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As Fairfield University students we are lucky to be in such close proximity to New York City, but we probably don’t have the extra cash to take advantage of everything exciting the city has to offer. There is one place you can go to that offers a rich entertainment experience without hurting your wallet: the TKTS Discount Ticket Booth in Times Square.
The TKTS booth sells discount tickets on a variety of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. There are over 30 musicals and plays with discounts ranging from 50 percent, 40 percent, 30 percent and 20 percent off the full price ticket.
“Being from Massachusetts, I don’t get into NYC as often as I would like but every time I go, I end up checking out TKTS,” Katie Foley ’10 said. Foley has used TKTS about five times, seeing popular musicals like “Movin’ Out”, “Spamalot”, “Thoroughly Modern Millie”, “The Music Man” and “Chicago”.
The choices at the TKTS booth are filled with a vast array of popular shows. Okay, so “Wicked” will probably never be at TKTS (and trust me, I will be first in line when it does), but there are many other hit shows available. Last week the list included “Phantom of the Opera”, “In the Heights”, “Chicago”, “Avenue Q”, “South Pacific”, “Next to Normal”, “God of Carnage”, “Memphis”, “Mamma Mia”, “Hair”, “Mary Poppins” and so on.
Even new and critically acclaimed shows like “West Side Story”, “Billy Elliot”, “Shrek the Musical” and “9 to 5: The Musical” were on TKTS soon after their openings. All of these shows were featured at the 2009 Tony Awards! Two new musicals that just opened in the last couple of months, “American Idiot” and “Promises” are already on the billboard as well.
TKTS is really convenient and easy to use for both matinee and evening performances. To check online to see what’s being sold at the booths, visit their website tkts.org. If you find yourself wondering where exactly the ticket booth is, then go to Times Square by the red steps in Father Duffy Square, and check their choices in case something new is showing or if an older show is no longer available.
Like anything that requires buying tickets in person, the lines can be pretty daunting. Although the lines move pretty fast once the box office opens, the ideal plan would be to get there an hour early to get the better seats. Waiting in line is improved by the employees standing by to tell you different details about a musical or play which may assist your decision making. According to Foley, it’s worth waiting in line because there is so much going on around you and there are always people performing up and down the line.
Getting a seat for certain shows are guaranteed because the theaters give the TKTS surplus tickets, but it’s always a good idea to have a back-up plan. Sometimes, you can get up to the window and they tell you there is only partial-view seating. In other instances, musicals listed online as being at the booths are no longer on the board for that given showing. More than once I’ve waited for “In The Heights” to go back to TKTS, to discover it’s only being offered for the evening performance.
When Claire Barnes ’10 and her family were staying in New York City for a week, they decided to see a show only a few days before trying to get their tickets through TKTS. Originally planning to see the evening performance of “Avenue Q”, her father stood on line for an hour in the rain. However, “Avenue Q” was not selling tickets at TKTS that day. Instead, they went to see “39 Steps”.
According to Mr. Barnes, one of the best things about TKTS is that it offers cheap tickets that you can’t find anywhere else, even if your searching online. $60 seats from TKTS can be just as great as the $100 seats others paid for months in advance.
“We ended up with excellent seats that I never would have paid for had they been full price,” Barnes father said. The family wound up sitting center orchestra five rows in front.
Foley had sat up in the balcony for a few shows and revealed that she had an “obstructed view” for The Music Man. They missed a little bit of the action that happened on the side of the stage, Foley said, but overall they were really good seats.
From my own experiences and from hearing those of others, seats through TKTS are best compared to ones from Ticketmaster. When I went to see “Avenue Q”, I was in second row center orchestra. At “9 to 5: The Musical”, we were about four rows in left orchestra. At “Next to Normal”, I got partial view seats 6 rows left orchestra that turned out fine. My farthest seats were when I went to see “Spamalot”, where I wound up sitting in the front row of the balcony.
“You don’t always get the show you want,” Foley said, “but you really can’t see a bad show on Broadway.”
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