My Experience Buying Tickets Today - 10 Hot Tips Included!
I had a Beyhive presale code today and here is my experience to share with you to make your ticket buying process as easy as possible this week:
Can You Have Multiple Tabs Open? YES, but with a huge caveat! You CAN have a separate tab open for each show you want to buy on a desktop or laptop. I had 4 tabs open, one for each NYC MetLife show and then 3 tabs open, one for each Chicago Soldier Field show. However, I could not use more than one account on a shared wifi. I had four unique accounts, mine and 3 friends, with their login information and them on standby to text me their 2FA code to enter. I tried to open their accounts on separate browsers, separate computers and laptops, but I kept getting an error message when I tried to put in the 2FA text code because they were all connected to the same wifi. So I was limited to trying with one account. I turned off wifi on my cell phone and used my data so I could try for one extra chance through the Ticketmaster App, and so did my one friend.
Queue Positions: For the 7 shows I tried, with two friends helping me, we had 12 queues. The queue placements ranged from 3,000 to 33,000 for us! It truly is luck of the draw. It took about 10 minutes to get in at 3,000, 15 minutes for 6,000 and about 35-35 mins for 16K-20K. I didn't really bother with the 33K tab because I figured it was a lost cause. All queues moved regularly and I didn't have any freezing issues.
Is Dynamic Pricing on? YES. The earlier you get in, the cheaper the seats are. I checked again after a couple of hours to see what tickets were left. Most were either premium seats or packages, $1000-2600 USD. The few singles that were left had risen to crazy high prices - nosebleeds starting at $350 US!! I got a first row 200s seat for $392 USD with fees at MetLife when I bought mine. The last row 300s/400s were listed for that when I checked later!
Use the cart timer to your advantage! If you are looking across multiple dates with a tab for each date, or you have friends recruited to try for you too, you don't have to rush to check out. You'll have about 7 minutes to hold the seats you've chosen in your cart until it gets released back. However, don't wait until 30 seconds are left or you could lose out, because it may ran out of time before it refreshes to the sold screen! That happened to me UGH
Filter out what you don't want as soon as you get in to the buy screen. Set the pricing bar to the limit you're willing to pay. Use the list as well as the map. The map is risky because things disappear as you try to click on them, but that's what I used to get mine. Don't let FOMO push you over your budget - we stan for Bey but we need to pay our bills too. Stay within your budget!
Use the website A View From My Seat to determine what seats/sections you want to sit in. I had a whole color-coded map of each stadium and x'd out all the sections I didn't want. Then when I saw what seats were available during the onsale, I had a reference guide for what I preferred. But be super quick when cross-referencing, or your seats could disappear from the map.
Stay calm! Be patient! Remember #4 above-people will be carting but not buying seats, so you'll see things come and go a lot. You can stay in the map for quite a while before you check out, so you may see new seats pop up as you shop. However, if you see the seats you really want, grab them and cart them, because they may not show up again.
Accessible seats went really fast. I only saw one date that had one available and it was gone right after I saw it. You could also try calling for accessible tickets but I don't know how successful you'll be going that route. No harm in calling, unless you're also using your phone to buy tickets on the app, which could be tricky. Ticketmaster ADA sales number is: 1-800-877-7575
It's not over until it's over! You can stay in the map until it gets grayed out. Even then, you can still use the list. Drops could continue to happen, so if you didn't get something today there will be other chances. There will be drops close to the show dates.
The prices are STEEP. Expect sticker shock. The cheapest seats I saw for Chicago were $141 USD, and for MetLife it was $76 USD I think? Don't know if those were before fees or not. They will sell first so plan accordingly!
That's everything I can think of! Good luck, Bey fans! You got this! This is only the first of many opportunities you'll have to try. Planning, determination and persistence will prevail if you don't give up. Today was but one chance. You can do this!