Elton John is FINALLY coming to Seattle again. It’s been years, and damn do I need a fix!

Nate, my best friend and partner in crime in all things Elton, treat ticket-buying as seriously as a covert military operation. We gather intelligence from reliable sources, we plan our mode of attack, and then at the crack of dawn, we move in and conquer.

Intelligence gathering:

Last night, I called the ticketmaster near my house. The guy informed me that they do a lotto if “a ton” of people show up. I ask him to define “a ton” and he says “10 or more”. In previous  ticket-buying operations, we’ve encountered 50 or more people in line, soooo… I won’t bother getting up before the crack of dawn to be 3rd in line only to draw #27 in the lotto. Yay, extra sleep time fits into the plan.

The Plan:

Nate will be at work, so she will man the computer and try to get through to Ticketmaster Online and if needed will also use her cell phone to make attempts to call in to get tickets. Meanwhile, I will go to the nearby Ticketmaster and go through the lotto process. I will also attempt to call on my cell phone to get tickets. We will stay in phone contact with each other during the entire operation.

The Operation:

8:00 am – I’m out the door, and heading down the road. All is going as planned, so far. Shit! People are driving to work and they’re IN MY WAY. Traffic hell. Time to revise the plan and detour to find a better route.

8:30 am – Tentatively I walk into the store where the Ticketmaster counter is and find… TWO people in line. Oh life is good. I take my place in line and immediately start praying that “a ton” of people do not show up. Immediately the Ticketmaster nazi girl comes over and starts handing us tickets for a lotto. Dumbfounded, I ask “Umm… excuse me? You’re doing a lotto for THREE people???”

She replies, “Yes, the Ticketmaster rules clearly state that a lotto be done for more than 2 people.” 

OK then.

She hands us each a ticket… the kind that come on a roll. Mine says number 8590753. I’m a little confused. I ask her how this works, and she tells me that at 9:50 she’ll draw the corresponding other side to the ticket and the person with that ticket will be first in line, and the following ticket numbers line up after them. I’m surprised because in previous ticket-purchasing operations, at 15 minutes before selling starts, they put a bunch of numbers in a hat (or box or whatever) and everyone in line draws a number and that’s where they stand in line. I indicate this to the nazi girl and she once again goes into the Ticketmaster spiel. “Then they were not acting in accordance with Ticketmaster rules. The rules state that the lotto be performed exactly this way.”

OK then.

8:52 am – This is T minus 8 and counting, I might add. The nazi girl gathers everyone around, while she unknowingly taunts us, shaking the little bag that contains the tickets she’s going to be drawing for the lotto. She explains how the lotto works. Internally, I’m tapping my foot while (still internally) chanting “draw… draw… draw”. She explains how the ticket buying process works. By now my eyes are darting around, I’m starting to hyperventilate and I fear my tongue may start bleeding from biting it so I don’t yell out “For the love of God, just DRAW THE TICKETS!!!” She then goes into a personal tirade about how we should refrain from using our cell phones during the whole process because it’s distracting for her, it’s distracting for other people, and “it’s just plain RUDE”. Already being discrete with my phone convo with Nate, I get even more so. 

My eyes start darting around in search of a clock while frantically muttering “What time is it? What time is it?” Thankfully, Nate informs me that it’s 8:55. What??? The nazi girl said she was going to do the lotto at 8:50 and all she’s been doing is spewing out rule after rule. How in the world will we all assemble in an orderly manner in time??? They MUST make the first attempt at tickets for the first person in line at EXACTLY 9:00!! 

8:56 am - Finally, she draws a ticket! Technically, according to the guy I talked to last night, we’re just one short of a ton, seeing as only 9 people showed up. We all line up, and there are 4 people in front of me. According to our well drawn-up plan, that’s enough for us to implement Nate going online, but not enough to justify using multiple phones to try to call in. 

9:00 am – GO!!! The first guy gets decent seats. The other people in front of me are getting *OK* seats but they’re all buying the $85 tickets and we’re going to be shooting for the $125 tickets. Nate is finding nothing short of nosebleed seats online. As the woman in front of me pays for her tickets, I slip my cell phone into my back pocket, still connected to Nate, who is still trying online. I’m not in the mood for nazi girl to slow the process down by telling me I must get off my phone. 

9:0… hell I wasn’t watching the clock!! – My turn! My turn! “Two $125 tickets please” *type type type*…. *wait wait wait*…. Section 209… I look at the seating chart. Section 209 is in the nosebleed section at the very back of the Arena. “These seats are $125??” I ask. Apparantly there are none of those left, and these are $85 tickets. If those are $85, where are the $45 seats???

The nazi girl kind of laughs and says “probably behind the stage”. My eyes light up as I urge her to search for $45 seats. We’ve sat behind the stage before, and it is NOT a bad place to be, believe me. While the girl surrenders the bad tickets back into the online pool of tickets and performs a new search, I have to reassure myself that the tickets won’t all be gone by the time she gets through again… Elton won’t sell out a 30,000 seat venue in 5 minutes.

The tickets she pulls up this time are not $45, but once again $85. They are however, MUCH better seats. Still in the nosebleed section, these are on the side in the middle. “I’ll take them!”

After I finish the payment process, I pull out my phone and tell Nate the location of our seats. She is still trying online and has found $85 tickets that are NOT nosebleed and directly to the left of the stage. WOOHOO!!  26 rows from the stage!! We’ve sat here before too and though a lot of people wouldn’t like looking at Elton’s back, I love it because we get to watch his magical fingers on the keyboard. Besides, they always have big screens showing closeups of his face and all that.

“Buy them!!”

Debriefing

The operation is a success. We have 2 sets of tickets. We’ll keep the best ones and sell the others. Now we just have to wait till September to use them…