The sign as we walked into the Winter Garden Theater said: Back to the Future, Buy Your Tickets Yesterday. I chuckled as we went under the sign because we did buy our tickets yesterday.
Back up a little ... two weeks ago we bought Life With Pi tickets for July 8th to celebrate Don's half birthday, and to see the show that won a Tony for Best Lighting, Best Scenic Design of a Play, and Best Sound Design of a Play. It is also a play Don has been interested in seeing since he first heard about it earlier this year.
Going into New York is an all-day experience for us. It is at least an hour drive to the PATH station, a search for street parking, a thirty minute PATH ride (with trains coming on average every 20 minutes), and a walk from there to the theater. Easily 2 hours door to door, but allow at least two and a half if not three. That said, it is nice to do something else while in the City.
There are a lot of great shows currently on Broadway, many of which won Tony's this year. We were thinking we wanted to see another show, but couldn't decide which one. We left it up to fate and entered the lottery system.
We first learned about the digital lottery in 2016 when Hamilton was starting to gain excitement. Don and I both entered the lottery. He won. I lost. He gave Ashley and I the tickets and we had an incredible experience.
Over the next few years we tried again without much success. I tried to win Springsteen on Broadway tickets over and over and over and over again with only a "try again" message in reply. Since May 2022, though, we have had four lottery wins. A lottery win just means you have a limited opportunity to buy a ticket to the show. While Hamilton tickets are $10 (a Hamilton), Back to the Future winning lottery tickets are $45 (unlike the regular lottery, you only pay if you win). Most of the tickets I saw for that performance were over $100 each.
Each show has different rules. In this case, the lottery is run by Telecharge for performances taking place the next day. The day before the ticket, you register to say you want to apply for the lottery. They also have other shows you can choose from to try -- I selected Camelot, Some Like it Hot, and Parade, too. The one website approach is great.
At 10 AM I received a message saying I won Back to the Future tickets and that I had until 3 PM to purchase my tickets. Don did not receive a message. I did not receive word about the other shows. This is a change from the past when we would receive the "try again" message (which is so easy to read as "you are a loser" in the heat of the moment).
At 3 PM we heard we did not win the other shows. This was the biggest change from the past -- a second chance drawing using the unclaimed tickets from the 10 AM drawing. Our "try again" messages included a link for buying cheap seats to the shows we did not win, or when there were no cheap seats, there was no upselling. The cheap seats were about $15 more than the lottery ticket, still a bargain for the caliber of live theater.
With our win we abandoned our plan to go in extra early to stand in line for Rush tickets (last year we paid Line Dudes to stand in line for us to score Music Man tickets). Same theater. Different show.
This makes our fifth lottery win: Hamilton, Mrs. Doubtfire, Beetlejuice, and Plaza Suite being the other four. With the exception of Hamilton, the others are all after the COVID closure. At this rate, we'll keep trying.
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