Ticket Touts update and Hamilton ticket thoughts

Hey everyone,

Just a quick update. We did email our MP Karen Bradley who is the Secretary of State for Culture, Sport and Media about the issue of ticket touts and the overpricing of tickets (which mentioned the day seats and lotteries which are good if you live near London or can afford to risk travelling down for the day, which most people can't due to travel costs etc.), companies like ticketmaster and how they deal with tickets and also the ridiculous fees that they charge, looking at you ATG (unless you get one of their stupid membership cards or can go to the theatre)!

Surprisingly, she wrote an actual reply completely on our side! She said that it they are pricing people out and it is not fair.

She has sent our letter to the Minister of State for Culture, Matthew Hancock MP so he can give us some comments and a full plan of action by his department on this issue. Therefore, I will update on here and twitter as soon as we get a reply!

In other news, anyone have any thoughts on the Hamilton tickets? Their way to tackle the touts sounds pretty good to be honest. I know it will be time consuming to get people in and it causes issues with buying tickets for people etc. which I raised to Karen Bradley as it happened with Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet, so hopefully we won't be stuck with that situation forever but I honestly can't think of a better solution at the moment until they start challenging these touts and putting rules or laws in place against them. Anyone got any ideas!

Pricing wise I am a bit disappointed as they did say they were going to keep it cheap. I know it is way less than Broadway, but we need to think about it as a West End show and compare it that way. If we do that then the tickets are a bit too expensive in my eyes, £200 is a lot of money for one ticket! For example, the top Les Mis premium is £127. Even their dearest normal tickets at £90 are more than other shows, so to use Les Mis again a show of a similar scale, their top normal ticket is £75. Les Mis was the most expensive tickets we have ever bought as it was for my Mum's birthday, which cost us £80 so this will top that if we get them! Book of Mormon, another one that came from Broadway helped to start pushing the prices up, so their top premium is £150 and top normal is £70, so Hamilton to me is still more expensive than is really fair. I don't like this trend of them pushing the prices up, which I mentioned to Karen Bradley as well and I can only see it doing more harm than good. Of course Hamilton will sell out for a while, as it is even cheaper for Americans to fly over and see it in London than over there, but other shows might struggle and I can even see Hamilton struggling once the novelty wears off a bit, as we see, even Wicked rarely sells out now even and it could harm other shows that put their prices up. I think this did Jersey Boys in at the end as I would love to have seen it more times, but the prices just didn't reflect what I was willing to pay anymore to visit the theatre, especially mid-week. They are doing like £40 seats which is fine for some people, but if I am spending money on a proper day out, once in a life time probably experience, I'd rather have decent seats and there is the lottery thing which I already raised the issues with! I honestly thought they were going to be a bit fairer.

Any way, nothing we can do for now, just hope we do get to see it, I have been saving up, and hope it is amazing! It will be interesting to see how a British audience takes to it (or not?) compared to American ones and how long its run will be. Can't wait to find out who we have as King George III!

2016 Show list

Thought I'd put a quick list of the shows I saw in 2016 for future reference if nothing else, so it includes everything, not just plays and musicals. They are in no particular order, just how they popped into my head! If I've forgotten anything and remember later I'll edit the post and add it!

• Billy Elliot UK Tour
• Hairspray UK Tour
• Chicago UK Tour
• The Comedy About A Bank Robbery (twice!)
• Matilda
• In the Heights
• Panic! At the Disco
• Pentatonix
• Josh Widdicombe
• Nina Conti 
• York Minister Mystery Plays 
• The Commitments UK Tour 
• Let Me Entertain You- Angela Beardmore's School of Dance 

Things we already have lined up for 2017 are:

• Anton and Erin
• Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre (never been before!) 
• The Play That Goes Wrong UK Tour
• Jon Richardson
• The Boys in the Band

We are currently thinking about what to see in August 2017, so far we have been thinking about

• Dream Girls
• School of Rock
• Motown
• We would like a play as well but will look closer to when things get announced! 

If anyone knows of any good musicals/plays coming up, in August 2017 or before, let me know and I'll check it out. We are thinking about Sister Act UK Tour if I find time to go down to the theatre to avoid ATG's ridiculous booking/transaction fees! Otherwise I am planning a meet up with mates in February to either see a play or Jersey Boys one last time :(. After that, as things pop up I'll be booking more, I know Grease is on a UK Tour, which is my favorite musical but the cast looks terrible + ATG's are putting me off at the moment. We will probably be after Hamilton tickets too as soon as they say what dates they are selling too! 

Happy New Year to everyone!