Wonderful Wednesday in New York City, Part I — In the tckts Line

Waiting in line for the tkts booth to open up

I had expected that the heavens would open up when we were there. It was one of the reasons that I decided to wear dress pants instead of blue jeans because the dress pants would dry off quicker. Turns out I didn’t have to worry about that. There was some ran but none that really impacted us.

Along comes Wednesday. We get up and have breakfast. Denis had eggs Benedict and I had french toast at a place not too far from our hotel. Once we were done we headed off to the tkts line. There were about five people in line ahead of us. We were in line about an hour and a half before the booth would open. About as long as we had waited the day before.

This time the weather was not as nice as the day before. It had rained some and it was sprinkling on and off as we waited. Nothing terrible but just enough to be annoying.

As often happens when standing in lines you got to know the people around you. The woman in front of us had just gotten into the city the day before. I’m not sure from where exactly. She was thinking of seeing Kinky Boots. I said it was really good and I think she would like it.

Behind us was a group of women from Madison, Wisconsin. At least the one we did the most talking with said that was where she was from. I assumed that the rest were from there too. They had done a great deal of walking the past couple of days. They had several shows on the list that they wanted to see. Chicago and Les Misérables being two of them. Denis talked them into seeing Les Misérables because he thought they would enjoy that the most.

As it got closer for the booth to open an employee of the booth came out and started talking about what was going to be on the board. We asked about A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. He said it was not going to up on the board. He said might get some tickets sometime during the day for it but he wasn’t sure. He added that sometimes theaters will wait until later in the day to make a decision.

We were both disappointed. We started talking about what we would do. We looked on line for tickets to it but they were way too expensive. They we thought we could go to the theater and see what they had there. Or we could pick another show entirely. We decided to go with Pippin.

The line moved forward as the booth got ready to open. We then noticed that there was another line that people were in. This were people that had bought tickets in the last week from the booth. You’d show them and be able to jump to the front of the line. (Denis pointed out in jest, if we done our home work, we could have been in this line. He added it to the list of the things I’d done to “ruin” his trip. The fact that the outlet on the bus didn’t work and the air conditioning. Also that both Kinky Boots and Gentleman’s guide had been listed the day before. Also that Billy Porter was off the night we saw Kinky Boots. This became the joke of our little group of line standers). But things took a different turn in our favor

The booth opened. There’s one big long time to get up to the booth. Once it’s open there are individual lines for each of the windows. We ended up being on the next to last window to the right as you face the booth. The woman who’d been in front of us was in the farthest line to the right. She could see the list of shows that were available. All of sudden she said it’s up. It’s up. Gentleman is on the board. We both said great and thanks. I said I think that deserves a hug. And gave her a big hug.

It seemed to take forever for it to be our turn to get tickets. We asked for a Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. The guy said that’s not available and we said it had just gone up. He checked and said it sure is up. So we got our tickets. It turned out to be the last row in the orchestra. It also turned out that most of the people in our row were people who were in line at the booth.

With this huge success, we headed back to our hotel to rest up and plan our next move.