Most folks are aware
that you can get same-day tickets to many Broadway and off-Broadway shows
for nearly 50% off via the Times Square TKTS booth. But here are a few
things that aren't as well known:
You
don't have to wait until you arrive at a TKTS booth to get some idea of
what shows will be sold at discount. Instead, you can see what shows were available
at TKTS last week by simply clicking here. Alternatively,you can click here and
then click the All Shows link that appears (in the upper-right)
to see a long list of NYC productions, along with a note about whether
each show typically does and doesn't provide tickets via the TKTS booths.
For example, here's a sampling from the listings on January 2nd, 2009:
Shows Frequently Available included:
Alter Boyz, August: Osage County, Avenue
Q, Chicago, Forbidden
Broadway, Hairspray, and Monty
Python's Spamalot.
Shows Occasionally Available included: All My Sons,
In the Heights, Mary Poppins, Pal Joey, Shrek the Musical, and
Tony N TIna's Wedding.
Shows
Never Available included: Billy Elliot: The Musical, Jersey Boys,
The Lion King, Stomp, and
Wicked.
The
Times Square TKTS booth is notorious for its long lines. But if you show
up around 7:30 pm, you'll find most of the tourists have already purchased
their tickets and run off to dinner...often shrinking the line to a wait
of 5-10 minutes. In addition, some of the most popular shows don't release
their prime vacant seats until 7:30 pm, which means your timing could
be rewarded with a VIP spot.
One
of the Times Square TKTS windows is devoted to plays. Therefore, if you're
not aiming for a musical or music-related show, go directly for this window,
which usually has shorter lines.
There are two other TKTS booths, at the South
Street Seaport and in Downtown Brooklyn.
Understandably, these tend to have fewer customers than their counterpart
in the heart of the Broadway district, which means less waiting and hassle.
And they're both a mere subway ride away.
Times Square TKTS Booth
Location:
Under the red steps at Broadway and 47th Street (called Father Duffy Square).
Getting
There by Subway: Take the 1/2/3/4/5/6/N/R/W/A/C train to the Times
Square stop.
Hours for Evening Performance Ticket Sales:
Monday - Saturday: 3:00
pm - 8:00 pm
Sundays: 3:00 pm until
30 minutes before the last curtain time available
Hours for Matinee Performance Ticket Sales:
Wednesdays and Saturdays:
10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Sundays: 11:00 am - 3:00
pm
South Street Seaport
TKTS Booth
Location:
At the corner of Front and John Streets, near the rear of the Resnick/Prudential
Building at 199 Water Street.
Getting
There by Subway: Take the 2/3/4/5/J/M/Z train to the Fulton Street
stop; or take the A/C train to the Broadway-Nassau stop.
Getting
There by Bus from Midtown: Take the M15 traveling downtown on 2nd
Avenue to the South Street Seaport.
Hours for Evening Performance Ticket Sales:
Monday - Saturday: 11:00
am - 6:00 pm
Sundays: 11:00 am - 4:00
pm
Matinee Performance Ticket Sales:
Matinee tickets are sold the day beforehand
at South Street Seaport. Specifically, Wednesday matinee tickets are sold
on Tuesday; Saturday matinee tickets on Friday; and Sunday matinee tickets
on Saturday. (For example, if you showed up Saturday morning, you could
buy tickets for Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon, but not for Saturday
afternoon.)
Downtown
Brooklyn TKTS Booth
Location: In 1 MetroTech Center, at the corner of Jay
Street and Myrtle Avenue Promenade.
Getting
There by Subway: Take the 2/3/4/5/M/R train to the Court Street-Borough
Hall stop, or the A/C/F train to the Jay Street-Borough Hall stop, or the M/R
train to the Lawrence Street stop.
Getting
There by Bus: Take the B54, B57, or B61 bus to the Jay Street and
Myrtle Avenue stop, which is on the same block as the booth; or take the B67
or B75 bus to the Jay Street and Willoughby Avenue stop, which is just a block
away from the booth.
Hours for Evening Performance Ticket Sales:
Tuesday - Saturday: 11:00
am - 6:00 pm
Matinee Performance Ticket Sales:
Matinee tickets are sold the day beforehand
at the Downtown Brooklyn booth. Specifically, Wednesday
matinee tickets are sold on Tuesday; Saturday matinee tickets on Friday; and
Sunday matinee tickets on Saturday. (For example, if you showed up Saturday
morning, you could buy tickets for Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon, but
not for Saturday afternoon.)
For more information,
please visit the Theatre Development Fund's site at TDF.org.
The TKTS booths are great
if you're okay with waiting on a potentially long line, and are open to
whatever shows and whatever seats for those shows happen to be available
when it's your turn at the ticket window.
If you want to plan an
evening, though, it's best to buy tickets in advance, which allows you
to carefully select both the show you want and your reserved seats. (In
addition, certain shows won't go through the TKTS booth but will
offer discount codes.) You usually can't nab 50% discounts this way; but
you can often get around 40% off, which for a party of four will still
save hundreds of dollars off the retail price. Here are a few examples
(as of January 2nd, 2009):
$66.50 tickets available for $39.50 (40%
off) with discount
code FBBBX84
To avoid service charges, buy at box office: 47th Street
Theatre, 304 West 47th Street
Again, the above are just a few examples.
To access tons of theatre discount codes, please visit the following sites:
BroadwayBox.com: The most comprehensive
list of theatre ticket discounts I know of on the Web. If you aren't familiar
with this site, you may find the quality of selections & discounts
jaw-dropping.
Playbill.com's Playbill Club: There are, very
occasionally, shows discounted here that aren't on BroadwayBox.com.
In addition, this site provides discounts for restaurants, and for events
beyond Broadway. (Note: Access
to the discounts section requires joining the Club; but membership is
free.) While you're visiting, check out all the other wonderful features
of Playbill.com, which provides a world of information
about the theatre.
TheaterMania Insiders:
Again, there are very occasionally shows discounted here that aren't on
BroadwayBox.com. Plus, for what it's
worth, this site is way more colorful and fun to use. (Note:
Access to the discounts section requires joining; but membership is free.)
Also be sure to check out this site's comprehensive NYC theatrical show
listings—which
are the best on the Web—by
clicking here.
Being able to see a NYC
stage show for 50% off is fantastic. But if you want to go for near-miraculous,
join a "seat filler" theatre service, which will let you catch
a wide range of live shows for an incredible $3.50-$4.50 a ticket.
These services exist
because there are many shows that, at times, don't manage to sell out
a performance. In some cases, these productions want more people to experience
them and spread positive word of mouth (especially during the first week
or two of the run). In other cases, they simply want to fill vacant seats
so the paying customers feel like they're at a popular show and the performers
benefit from the energy of a large crowd.
By getting enthusiastic
audience members to fill empty seats, these companies are providing a
genuinely valuable service to shows; and in the bargain allow you to see
off-off-Broadway, off-Broadway, and sometimes even Broadway productions
almost for free.
The following are the
four primary theatre services for NYC:
Theater Extras (www.theaterextras.com): Membership is $99 a year. Cost per ticket is $4, which is charged to your
credit card at the time you make your purchase. You can buy up to two
tickets per show. (Alternatively, you can join for $175 a year, which
allows you to purchase up to 4 tickets per show.) This is a mostly wonderful
service: Its Web site is colorful, informative, and fun to use; it typically
provides a large and wide-ranging selection of shows (often dozens
of them); and $4 is a quite low price (plus 25% of that is donated charities
such as Broadway Cares and Equity Fights AIDS). The one drawback I've personally
experienced is occasionally unresponsive customer service (though I'm
hoping the current problem, which has dragged on for weeks, is soon resolved).
If you join and want to do me a good turn, enter hy@hyreviews.com
as the person who referred you; if the site lives up to its promises, I'll get
four free tickets for it.
TheaterMania Gold Club (www.theatermania.com/gold): Membership is
$89 a year. Cost per ticket is $4.50, charged to your credit card at the time
you make your purchase. You can buy up to two tickets per show. (Alternatively,
you can join for $152 a year, which allows you to purchase up to 4 tickets
per show.) Like Theater Extras, this superb service has a Web site that's colorful
and informative; and it's even easier to use, because it gives you the option
of listing shows on a day-by-day basis. The Gold Club charges 50 cents more
per ticket than Theatre Extras; and when I last looked a year ago, it didn't
offer as many shows. On the other hand, it's recently been offering two tickets
to a hot Broadway show just for joining, which instantly more than covers the
annual fee. In the past the Gold Club has provided more tickets to Broadway
shows than the other services, but I don't know whether that's still the case.
The bottom line is that you can make up the cost of membership to the Gold
Club in a single evening.
Audience Extras (www.audienceextras.com):
The least expensive of the services, membership is $85 a year. In addition,
you must "bank" $30 when joining, and can then apply that money
to your ticket purchases. Cost per ticket is a low $3.50, which is subtracted
from the amount you've "banked." (In other words, your initial
membership fund will buy you eight tickets!) You can purchase up to two
tickets per show. (Alternatively, you can make a tax-deductible contribution
of $50 to The Memorial Foundation for the Arts, an organization Audience
Extras strongly supports. As a "thank you," AE will allow you
to purchase up to 4 tickets per show.) This service is more bare-bones
than Theater Extras and the Gold Club in that its Web site offers no show
images and isn't as much fun to use. Most importantly, the site provides
fewer quality show selections. However, you can't beat the low membership
fee and $3.50 charge. Therefore, Audience Extras can be a reasonable choice
as a backup service; e.g., if a show if available on both the Gold Club
and AE, you might as well buy from AE and save $1 per ticket.
Play-by-Play (www.play-by-play.com): Membership is $107 a
year. In addition, you must "bank" at least
$15 via your credit card. Cost per ticket is $3.50, which is subtracted
from the amount you've "banked" on the service. You can buy
up to two tickets per show. (Alternatively, if you pay double the membership
fee, $214 a year, you can purchase up to 4 tickets per show. However,
please note this is the steepest upgrade price of the four services.)
When I last looked a year ago, Play-by-Play's Web site was the most bare-bones
of the four: it offered few graphics, wasn't very informative, and wasn't much
fun to use; plus having to "bank" money instead of being charged on
a ticket-by-ticket basis is a nuisance. However, while Play-by-Play offered
significantly fewer shows than Theater Extras, the ones it made available
tended to be solid; and the per-ticket price of $3.50 is low.
Bottom line: I'd recommend
joining Theater Extras or the Gold Club as your primary service.
Because you can quickly
save hundreds of dollars in ticket costs using any of these services,
though, it can make sense to join a second one as a "backup."
While there's enormous overlap among the services, there will also be times
when primary service isn't carrying a show but your backup service is...and
it might be a production you really want to see. Also, because each service
is allotted a set number of tickets, a show will often sell out on one service
but still be available through another.
If your only interest
is in the latest and greatest shows on Broadway, then you should probably
stick to buying from TKTS and using
discount codes...and, when necessary, paying full price.
But if you're game for
exploring all NYC has to offer—especially
the myriad of small, quirky, and occasionally breathtaking productions
beyond Broadway—joining
a theatre service is opening the door to what might prove to be an unforgettable
adventure.
