The Things We Do For Our Kids

Some of you may not be able to relate to this. . . but those of you who know who Hannah Montana is probably also know a young girl who's crazy about her! My daughter is one of them.

So when I found out that she was coming to Atlanta in November, I decided to do the cool thing and get Maya and her best friend tickets to the show. (Of course, I'll have to endure it too.)

HOWEVER . . getting the tickets was a total nail-biting experience. I'd heard that tickets for this concert sell out in 30 minutes .. . and they're currently going for $600 online. But for those who are members of the fan club, you can order them four days early (starting at 10:00 AM today). So I joined the fan club a week ago. And at 9:50, I go to log in.

I knew something was up when it took almost two minutes to authenticate. I'd gotten in every other time in the past almost instantaneously. But I finally get in and I tried to purchase tickets early with my "secret" code to use for the presale. But once I navigated to the place where you enter the code, it stalled. The field just said "retrieving code" . . Try back later." It wouldn't let me enter anything!!!! So I'm cursing at the computer and clicking it over and over. . .and meanwhile the clock is ticking down . . . it's now 9:57 and I'm freaking out. This is the only way you can get to the Ticketmaster site for presale. Finally, after the 8th or 9th time of clicking the button, the field populates with my code. I click Buy Now. Success!!!!

Oh. . but not so fast. . . . Now, I'm in Ticketmaster, and it's still showing "tickets are not available for purchase yet." It's 9:58. So I stare at the time on my computer and when it's finally 10:00, I hit refresh, and the screen populates to order tickets. So I choose some seats that I think are good (not the cheapest but not the most expensive) and click "Find Tickets". And it returns "can't find any tickets for that location."

So now I'm pissed. It's 10:01. I go back to the main screen and select "Find any location" . . and FINALLY!!! It gives me 4 tickets on the lower level . . and of course, it takes forever to process and authenticate, and it keeps hanging because I get that popup screen that says "Do you wish to show both secure and unsecure information" about 5 times. I'm scared to click too much for fear that it will screw up and lose my space in line. . but it eventually works, and we are now the proud ticket owners of four seats in the Gwinette Center for November 28th show.

Also, I need to say that Ticketmaster is such a rip. They charged me $10.90 convenience charge (per ticket), a $3.60 processing fee and a $2.50 fee to print it now! But hey -- it's done, and my kid will be thrilled. I'm sure the tickets are completely sold out by now.

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10/2/07

Ten minutes after I bought these, they sold out! So far, I haven't found anyone else who's bee able to get them. So I totally lucked out.