I knew it wouldn't be easy. After
losing the lottery, I was getting ready for the public sale this thursday. I read a lot of pieces of advice from several forums and
a good link given by
Holger.
My TicketMaster account was ready with all the informations saved. I stayed at work later to be before a computer by 18 PM.
To "train" myself with the process, I logged at 17PM and tried to score a ticket for Reading, the show right before Halloween, on the 29th.
Last week, I toyed with the idea of going to this show too on my way to Atlantic City but the timing wasn't right with my Morocco trip and the flights to the USA.
After 10 minutes of "High demand! No match!" I'm finally offered 100 section seats, most of them behind the stage ! I'm still hiting the "search" button until I found General Admission floor tickets 15 minutes later. That's a good thing I tried before the Atlantic Run. I realized that I can have others tickets than the first offered.
I follow the process to see what's next, if I can get to the end and so on. And so I clicked one more time... and found myself too far than I thought.
I just bought my first Phish ticket.
But I'll have to go myself to the venue on the day of the show with my ID and the credit card to get it ! As an international buyer, I can't have the ticket printed or shipped to France ! And then I realize that I have a non-refundable ticket to a show I can't attend and I can't sell it because I can't go to the venue to retrieve it !
And then 18 PM arrive.
I click on the link for the 3-days pass, enter the quantity (just 1, I'm not greedy), select GA Floor and hit "Find Tickets".
And I waited...
And I waited...
20 minutes later, the "countdown" has already showed me "Please wait 15 minutes", "14 minutes", back to "15 minutes", "7", "4", "15", "3"... That's rather random if you ask me !
40 minutes later, after trying on the computer and on my phone at the same time (with the mobile site, not the application because it can't be installed on a french phone !)
A few minutes later, the Twitter account announced that the run was SOLD OUT.
How bittersweet. I paid a ticket that I won't ever see and didn't get the ones I wanted.
My options now are trying to get the AC tickets from extras. But let's see on Stubhub, the prices are insane.
I might find a fellow fan on phish.net but I'm not the only one who wants tickets.
I can do like this japanese fan who'll fly to the show and plan on finding tickets at the venue. I can't take that risk.
I can go to the Reading show only but that would be far too expensive for only one show.
I guess I fail at Phish.
