OC 8-14-10

Pre-sales and other "necessary" evils of concert going…

Note: This is not in any way shape or form a bitchy rant against "Weird Al", his management or any member of his band or staff. Just my personal experiences with the presale during the 2010 tour.

 

    So, Weird Al wrapped the summer portion of his tour. I went to 5 concerts in 4 different states. Actually if you read this and don't know my obsession with "Weird Al" Yankovic, you would find this excessive. Actually five concerts is a low number for me. Usually it is between 10-12 concerts per tour. But, the kids are getting older (my children, not Al or TBITB) and I have to chauffeur them all over creation for their own activities, so, this year it was less concerts than usual. No less fun, mind you.

Well, this year they did something different. An outside company (Artist Arena) was contracted to handle the pre-sales. I planned on getting tickets through the pre-sale just one time for me and a friend during our "California Adventure" this summer. Well, AA calls me and tells me they had a problem with my original tickets and they offered same seats for the next night or similar tix for the original date. I told them that I still wanted to go to the Friday concert so go ahead and change the seats…. That was the last I heard from them. Shortly afterwards, another company took over (Paid.com) and when I contacted them, they assured me they would honor all AA transactions. As the weeks went on, I started to wonder where the tickets were, after contacting Paid several times and getting people that seemed to know very little about the AA snafu, I got the tickets and everything was resolved (at least for me, I know of at least one person that never got their ticket).

    I see all the problems people had as growing pains………. I had similar problems with Broadway in Chicago when they started out (of course, the year they forgot to process my subscription, I got tickets on the 5^th row dead center at the balcony prices…..YAY!) Something new was tried and while the system still seems to have a few kinks, I hope they iron them out before the next tour (whenever that might be). The people I spoke to were never short or impolite, they just seemed a bit lost… like they haven't been doing this for too long. One big complain I have with the presales is that I don't get to select my seat. For theater, if I go to the box office to select seats they tell me not only the seat I'll be seating at, but also they tell me if I will miss a specific part of a play, so I am a bit spoiled with that (adjusting tiara). Since I like to take pictures during concerts, I have very specific areas I like to seat at, so that I am not sitting almost under the chin of anyone (happened once) and the microphone stands are not in the way. A bit "princessy" of me but, hey, I am a creature of habit, so whatever.

    So, there I exorcised my complaints about presales and will move on to better things. I have five concerts to blog about! (Coming soon!)

 

My OC Weird Al concert pics 8-13-10

California Summer 2010

Freedom of expression misinterpreted

(vent)

Pastor Jones....Your "protest" will do nothing more than portray Christians as intolerant and narrow minded. You do not represent me or any other sane Christian in this country. How could you burn something that is sacred to so many in this country? How would you feel if someone decided to "protest" by burning Bibles. Thanks to delusional idiots like you, this country is becoming more divided by the day. Do you REALLY think that is what God wants????? That we blow each other to bits?

Like I said before, freedom of expression allows you to be an ass but it also grants me and pretty much everyone else that is sane in the US to call you on it!!!!

(/vent)

California Summer 2010