go downtown together to wait on line for tickets (there was confusion if they were available online, however, I fucking hate Ticketmaster anyway, so had two reasons to do this.) We arrived at 8 a.m., two hours before the box office opened....and the line already had easily 300-500 people in it. We gamely settled in for the long wait, not anticipating how long of a wait we eventually ended up with..... (<------a bit of foreshadowing there, thanks UCONN English Dept.)
At about 9 a.m. the line inexplicably took a big jump forward (the only one of the day.) Just as we got excited that perhaps they opened early, the rumor got back to us that they had made the overnight campers pick up their blankets and make room. So the wait began. We made friends fairly quickly with our fellow line-waiters immediately around us, who were very cool about holding the spot for the singletons among us, etc. The true bonding moment came when the line made the first big move. When we had settled down again, we all noticed a huge gap in the line behind us and across the plaza as it snaked around the edges. Creating this gap were a couple of uppity, chi-chi-poo-poo women in showy fur coats who were refusing to move up. When some people asked why they weren't moving, they insisted that they didn't want to move closer to the railing at the end of the plaza because it would be colder there. The entire space was a huge, open-air plaza, so this idea was ludicrous enough without taking into account that they were holding back probably another 1,000 people for their own personal illusions of comfort. The people behind them started getting restless, having seen the front of the line moving so rapidly with nothing to show for it at their end, until the folks directly behind them simply walked past them, trailing I don't know how many more before the women thought better of their plan. I imagine they didn't have many friends in their section of line after that. Deb and I (and our newfound friends) all gloated because we were in front of them, no matter how special they thought they were in their gruesome fur coats.
Sadly, this was the extent of the entertainment for many more hours, spent for the most part standing in one place on cold, hard concrete for 20-30 minutes, moving up two or three feet, then back to the standing in one place, etc. etc. etc. The sun showed its face for about 30 minutes, then uncaringly disappeared for the rest of the day, making for quite chilly conditions. I had my cell phone with me and amused myself by calling Tery at home twice, but she was sleeping so wasn't much fun. The rest of the time I spent endlessly redialing the box office number, hoping perhaps to get through and cut any amount of time off the grueling wait, unsuccessfully. We began in good spirits, reassured by people passing out seating charts that there were more people behind us than in front of us, a promise that quickly proved pretty meaningless as the hours dragged by and we performed the procedure described above of standing a lot, moving a little, etc. etc. etc.
Then, the rumors started. One guy in front of us who couldn't stand still for more than a minute was constantly running back and forth, trying to get information, which was oftentimes conflicting. First he heard not to waste time calling the box office, they had sold out of their ticket allotment. He told us there were only 7 windows open selling tickets (it turned out this was a generous number by the time we got close enough to see for ourselves.) Then he heard an employee estimate that at our current line position, we should have nothing to worry about. But he also heard that practically everyone in front of us were buying 8 tickets at a time (the maximum allowed per "household", not necessarily per party). The rest of us, I'm sure, were frantically making calculations: 10 weeks of shows x an uncertain (and constantly dwindling) number of decent (i.e. orchestra section) seats = get this fucking line moving, I'm cold and I want to get the hell out of here, but I also want my tickets godammit. As soon as the guy came back with the phoneline rumor, I shut off my phone to save the battery. But then at noontime Deb and I were so hungry that I went to forage for food, ending up in a coffee house in another line in front of a box office employee on a short break, who told us that the phone lines still had plenty of tickets left. But she also told us that 80% of the seats were sold before the box office even opened (to corporate groups, radio stations, season ticket holders, etc.) On went my phone again and back to the futile redialing routine (which at least kept me occupied.)
By the time I triumphantly returned with scones and hot chocolate for Deb (practically frozen solid even with six layers of clothes on) the rumors had taken an ugly turn....they were starting to sell out, by the time we got there all that would be available would be balcony seats, which according to Deb were worse than not being there at all. We decided easily that if that were the case, we would rather go home empty-handed and wait for the show's return someday. But we then had the dilemma....if this rumor were true, was it worth wasting another 2-? hours waiting for balcony seats? When I pointed out that the guy was wrong about the phone lines selling out, he got a little miffed and suddenly stopped sharing the (dubious) fruits of his frequent reconnaisance missions. There was a rumor that someone had offered a guy near the front of the line $200 for his spot in line....we all speculated that perhaps we might take the offer if we had nothing to look forward to but balcony seats anyway. Humorously, the guy behind us offered us $10 for our spot in line.
We had finally made some real progress....we had reached the first of the heat lamps set on tall light posts, they had about ten of them set at intervals to warm the lucky first 1/8 of the line (not giving two figs, evidently, for the freezing throngs at the back of the line, whose lives were already miserable enough, being at the back of the line.) As we neared the first lamp, the soundtrack (which had been blaring over speakers repeatedly the entire day) was playing the inspirational, uplifting chorus of "Circle of Life".....as we all stretched our hands into the sky to get closer to the heat, we laughed because it looked like we were paying homage to Mufasa himself. We all grew more excited to have come so far, while at the same time bleakly realizing we probably still had at least 2 more hours to go to travel that last, pathetic, 100 feet or so.
Then.......another rumor came, this one as good as verified when the family behind us left the line because of it. There was a second, smaller (smaller is not good enough a word.....infinitesimal is better) line around the corner selling tickets for everything else but Lion King...however, if you bought tickets to one of those shows, you could also get Lion King tickets at the same time. I again left Deb to verify this information, as coincidentally there is another show that Tery is dying to go to (Blast! an onstage drum and bugle corp with Stomp! influences.) There was a haughty woman on the sidewalk answering questions, and when I asked if the buy one, get Lion King tickets rumor was true, she only answered "It's possible." ??????? It was obvious she felt that we were cheating by getting tickets that way, (but hell, she hadn't been freezing HER ass off on the cement since before the sun came up) as when she later started manning a booth she would annouce her availability by loudly exclaiming "Next person buying anything BUT Lion King", causing some people to actually hesitate before proceeding, as it seemed that she might even refuse to sell them the Lion King too.
I waited in this line for probably 45 minutes (after going back for Deb, who was in the bathroom, but our newfound friends promised to tell her the news.) I also got to see firsthand why the line was so fucking slow. Poor staffing was the least of their problems....the root of the delay was illustrated by a couple who literally took 15-20 minutes to buy their tickets. As I listened with growing disgust, they attempted to buy 10 seats, together, and they weren't going to leave until they were seated on the fucking STAGE. They had to see what seats were available for practically all 78 shows, weighing them against each other for desirability, etc. They finally settled for two blocks of five, and I don't even know how close they ended up getting. The man selling the tickets was so exhausted after they left he got up and took a break. My new-newfound friends in line shared my derision for people like that who didn't care how many others were freezing outside who would probably not even get tickets after waiting for so long, as well as uncomprehension why the promoters, if they couldn't get more people selling tickets, didn't at least try to time limit this kind of behavior. Things were getting ugly, there ain't no denying that.
This included people who weren't even IN line. Just before I entered the building in the home stretch, I heard another chi-chi-poo-poo woman behind me approach the "It's possible" bitch with THIS attitude: "I've been trying to get through on the phone since 10:00 this morning (she emphasized "10:00" as if that was a really impressive time to start.....we heard some of the campers arrived in line at 5 pm the night before.) and I am NOT waiting in that line. How am I supposed to get tickets?" I didn't hear the answer, but I was tempted to suggest she go ask the fur coated-gap-ladies for cuts, they sounded like they might get along.
Anyway, AT LAST my turn came. Deb had turned up at this point (she was saving our spot just in case something fell through, but when someone from our original posse (most of whom had defected to the new line) saw my progress they offered to go collect her. I thought of inviting them all to Christmas, since we were so close now.....) The woman offered us three semi-decent seats in the orchestra section, and I said, "Fine, great, I'll take them!" The Blast! seats were even better, front row of the first balcony, right in our price range. "Excellent, where do I sign?" I was anxious to be the exact opposite of that damn couple and every other fucking customer who had held us up the entire damn day, if for no other reason than for the sake of my poor posse still waiting in line behind me (shout-outs to you, my bruthas.)
All told, we stood in that damn line for 7 and 1/2 hours. I thought I would never feel my feet again, and Deb swore never to go outside again. Ever. But we had our Lion King tickets, and we walked back out again six inches above the ground. I so wanted to hunt down the fur-coat-ladies, or better yet, the "poor-me-I've-been-sitting-on-the-phone-all-day-now-I-have-to-go-back-to-the-hairdresser" woman and inspire them, show them that it could be done, or more precisely, that I was done and I was going home now. But we made lifelong friends and have a great story to tell our grandchildren......if either of us didn't hate children.
Further interesting statistics: the total ticket sales for the day were 25,377, a Denver record (previously 8,300 in one day when Phantom of the Opera and Riverdance went on sale simultaneously.) 13,000 of them were in the first two hours. There were around 1,500 of us in line.
I'm going to see The Lion King.........:)
I'm going to see Equus..........: )
