Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - RETURNS QUEUE THREAD

Premiums available thru Nimax right now.

Hi grocker, it was after the Friday Forty, so after 1pm. Just checked my email confirmation & that came through at 3.09 so I'd say I was looking between 2-3pm. The dates were yellow while I was looking, but I did click on some that were red that did have tickets, I wonder whether people had put those ones in their baskets but not gone on to complete the transaction

I have tickets for both parts on a Sunday in April. I bought them in June when that additional group went on sale, and our seats are in row TT, next to the sound desk. It seems these seats were added for the June sale of tickets. I'm really hoping to get better seats although I am thankful we have any at all. We arrive in London the day before on Saturday. If I want to try my luck at the box office with returning these and getting better seats, should I go by the box office on Saturday? Are there two lines - one for people actually returning tickets and another for people waiting to get tickets? Thanks for your help. I also plan to try the Friday Forty lottery while still here in the US.

I had a successful experience at the returns queue yesterday, though just barely! I arrived at about 10:00am, and was about 20th in the queue. The box office opened and they came out and said that, at the moment, they had no returns. It only took about 20 minutes, though, for the first people to get their tickets (those first people told me they got in the queue at 4:30am). Then, for the next few hours, the queue moved surprisingly fast, comparatively speaking. By around noon, I think I was only 7th or 8th in line. At around 1, I was in the first 3 or 4. Finally at 1:50 (10 minutes to curtain), I was offered my tickets and decided to take them. As I was contemplating earlier in the thread, I DID in fact pass on a £190 pair because it was out of my budget, and the person behind me took it. I was willing to take the risk since I knew I would be here in London for a while and would have other chances to get in for cheaper. Luckily, I was offered a noticeably cheaper pair of tickets in the end, and it was a great seat in the 2nd circle.

I didn't see anyone get offered a ticket for just one part. All the tickets I saw offered to the queue were for both parts, which was good. A man came out with a clipboard every time he had a return ticket to offer. He would come out and say how many he had, where in the theatre they were, and how much they were, and the person would then be directed into the box office to pay for the ticket(s) at the window, at which point the man with the clipboard would hand us the tickets from an envelope he already had on his clipboard. So to answer my own question from earlier: NO, there was no direct exchanges between us and the people who returned the tickets. It was all through the box office staff.

However, 30 minutes before the show-time, the man came out and told us that from that point on, we would only be allowed to pay with CASH (credit cards had previously been accepted throughout the afternoon). He said, however, that if we were in the front of the queue and we were offered a return ticket, we would then be allowed to go to the bank across the street and get cash from the ATM without forfeiting our ticket, which I think is a very nice gesture on their part.

All in all, a bit of a nail-biting experience, but totally worth it. I really loved the show!

I think there are three threads about this play, but I guess this is the one for this question:

Is there ANY WAY to a brazilian soul making an unexpected trip to London in the first week of December to get tickets for this shows without having to selling his own kidney to pay premium prices?

I'm a die hard fan, but I didn't know I was going to do this and as you know, every performance is sold out.

The Friday Forty is my only opinion, right??

You are entitled to more opinions than the Friday Forty when you arrive.

Like rush seats? Anything else?

Literally any opinion you want. The people in the queue will let you know about more opinions too.

Yes, maybe we could stop hassling people who are writing not in their first language for a simple typo that anyone's autocorrect could make!

How did you know I was American?

I returned a front row seat yesterday for both parts this Sunday. Literally just walked into the box office and asked last Friday. They had 1 for the Saturday and three for Sunday together. I got three tickets for two friends and I but decided as I have already seen it I would do the sensible thing and let someone else have a chance. Just goes to show the box office do have tickets if you go and ask. But the only way I can find out if it has sold is if I go to the box office on Sunday...I live in cambridge so it would cost me around £25 for the privilege of finding out the ticket has probably gone already. But if it hasn't I would rather return and see the show than lose the ticket money. Anybody know a direct number for the box office so I can check or is going to the box office today and would ask if the seat is available by any chance?

Sorry to hear this samjane92.

The Palace does seem to have a habit on this show of holding back returns til 1-2hrs before the show starts.  They do, as you point out, seem to enjoy making people queue longer than necessary.  At first we thought this might be a Producer-led thing, creating a buzz by the Wonder what they're queueing for? idea, for people walking past (although it's pretty obvious!).

The release of returns tends to be at the discretion of the box office manager/clerks who are there on the day of the performance, rather than producers, so I think words need to be had with the box office themselves.

Why should patrons have to stand outside for hours on end, when they could be sold available returns, and go a) home/back to their hotel and get some rest before the show, or b) get to sit down in a coffee shop or go wherever, instead of being chained to the side of a building.

The Palace box office need to have a word with whoever is delaying the release of those tickets.