If you want to see The Book of Mormon, you’re out of luck. At least for now. You can, however, get discounted tickets for other Broadway shows via tkts at 3 locations–Times Square, downtown Brooklyn, and South Street Seaport. Closed since Sandy blew through, Seaport reopened while Ruth & I were in New York.
According to Wikipedia, tkts has sold 51 million tickets, filling what might otherwise have been empty seats, during 35 years of operation.
We’ve never been disappointed with tkts’ service, but every time we’re in NYC, there seems to be a major change in its system. At the time of our last visit, tkts had started taking credit cards, which eliminated the need to carry around large amounts of cash. This time we discovered a new line that speeded up getting tickets. Line #1 was just for plays, and it was very short since there weren’t many of those running. If you’re planning to see more than one show, see a play first and save a lot of time.
Most who don’t want to pay full price for tickets hope to see a musical. Those lines can get very long very early. I was told that some avid fans begin queuing up at 7 am at the Times Square booth that doesn’t open until 3 pm for evening performances. Tickets for matinees usually go on sale at 10 am.
On our first day in New York, I stood in the “play only” line for less than 45 minutes and scored half-priced tickets to Ann, a play about Ann Richards, a salty Texas ex-Governor, starring Holland Taylor, who gave a magnificent performance. Regretfully, Ann has closed. The man before me in line ignored the little red, white, and gold paper the agent passed out to him. I stuck mine in my pocket and learned later that it allowed me to return within a week to buy tickets to ANY show in the fast line. That’s how we saw last year’s Tony Award winning musical Once with half priced tickets. The day before, Once had been only 20% off. You have to watch the electronic board for the deals.
A helpful tkts line watcher told me about a free tkts app and helped me download. It listed shows that would probably offer reduced ticket prices, described them, gave directions to the theater, told the full price range, etc. It even informed me if the theater had a drinking fountain and where it was. I used this app a lot.
tkts website warns, “Beware of tickets sold on the street…illegal tickets will not be honored at the theatre.” I talked to a few circling, independent agents because there was a show that Ruth & I really wanted to see, Pippin, that wasn’t being offered at tkts. Luckily, a tkts agent recommended that I go to the Music Box Theatre and ask if there were any regular priced tickets available. There were. We saw Andrea Martin give the Tony-winning performance of the decade for less than $100 a ticket.
Hank
Security Conscious 