I plan to buy tickets for the upcoming Tears For Fears concert in Atlantic City via Ticketmaster. The ticktes go on sale at 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, and as I would like to secure the best possible seats, I plan to complete my purchase at 12:01…which leads to my question.
For anyone who’s bought tickets from Ticketmaster before – does their online sales dealy bob allow you to select your seat from those available? If not, will I be able to do this if I buy the tickets over the phone? Which method, in your experience, would give me the opportunity to secure the best seats in the house? Or does this all vary by venue (it’s the Taj Arena, if that makes a difference), rendering all of these questions irrelevant? All input is appreciated.
P.S. Yes, I checked the Ticketmaster FAQ, and yes, I sent them an email. Their response was that the tickets go on sale Saturday at 12:00 p.m., and I can make “all relevant choices” at that time. Well, thanks. Way to be specific. So, as usual, I count on the SDMB to be smarter than the company that actually sells the damned tickets. Don’t let me down.
I’ve used Ticketmaster in the UK before, the seating options vary from place to place and gig to gig. I guess they get the information from the venue. However they always have a “Best seat at this price” for each ticket price – I’ve no idea how they decide that.
However, the Ticketmaster UK website tends to fall over in a heap when selling tickets for anything really popular (i.e. events that sell out in hours rather than days).
I’d think you’ve a better chance going through the venue if you can. If you buy tickets over the phone the worst case scenario is that the person you’re talking to will have the same options that ticketmaster would have given you and there’ll be a good chance that they may have more options or at least have some knowledge of what the options translate to in real life.
Ticketmaster are vague in their response because it varies so much between events. As I said some events have more options than others. I dimly recall links to seating diagrams with colour coding showing how the tickets are partioned but that might not have been a ticketmaster thing.
Been there and done that. I would register ahead of time on their site. That will save you some time. You are given the choice of “best seats available” but I do not know how this is determined.
The only times I’ve gotten really good seats has been when I have had inside connections (radio DJ or record label person).
I used to work at a record store where we sold Ticketmaster tickets. The moments tickets go on sale, you have hundreds of retail outlets, computer users, and phone sales people drawing at the exact same time. There isn’t time to let you choose your tickets because they’re selling so fast. At the record store, we got the ticket orders of the first ten peope in line (we lined 'em up by lottery) and drew those tickets as fast as we could so they could get the best tickets.
If you have a fast connection, do it online. Preregister and have the window up so you can hop in there at the first possible moment. That’ll be your best bet. A screen’ll come up asking you if you want the tickets drawn and you’ll have a couple of minutes to decide. If you decide no and redraw, realize that hundreds of tickets could have been sold in those two minutes and the seats you’ll get are gonna be much, much worse.
If this show isn’t gonna be a big seller, I might risk the redraw. The computer has the seats ranked in order of “goodness”. A lot of times all the seats in the middle section must sell out before the side sections do. Often, I find a closer seat in the side section preferable to the back of the middle.
A lot of getting tickets is really a matter of luck. A good portion of the tickets are already prereserved for VIPs, radio station give-aways, etc. Also, there’s some mysterious scalper/Ticketmaster connection. They always swore they didn’t have seats reserved for scalpers yet the scalpers always mysteriously have good seats. One trick the scalpers do is to pay bums to stand in line and purchase tickets. But the scalpers often have blocks of tickets in numbers exceeding the number of tickets allowed to be purchased at one time. Don’t know what’s up with that…
Thanks to all for your replies. As much as I’d love for it to be otherwise, I doubt if “Tears For Fears 2004” is going to be the sellout of the century. My Cafe Society thread on TFF Atlantic City – Who’s Going? has garnered precisely three responses, all of which are of the negative variety. The Arena at the Taj only has 5,000 seats, which isn’t that terribly large, so it seems the band’s promoter would (silently) agree with my assessment.
So, does that fact change anyone’s suggested strategy? I emailed the Taj, and they said phone orders aren’t accepted…and I don’t intend to make an 11-hour round trip to purchase tickets. I have a broadband connection, and I’ve already registered with Ticketmaster online. So, the plan now is to get online at 11:45 (tickets go on sale at noon), and refresh, refresh, refresh until go time. Sound like the best idea?
As much as I hate ticketmaster, your strategy is sound. I’ve used them for concerts of this type before.
Here are your best and worst case scenarios. Best scenario at home You use ticketmaster online at home. You’re online before the tickets are available. Jump in and order away. For an event like this, you’ll likely get decent seats. As far as risking the redraw, that is up to you.
Do you know this arena well? Some arenas may not sell some of the side seats at all if the demand doesn’t warrant it.
The only drawback is any potential problem you might have on that particular day with your interent connection. The whole Murphy’s law thing.
I have always had worse luck with tickets over the phone. I’ve been cut off over the phone before. You’ll run the risk of getting an incompetant or apathetic agent as well.
I would NOT go to a local ticketmaster outlet. I have the worst luck with those. The person working there will not have any interest in getting you the best seats.
The REALLY good seats are going to be held by local radio stations and promo people. Nothing you can do about this except try to get to the concert early enough and maybe score some.
Why not just go to the Ticketmaster site and practice? As long as you don’t accept the tickets and give your credit card info, nothing happens.
You can search by artist, by venue, and by geographic location. So you can test all the places that Tears for Fears will be at before Atlantic City and see how good the available tickets still are. (The computer decides what the “best available” seats are for any price range.) Or you can just go to the Trump Taj Mahal and look at the seating plan and see what tickets come up for other shows. Play around with the site until you feel confortable.
Practice, practice, practice as they used to say.
Just to spook you, though, is 12 p.m. noon or midnight?
