Wednesday, February 8, 2017

DISNEY ON ICE

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 on the days that Charley & Darrin are up here visiting next week. Hooray!

Golden1 Center, our new downtown arena in Sacramento, is a gorgeous facility that we hope will revitalize our downtown area with new hotels, restaurants & shops. Lou & I have attended one King's game since its opening last October. Disney on Ice will give Darrin a chance to see our new facility & of course, Charley, will thoroughly enjoy the show & all the additional goodies that Gaga will buy her.

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!" 💖😊💝

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