Hey guys!
If you are reading this and are a Hamilton fan, you will probably already be aware that tickets for Hamilton London go on General Release at noon on Monday, January 30th.
If you are currently feeling all the feels and emotions, including (but not limited to) dread, anxiety, stress, excitement, apprehension, etc – then fear not, I am here to (hopefully) be of assistance!
I was lucky enough to sign up in time to get priority on sale, which means I got my tickets on January 16th. It was stressful. I cried. But I got them and I’M SO EXCITED!!!
Anyway, I thought since I have my tickets and I am no longer stressed and worried, I’d put together a couple of tips and tricks to make the ticket gaining process slightly less daunting!
1. BE READY TO QUEUE
The first thing you need to do is face the fact that you’re going to have to Queue. AND, to make matters worse, you’re going to be in a queue against the rest of the world. Priority on sale bookers were lucky in that we only had to queue against the other people on the priority list, whereas you could potentially be queuing with the other 7 billion people on the planet. So don’t have a paddy and start screaming at Ticketmaster or the HamiltonWestEnd twitter account because you’re in a queue and don’t want to be, just accept it before you’re even in one.
2. GET THERE EARLY
Bearing the above in mind, treat an online queue as if it was a real life queue for tickets and get there early. You wouldn’t turn up at a box office three hours after tickets went on sale hoping for a front row seat, would you? So don’t do it online either. I was set up with my laptop and iPhone out ready to refresh the living daylights out of the page an hour before the tickets were supposed to go on sale and it turned out that the website let people in the queue 15 minutes before 12pm, so being early was a good thing.
3. HAVE MULTIPLE DATES IN MIND
If you decide that out of the 200+ dates that are on offer, you’re only willing to go on one particular day, you may as well resign yourself to never ever getting Hamilton Tickets. Try to pick a month or two in which you would be willing to take time off work/college/school in order to travel to see the show. Personally, I wanted to go on my 20th Birthday, which is March 17th, 2018, however, I knew that I wasn’t 100% likely to get that date, so I tried for any date in March, and I was lucky enough to end up with March 16th, 2018. Not bad at all, in my opinion!
4. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY
If you’re taking money from a savings account to pay for the tickets, take it out on Sunday. If you’re using someone else’s card to pay for the tickets, make sure you have it as early as you can so you’re not running around looking for it when you finally have tickets in your basket. Tickets range from £20 for limited view seats, up to £200 for premium seats, so know which price band you’re looking for and make sure the exact amount is in your bank account ready to pay!
Note also that you CANNOT buy these tickets as a present unless the cardholder is attending the show with the gift recipient. All Hamilton tickets are paperless and therefore require ID in order to gain access to the theatre on the night of your chosen show.
5. KNOW WHO YOU ARE GOING WITH
Tickets are limited to 6 per person. So make sure you know who you are going with, how many people want a ticket and what night you are all free. You aren’t going to have time to dilly dally around wondering how many to buy when you finally beat the queue. You get around 3/4 minutes to make your seat selection and 4 minutes MAX to pay for them otherwise it’s back in the queue for you!
6. MAKE A TICKETMASTER ACCOUNT
I cannot stress this enough, you NEED to make a Ticketmaster account BEFORE the tickets go on sale. If you try to sign up for an account half way through the ticket purchasing process you’re going to lose your chosen seats and again it’ll be back in the queue for you!
7. DO NOT HAVE A MILLION TABS OPEN
Ideally, you should be able to get tickets by having one tab open on a browser on your laptop. But, if this doesn’t work out so well PLEASE do not open a million tabs all at once, it will make everything slower and most likely decrease the likelihood of you getting tickets. If you must have the website open more than once, do it on separate devices AS LONG AS you have very good WIFI signal or are willing to use your 4G.
8. DON’T USE THE TICKETMASTER APP
You can’t.
9. KEEP YOUR EYE ON TWITTER
Follow @Ticketmaster, @TicketmasterCS and @HamiltonWestEnd on Twitter, as well as keep your eye on the #HamiltonLDN hashtag. This will keep you updated on how many tickets are gone, how many are left, what dates have the best availability, etc. It will also be your lifeline if anything goes wrong, use it to your advantage!
10. STAY CALM
Technically I can’t really say I practice what I preach because I was shaking. BUT, try and stay calm. Once you get in, pick your date, pick your seats and get out. Don’t tweet about being in or call your friend to tell them you’re in. GET IN AND OUT AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. Then you can scream and cry and tweet Lin that you love him as much as your heart desires. AFTER you’ve secured your tickets!
I hope this helps people wanting to buy Hamilton tickets on Monday, and I hope everyone that wants them manages to get them! Don’t be disheartened if you don’t, though, there’ll be another ticket release for the next run, later, so you still have a chance!
If there is anything else ANYONE wants to know, do be sure to comment down below, or you can tweet or DM me HERE with your questions which I am happy to answer!
Good Luck!
