Sunday, July 24, 2011

Potterpalooza: A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Alternate titles:

Things Fall Apart
How to Fail at Most Things Despite Trying Really Hard
We'll Laugh About This Later

So here's how the rest of the weekend was supposed to go: on Saturday morning, get day-of rush tickets to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, spend the day shopping, hanging out in the park, and eating before going to the show that night. The next day, maybe a repeat viewing of HP (naturally), do anything else we felt like, and then send the girls off home again. Sounds great, right? Well, it would have been. Now, I should mention that the things I'm going to whine about are all very First World Problems that I realize don't matter at all. But being the way that I am, I don't like it when my grand plans go awry, especially when I'm responsible for other people.

The box office for the show opened at 10am so we showed up around 9:45 thinking we'd be fine, since there were two shows that day. What I failed to consider was that 1) when I've gotten rush tickets before it was usually limited to students so there weren't as many eligible for tickets, 2) Daniel Radcliffe is in the show and is kind of popular, and 3) it was HARRY POTTER WEEKEND. The line was about a mile long, but the girl working there said they often get through the whole line. So we stuck it out. By 10:45 we'd made it up to the front and the only available tickets were a few singles or standing room only. A miscommunication between myself and the ticket lady meant that the girls behind us bought their tickets before we could, and we came up short. Disappointed, we went over to the TKTS booth in Times Square to see about tickets for the matinee, but they had just run out as well.

I was frustrated, but decided that after lunch I'd come straight back to TKTS to wait for when the evening tickets went on sale at 3. We trekked across to the wasteland of East Midtown to eat at this really delicious place Becca and I had found on her first visit to the city a couple years ago. It was a nice little grilled cheese stand that had awesome sandwiches and milkshakes, and I had checked their website that morning to confirm its location. We walked into the little building and the decor looked different, and they just had pre-packaged sandwiches and other random things. "Oh, no," the guy behind the counter said, "the grilled cheese place closed like a year ago." Great. We raced back across town (missing a bus in the process) to eat at Shake Shack which, while crowded with tourists, was delicious as always. Krissy bit into her portobello burger and exclaimed in wonder, "What IS this???" Fried awesome, that's what.

Armed with sunscreen and an umbrella to protect me from the blazing hot sun, I got back in line and the girls went off to shop for a bit. About an hour later, the ticket availability went up on the marquis. Guess what show wasn't on there? Feeling defeated and tired, we headed back uptown to shower off the sweaty day and the stench of failure.

I was frustrated at having wasted pretty much an entire day for nothing, but we still had a really nice dinner with a couple of my friends and some of Krissy's friends who live here. We split off afterwards and Becca and I stopped off to get some cheesecake at Junior's. We decided to go over to the theater, which would just be letting out, to witness the crowd mayhem waiting for DanRad to exit the stage door. It was pretty nuts, although I did manage to get a glimpse of his back as he climbed into a car. Becca was distracted because at that moment a middle-aged guy had tried to run up to Dan and the cops had pushed him on the ground. Yikes.


The crowd.

The next morning, Becca and I had talked about going for a run in the park, but ultimately decided that we'd give rush tickets one last shot (despite the fact that we had maxed out my Times Square tolerance long before). We got there earlier and the line wasn't too long yet, so we figured we had a chance. Around 10:15 they hadn't opened the doors, so I went up front to investigate. FUN FACT: apparently on Sundays, the box office doesn't open til 12. At that point we knew it was time to give up. We had brunch plans for 11 and anyway, I wasn't about to wait another 2 hours in line just to risk being disappointed yet again.

Thankfully we had yet another delicious meal to drown our sorrows in, followed by some street shopping in SoHo. Then it was back to my place for some leftover cheesecake and putting Krissy on the train to the airport. Of course, things couldn't go off without a hitch at that point and Krissy missed her flight by a matter of minutes. I was pretty sure we were being Punk'd. Luckily, she was able to get on another leaving shortly after, and Becca got home without any trouble (or at least she had the decency not to tell me about it).


All in all we really did have a ton of fun during the weekend; I just wish the last two days had worked out like I'd planned. But anytime I get to see these girls is a win in my book, and we've already decided that our next trip will be a beach paradise where we don't have to schedule a single activity. And thankfully it will be nowhere near Times Square.

3 comments:

  1. See! It's making for a funny story already! But let's not have that bad luck again. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think the fact that Becca didn't have plane issues is a huge win in and of itself.

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  3. Ummm... wow. That sounds super frustrating. At least you got to see Daniel Radcliffe's neck??

    ReplyDelete

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