Not a Cursed Child During Registration

On Wednesdat, tickets went on sale for Harry Potter's Play in London. The boyfriend and I have been planning a trip next year to London since April. When JK Rowling announced a Harry Potter Play was coming to London, I had to make sure we planned our trip around it.

During the time between announcing the play and Oct 18th, you had to sign up for pre-registration to be able to book tickets. A week ago, you had four days to make a user name with one of their booking companies. I thought it was smart to divide everyone into two different sites. Ticket pre-sales would go on sale Oct 28th, yesterday at 7am my time.

I woke up at 6:00am to make the important phone call saying I won't be going into work today. I battle if I should go in late or not but I didn't know how long it would take. Good thing too cause it took more than a small bathroom break.

At 6:39am, I got an email giving me a link to purchase tickets. With excitement, I clicked the link. This link brought me to a "pre-queue" waiting area with a countdown clock to 7 o'clock. I knew I had 20 minutes before registration time.

 

The 21 minutes was the slowest 21 minutes ever. I collected my belongings and headed upstairs so I could make noise without waking anyone. 17 minutes left. I texted my co-workers who were up for work. 15 minutes. I reminded myself what days we were aiming for. 10 minutes. The time clicked slowly down. Little by little.

 

 Soon it became 6:59am, I stared at the screen waiting for something to happened. When the clocked ticked over to 7am, the screen turned into a queue. The number of users in queue ahead of you: 4203. I sighed. It was going to a long morning of waiting.

 

Knowing I had a while, I went downstairs made myself a nice breakfast and got my phone charger. I decided just in case the computer didn't work, I should wait in the visual queue on my phone too: 6347 people ahead of me there. I headed upstairs with my water and food in hand. I saw I now only had 3621 people in front of me on the computer. This is going to be a piece of cake. 

 

As I watched, the cloaked man walk across the screen and my queue number drop, I entertained myself on twitter. People were actually buying tickets! Hopefully, I could too even with over 3,000 people left in front of me. I then did the calculations. With roughly 50 performances including the previews and 1,400 seats, 70,000 tickets are available and for sale. Awesome!   



 

 

Five minutes left to go, I saw some people on twitter were 38,000 person in line! Wow. I knew it was going to popular but didn't expect to see a huge number like that. As the cloaked man walked closer to the right of the screen, I inched closer to my screen.

 

After over an hour of opening my email, I was one minute away from registering. I knew I had 14 minutes to find tickets at the best price, enter my information and click done.

 

 

The screen flashed to "now it is your turn" before loading a new site. On this site, I had to enter my email address and password I created during pre-registration. I typed them in and hit enter. "wrong password and/or email address". I tried again. Same message before I realized I had the cap lock on. My bad!

Successfully, I entered my information and entered the site. A huge calendar faced me. I scrolled over to September and saw my dates: Saturday the 20th. I clicked. The cheapest price was 60 for corner back row seats. Nope try again. I clicked my next preferred date: Thursday the18th. Yes, available for only 30pounds.

 

I added those dates to my basket and hit check out. It brought me to the credit card information page. I enter all my information before realizing my billing address I had entered with my site registration was wrong. Knowing I only had two minutes left on the site. I hit entered and hope it worked.

"Confirmation, your tickets are secured subject to successful card authorization." Worried it says

pending card authorization, I emailed the site letting them know my billing address was wrong.

 

 

After a long wait (five hours), I got a reply which was very snappy and rude that read "if your card doesn't go through, we will contact you in seven days. Please don't send your address in email for security reasons." Okay. Great. Thanks for looking out for me I guess. Though I am still waiting on my confirmation email. Luckily, I wrote down my confirmation booking number.

That was my adventure of buying Harry Potter and the Curse Child tickets. Now to start planning my trip to London and avoid play spoilers for three months!