Met Opera rush tickets - process changed again!
 

In August/September the Met Opera announced that they were moving all Rush ticket sales into an online lottery. You can google this; it got lots of press coverage. You could sign up from 5pm to 10am the next day for the following performance, and you'd be notified by 12pm if you won the chance to buy $25 tickets.

I've just gone to the website and it seems they've already done away with this system. http://www.metopera.org/metopera/con...ickets?src=rdr

Does anyone know why??? It seemed extremely fair to me; it gave everyone an opportunity to enter, regardless of their schedule.

According to the site:

<i>The Rush Ticket program has been changed for the 2014–15 season. In response to audience feedback, we are no longer offering tickets via online drawing. Instead, tickets are being sold on the Met website on a first-come, first-served basis.</i>

When I tried to buy those tickets on that website it was more like maybe and if you subscribe, etc., etc. Finally, I gave up and simply went to a broker and got great seats.

I wish Met tickets were as EASY to buy as the ones at a lot of the opera houses in Europe but perhaps they just don't understand opera over there, or perhaps they just don't understand New York.

maybe that's exactly why people didn't like it -- they don't think it's fair that everyone should have the same chance even if they don't do the work. The work is trying to get them early. Also, it sounds kind of goofy as lots of people could enter the lottery and win the "chance" to buy tickets and then never buy them. Maybe it was just that they cut the number of tickets available in half when they did that.

I tried several times under the online lottery and didn't win. I logged in Monday at noon, and got row Y. The woman next to me said at 12:15 she got row DD, waited a bit, then got row Y.

Thanks, Christina, you may be right. To me that's not really fair - everyone has different schedules. But I can see what you mean.

Absolutkz, I've tried several times without luck, too. It may be due to the sharply reduced number of tickets now available. I used to enter daily, and won every month or so. Now it seems basically impossible to do so.

As best I can tell, the rush ticket system is closed for the rest of the season. :-(

However, for anyone else interested in the reasoning behind all these system changes, the NY Times finally published an article explaining it!! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/ar...tan-opera.html

Sounds like they will be sticking with the online first-come, first-served system, which is a bummer, because in my experience that system is a headache and a half. Whenever I would get through soon enough to get a ticket, it would take me back to the sign-up page. I'd go back, and then the ticket would be gone. Over, and over, and over again.

Sigh. Hopefully they'll have worked out the glitches by next season!