Well it’s finally here. The long-awaited crush to get tickets for Hamilton begins on Friday morning. Getting in on the first run-tour of the Broadway Juggernaut is proof of concept for the Eccles Theater, which was built and sold to the public for exactly this type of event. The Eccles has already hosted some outstanding first-tour productions like Something Rotten! and An American in Paris but this is definitely the full stress test of the theater’s abilities. So let’s see what this baby can really do!
Hamilton completely upended the Broadway economy, commanding astronomical ticket prices in after-market sales. Thusly, the booking and ticketing agencies behind the Eccles are aggressively trying to ensure as many actual Utahns as possible get tickets and are working hard to shut down ticket bots, scalpers and counterfeiters. Season subscribers have already had the pick of the litter so the remaining tickets are going to be a hard won.
Feeling young, scrappy and hungry? The ticketing sales are going to have some pretty specific hoops you’ll need to jump through. The rigamarole is painstakingly detailed here on the Arts Salt Lake website. You’ll want to read that page carefully but here’s a couple of highlights.
Get your Arttix account up to date, like now. If you already have one go here to double check your password and account details are in order. If you don’t click here to set one up.
On Friday morning, starting at 9 a.m., you can log into a virtual waiting room, which sounds sort of like Spirit Prison. At 10 a.m., you’ll be randomly placed into a virtual line and can purchase only four tickets per household. This will be particularly vexing for polygamists.
You won’t be able to pick specific seats, just sections so pray and ponder over your comfort level out of the price range of $75 to $165 (or $300 if you want to go VIP) and have your personal schedule handy to pick a show date within the window of April 18 to May 6.
For you luddites—Harrison Smithwick, I’m talking to you—there will not be any sales over the phone, but you can go to actual the theater box office Friday morning, where I imagine there will be folks already starting to camp out like we Utahns do for the Pioneer Day Parade.
Although the tips don’t say this, you might want to make sure your temple recommend is in order. Couldn’t hurt.
