I've Got A Golden Ticket!

Friday was definitely a day of roller coaster emotions! April 1st had been marked on my calendar as the day that tickets for the 2011 Boston Beer and Bacon Festival were on sale.



I was ready at 1 p.m. on the dot, made it as far as the screen that asked for how many tickets I wanted, and then the screen stopped loading. As in, no button appeared for me to click on to purchase the tickets.  Seconds passed and finally the button appeared, but it was too late. A message popped up telling me that "No inventory was available" aka you're out of luck. I knew that this year's event was popular and was going to be a sell-out, but I didn't think it would happen immediately!

The worst feeling came when I had to email Andrew and Phu to let them know that I failed in getting tickets. The possibility of not getting tickets simply had not crossed our minds. I assumed Amy had the same luck, but she emailed minutes later, asking me if my email about not getting tickets was an April Fool's joke and that she had been successful in getting two tickets for herself and a roommate. I was happy for her but still feeling down in the dumps, especially since I felt like I had let Andrew and Phu down.

That was my cue to complaining to a coworker for a few minutes, who asked me to forward the link to buy tickets. I did it, while telling him irritably that I knew that the tickets were definitely sold out (no official message had appeared on the East Boston site at that point).  A minute later, he told me I was right (of course) but told me he had emailed Aaron Cohen of EatBoston, simply asking if the event was sold out.

Kudos to Aaron, I'm sure his inbox was flooded with complaints from people buying tickets but he responded within minutes with:

Hi,

I just triple checked with eTix to confirm, but the event sold out in 2 minutes. It went much faster than I expected.

We put up a waiting list for tickets if we're able to open some more up: http://bit.ly/hvSSCz

There are currently 25 tickets available at the Royale.

Sorry about that,

Aaron

My coworker forwarded me to this, and I stood staring at it for a couple of seconds, first thinking that yeah, yeah, I knew about the wait list and had already signed up, and reread it, not understanding what Aaron was saying about the tickets at the Royale. Did it mean that the Royale had a separate site for tickets? My brain kicked in, and I googled the Royale (for those who are unfamiliar with the name like I was, it's what the old Roxy in Boston is now called), called their ticket office and was told, 1) yes they had tickets but they were going quickly 2) you had to show up in person to buy them and 3) you had to pay cash for them.
 
How does this story end? I'm sure you've guessed from the post title, but:

• one impromptu drive into Boston from Waltham in the middle of the afternoon (I was egged on and accompanied by my coworker, otherwise, I don't think I would've actually had the gumption to do it)
• a lucky break in finding a parking spot on Tremont Street in front of the Royale
• a quick visit to no-name ATM on the street
• a 20-minute wait at the box office while we waited for ticket print-outs to be hand delivered from the manager's office at the Royale

and I ended up with some of the last tickets.  I had to restrain myself from doing a little jig in front of the box office! I had expected the place to be swamped, but there was just one other woman there who snagged four tickets for herself.

So in a miracle of miracles, I actually ended up with tickets to Festival.  I suspect they may release a limited number of tickets later in the month (maybe leftovers from what was reserved for vendors and restaurants), but since the Festival is in a smaller location this year, I doubt there will be many.

So for the rest of the day, I had the Willa Wonka and the Chocolate Factory song stuck in my head - Because I've got a gooooolden tiiiiicket.... and it fits. Even though technically, it's we got the golden (ahem) print-out paper tickets!  Beer and bacon goodness, here we come!  And yes, I think it's appropriate that Andrew, Amy and I will be doing the Walk for Hunger the next weekend as walking those 20 miles will definitely help burn off the calories from the Festival.

PS. Kudos to Aaron for being so responsive and helpful (yes I would say this even if I hadn't been able to get tickets) - he asked my coworker to keep him posted on whether we were able to get tickets from the Royale and responded back yet again to let us know that he was glad we were successful.