Holy Cow! Had I known it was going to be such a process, I’d have been better prepared the first time around. This entire saga was a week long event people, and not just any week, FINALS WEEK. Gahhh!

Basically, the pre-sale Hamilton tickets went on sale 05 December 2016 promptly at 10am. These tickets were only available to American Express cardholders (Thank-you military!), and they were only available online. I definitely did not think it was going to be a big deal. Just get online at 10am and buy tickets. Well, I was wayyyy wrong.

First of all, a countdown began on the website at 8am and it basically said anyone who gets on the website before 10am will randomly be assigned a number at 10am, and anyone who gets on the website after that will get assigned a number and will wait in line. Max tickets you could buy were 6. Okay, no big deal right? Again, WRONG.

At 10am, this is the screen Megan R. and I were looking at.

Ummm, good God. We were # 29, 481 in line. How many tickets were they even selling? No one seemed to know.

So this is how the pre-sale went for us. Not very well. I had to go to a class from 10 to noon that I can’t bring my phone into because it’s classified, and when I left the class at noon, 2 hours later, we were just under 20,000. This was going to be a long wait.

At around 2pm, I received an email saying that the ticket presales were finished and I would have to wait until they went on sale 12 December 2016 at 10am.

Well that kind of sucked.

Fast-forward one week and this time we were better prepared. Although we could not determine which random number we were assigned I woke up at 4am to write finals and keep the hamilton tickets page up, just in case it mattered how early you got there. My friend Sarah and her husband John were on their laptops, cellphones, any device with the website.

I actually had a meeting with one of my thesis advisors at 09:30 and literally had my phone on and inside of my jacket pocket during the countdown. We really wanted to get these tickets!! In addition to waiting in a virtual line, Sarah and I were also calling the box office to try to get through on the phone. Fat chance that was happening..!

The results for where we fell in line:

The computer at my house came in at 24,000

My cell phone got assigned 13,000 (not so bad)

John, Sarah’s husband, came in at 64,000 (holy shit!!)

and Sarah, that darling, came in at 6,600

That was our ticket! Today you could also call the venue and buy tickets over the phone, or go there and buy them at the box office. We were freaking out on the phone with each other, but in some crazy way, we got 6 tickets to Hamilton all sitting together, and on a Friday night! BOOYAH!!

I figured after all this effort, it merited a spot on da blog. What a morning. Phew. Now it’s time to get done with these damn finals so the holiday’s can begin.

This article appeared first on The Cassey Excursion.