Wednesday, May 7, 2014

NYC Preparations

Hello from NYC, loves! Hubs and I are waiting in line for a table for dinner right now. If you follow me on fb or instagram you've seen all the fun we've been up to the past couple of days. I've been getting a lot of questions about how to get in on the show tapings we've been to so far so I thought it'd be a good idea to blog about all the hard prep work hubs did to get our trip to NYC full of fun times.

Attractions:
Yesterday we took a great boat tour around half of Manhattan Island with Circle Line Sightseeing. We booked that a day ahead with no problems. We went on a weekday, so I'm not sure if that would change for the weekends.
We also went to the top of Rockefeller Center yesterday morning and night. We bought our tickets online the day before. This is not necessary, but it ensured that we got to skip the line to buy tickets and get right in line to get up to the top of the Rock.
We haven't been there yet but before heading to NYC we looked into seeing the Statue of Liberty. Depending on how high up you want to get up in Lady Liberty determines how early you need to get tickets. If you want to get up to the torch...sorry bub, you're SOL. No one has been up there in like a hundred years. If you want to get up to her crown you should look into getting tickets 2-3 months in advanced. Unfortunately for us we hadn't even decided to go to New York early enough to even feasible get tickets for that. We got our tickets to the pedestal about a week before leaving for our trip. However, hubs mentioned that when he looked tickets were still available for the following day; so buying tickets the day before should probably be okay for this too.
We also haven't been to the 9/11 Memorial yet either, but we made our reservations about a week before we left for New York. Making reservations ahead of time is most likely not necessary, but it should save us some time from having to stand in line the day of.
Check out my post on all the spots we visited

Tapings:
Yesterday we went to a taping of the Daily Show with John Stewart. Hubs doesn't quite remember how we came across these...we think mostly by sheer luck we looked at the website and sign up for tickets was available. For really good detailed info about how to get in on the Daily Show you should check out this super helpful website (the article is almost a year old, but still relevant).
Today we went to a taping of the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Signing up for this taping was significantly more difficult. Hubs ended up coding a program to text and email the both of us when tickets became available. If this isn't an option for you I'd suggest liking the Tonight Show facebook page because they make announcements on when tickets become available on there. In general we found that they released tickets a month at a time at the beginning of the prior month. For example if you want to go anytime in August you should be getting ready to sign up for your tickets in the beginning of July. You have to be on your A game here since we found that sign ups filled up within about the first 5-10 minutes.
A couple of notes on signing up for these tapings before we move on. First off, just because you've signed up for the taping it does not...I repeat, DOES NOT...guarantee you a seat at the taping. These tapings are all overbooked to make sure there's a full audience so pay attention to what time you need to be where to claim your actual tickets to the tapings. Secondly, when you sign up for these tapings you never know who the guests are going to be. Since we didn't know who the guests were going to be or what our schedule was going to be like we signed up for a couple of days for each show. They don't let you sign up for more then one taping per show, but we made reservations under hub's name one day and my name the next day. I'm sure this is probably frowned upon, but it gave us a little loop hole to have some extra flexibility during our trip.
Check out my Daily Show and Tonight Show experiences.

Broadway/Off-Broadway:
At least a month before leaving we purchased our tickets for Hedwig and the Angry Inch and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. While in New York we've been able to score discount tickets to Cinderella and Avenue Q. If you want to see popular shows (ie: Wicked or the two shows we purchased tickets in advanced for) best buy your tickets at full price ahead of time. Those shows rarely make it to the TKTS discount ticket booth...in fact I overheard them saying that they NEVER get Wicked tickets. Otherwise it has been easy for us to get good seats from TKTS to the shows we've wanted without even having to stand in line before the booth opens.
Check out my reviews on CinderellaAvenue QA Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder and Rocky

Anyway, I hope this was helpful for all of you guys planning upcoming trips to NYC.

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