Just need to do a little bit
of ranting....BUT it all turned out okay in the end which has me feeling pretty
good today. Sometimes either God feels a little sorry for you or the stars
align or you just get lucky. Anyway, back to the beginning of my story.
Last year we took Charley to
see Disney's Frozen on Ice. She loved
it! We all had a wonderful, magical time sharing the ice skating escapades of
Elsa, Anna, Olaf & the gang. Gaga spent lots of money but didn't mind one
bit seeing the happiness & excitement on my sweetheart's smiling face.
We have been bombarded with
commercials for the next Disney on Ice -
World of Enchantment on television these past few weeks. This show includes
the characters from Toy Story, Cars, The Little Mermaid &, of course,
Frozen - all favorites of Charley. Gaga has also seen all four movies more than
once, some many, many times. When I checked the dates, I discovered that it
will be in Sacramento
Golden1 Center, our new
downtown arena in Sacramento
For several days I have been
checking ticket prices. I'm not sure that I like this idea but they use what is
called "market pricing" for most events. That means that the same
seats can be different prices on different days all based on how many tickets
are being sold. For whatever reason Friday night's prices were considerably
less than Thursday, Saturday or Sunday - go figure. Anyway, Darrin said,
"Go for it!" & Lou agreed to come along, too. He has seen Frozen
& Cars so knows the stories for those movies.
Last night I sat down to do
some final research on Friday night's tickets. It turns out that Friday is still
not the most popular (good for us) since I could get four tickets in the tenth
row of the lower level for $28 each! Score! Other nights the same tickets were as high
as $68. Now, here is the rant part I mentioned. I go through all the
Ticketmaster stuff expecting $112 plus some of the obligatory "fees".
The total shows as $160.85!!! WTF?? $48.85 in "fees"??!!? Well, no way was Gaga
spending that much on "fees" - over $12 per $28 ticket! That is
ridiculous!
I decided to drive downtown this morning & pick up tickets at the arena to avoid a
majority of the "fees". And, here is the lucky part I mentioned
above. I easily figured out which street was closest to the ticket office &
turned onto it. As I began looking for a place to park & passed the walkway to the box office, a car pulled out of a parking space about
half a block ahead. I did a perfect parallel parking
job & fed the meter a few quarters to give me half an hour figuring there
might be a line. This was one of the easiest park jobs I've experienced in downtown Sacramento!
Inside there was one person
ahead of me. A very nice man helped me choose our tickets which were the same
ones I was trying to get online. He apologized for the fact that there are
still "fees" involved. Just an aside, why don't they just add the "fees"
in & charge that price for the tickets??? They aren't fooling any of us
into thinking we are paying less because the "fees" aren't included.
Anyway, my total came to
$128.60 - a more reasonable $4 per ticket extra in "fees". I was back
in my car in less than ten minutes. So, even allowing for my few quarters &
around a gallon of gas, I figured that about 45 minutes of my time saved me
right around $30 - not bad. When I texted Darrin to tell him I got the tickets
& saved 30 bucks, I added - "Enough to buy a magic wand at the
show!" 💖😊💝
