Tickets for the San Francisco performances of the hit musical Hamilton became available to the general public Monday, tethering tens of thousands of determined buyers to the their computers and sending hundreds more to stand in lines in an attempt to buy the coveted seats at the theater’s box office.
Local news station KGO sent its Sky 7D helicopter to shoot the blocks-long line that had formed that morning down Market street to the Orpheum Theatre, which is hosting the musical’s run from Mar. 10 – Aug. 5, 2017. Almost 100,000 people were in the company’s digital queue when online sales opened at 10am.
Tickets for the Tony Award-winning show were being sold $100-$524 by the theater. But by Monday evening the only seats available were singles, and the majority of these were in the orchestra, the most expensive section of the auditorium.
A pre-sale opportunity the previous Monday saw a similar flurry of excitement, with the theater’s digital queue reaching 80,000 by that afternoon. Hopeful buyers included Kristin Scheel, a writer in San Francisco, who waited for hours to buy tickets, only to find options limited.
“None of the days during the five months had really any tickets available,” Scheel says. “I was clicking ‘buy’ on random days.”