Ticket shopping

After my last post I was still so jazzed over the Habs’ winning that I decided to try to buy a ticket to see a live game. The ticket prices were insane, but I figured that this was something I would never ever do again, so it was worth trying to get. I spent 3 hours on Saturday trying to score a ticket!

To buy a ticket you had to go to the NHL.com website at 1:00 PM and enter the virtual “waiting room.” At 2:00 PM you were assigned a random spot in line and then had to wait until your turn came up. While waiting you were able to see as the different types of seats sold out, and the different games sold out. The cheapest (and worst tickets) ranged from $70 to $90. The best tickets cost $502. The rest of the tickets ranged anywhere between those figures.

As seat availability waned, I started having to triage my seat choices. My original choice was to sit in the cheaper seats that still had a good view. But as time when on, suddenly those seats were no longer available. Crap! I quickly surveyed the other choices and decided that I’d be willing to pay more for a better seat. And then those seats sold out too! Crap! This process repeated itself several times, with my seat selection slowly getting more and more expensive, but when the only available seats left were $430, I had to admit that seeing a game wasn’t worth that much to me.

Thankfully I never did have to make the choice between my wallet and seeing a live game. After 2 hours of waiting, all three games were sold out entirely. Phew! Problem solved!

Admittedly I might have had the opportunity to get a ticket, but half way through the process I accidentally left the “waiting room” by going to a different website. (I had meant to go into a different window, but I messed up.) When I realized what I had done, I frantically mashed the “back” button on my browser and re-entered the queue. I can only assume that I lost my original place in “line.”

Now, after having gone through all that drama to try to score a ticket, I don’t even know if it was worth it. The game last night was atrocious! I was revolted by how poorly my team played! WTF Habs?! (And apparently I’ve waxed on too long and hard about my love for this team. My mom phoned me last night to mock me for their bad showing. And this morning my friend emailed me to jeer at their loss.) They better make an awesome comeback on Thursday!