Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Sitting - It's Grand (hopefully)

I finally found the price chart for single tickets at the Met. Banawoman and I have agreed to spend about $130 for Zauberflote tickets. That gives us a few options: Orchestra Balance, Grand Tier Rear, Grand Tier Box Front or Dress Circle. All are $100 seats. Where to sit??? Chart can be found here, and from there you can get detailed PDFs of each section. Is the Grand Tier Box Front a partial view seat? Is it all the way to the side?

I'm leaning toward Grand Tier Rear. I sat in row F for Lucia and the view was great. Plus the Grand Tier has that bathroom like, right there, the one that no one uses. I've jogged down from the Balcony just to use that bathroom. There's another bathroom up up up near the ceiling in the Family Circle - thanks to Opera Chic for cluing me in to that last year. Not that I've struggled against the tide of Family Circle bodies to get there - I much prefer the trek down to the G.T. loos - that puts you closer to the better bar. Not that I ever buy a $25 glass of champagne... but I like to know that I can. And if I recall, the Grand Tier has this tiny little bar near the line-free bathrooms.

Then I guess for the other opera(s) I'll spring for Balcony or *gasp* Balcony Premium.

Last year it took me two hours to get through and buy tickets. Hopefully their computer system will be able to handle it all this year. Of course I'll also call, just in case I can get through to a human before the computer clicks through. If I recall correctly, last year the tickets are saved in your cart for 10-15 minutes, but it took so long to click through each page that by the time you went to pay they'd have been released. Talk about frustrating! At least this year I'm prepared, mentally.

Oh, look. This is printed on the bottom of the price chart:

Please note: a facility fee of $2.50 per ticket will be added for the ongoing maintenance of the opera house.

† Please note: the facility fee is not applicable to tickets for galas, premieres, and special events.

* Premium seats:
Orchestra rows A through T, seats 1–4 and center aisle plus adjacent seat;
Center Parterre seats 1–3;

Grand Tier rows A & B, seats 1–8 and 101–122;
Dress Circle rows A & B, seats 1–8 and 101–124;
Balcony rows A & B, seats 1–8 and 101–122.


‡ Please note that box seats in the Side Parterre, Grand Tier, Dress Circle, Balcony, and Family Circle may be partial view.

4 comments:

Avocational Singer said...

In the past two years I've ventured to the opera for the first time in my life. I saw three productions at the Met. For two of them we got pricey tickets.

Now the Met is calling and calling and calling and asking for money. It was a lot to pay that much just to attend. If I had more I'd want to get some more tickets to see some more productions.

I don't know if they think you have lots of extra money because you decided to pay a little more for a special evening out.

Susan said...

They call and call here too. It probably doesn't matter what seat you buy. I always tell them that after buying the tickets I have no money left to donate.

So where did you sit?

Banawoman said...

Grand Tier Rear!

That sounds like an appropriate description of us-hahahahaha.

Susan said...

You left out a few words ... 'pain in the,' as in, grand tier pain in the rear.