Getting Tickets
Ludo
My story begins long before the date of the show!
One fine day I received some 100 emails at once, telling me George would perform on June 6th in
Modena. Wow! George in Italy. It was unbelievable!!!
Soon I realised that I, being the only Italian member of the group, was bound to arrange the ticket/
accommodation question all by myself. How lucky!!
Well, I did my best to manage the thing: I found the box office, informed the others about how to buy the
tickets, bought a few of them for me and some friends, called several hotels in Modena, booked some
rooms (doubles, triples, twin beds, big beds, singles, amendments, cancellations, additional bookings
etc..) What a hell ... but worthwhile!!!!!.
Kristine
Getting tickets is always a crazy mess for us... Maybe because we are such
a
large group, hotels and concert tickets take hell of a planning...
This time when the news about "Pavarotti and Friends" broke, tickets
were
already on sale for a while. (Even though Aegean were still telling us
that
there is no info on tickets. We already had tickets in our hands when
there
was still "no info"... ;))
We had to decide quickly what kind of tickets we need. We had to let
Ludo
know quickly, as she was taking care of the tickets for many of us.
Since
some people were getting their tickets on their own, we needed to come
up
with a good plan on who's getting tickets for whom. And what kind of
tickets. Some people wanted to sit, some people wanted to stand. Good
seats
were dead expensive... I suggested standing area, cause I had seen
previous
"Pavarotti and Friends" shows on TV and it seemed that the standing area
is
ok, if you get there early enough. It had to be decided in matter of
hours.
I asked Ramona to double check (she had one of the previous concerts on
video), so I can tell the others if it is really ok and the standing
area
will be good enough for us. I asked her to do it in the morning and went
to
work. While I was on my way to work Jen phoned me from New York asking
if I
am sure standing tix are ok and if I can call Ludo and ask her how many
tickets she can order for us, and gave me the number of someone who
could
speak English at the box office for "Pavarotti and Friends". I couldn't
reach Ludo, I had her work number but she was supposed to be there only
after few hours. Then Herma called me from Holland. It was a rainy
morning,
I was walking down the street holding my umbrella in one hand and
flowers
and my bag in the other (someone at the office had a B-day that day),
and
when my phone rang, I had to put my umbrella down to answer it. I was
standing on the street, under heavy rain, at 8:30 a.m., talking to Herma
about what kind of tickets who is getting... I could barely hear her
because
of the rain, so it took a while... It was funny. Especially for people
who
saw me entering the office building that morning. LOL I still couldn't
reach Ludo and I couldn't reach Ramona, either. She was at the
University.
I called the box office in Italy myself and asked if the layout of the
stadium will be the same as last year and how close the standing area is
to
the stage. The lady who answered the phone assured me that the layout
will
be exactly the same as every year and that the standing area is all the
way
up to the stage, on one side, and the seats are on the other side of the
stage. I called Jen and said that I think we should be getting standing
tickets. I called Herma and told her the same. But we still had some
people
in the group who wanted seats. Paulette wanted to get a good seat and so
did Nicole. Herma couldn't get a hold of Nicole, cause she was too busy
at
work. We decided to get in touch after few hours. Meanwhile, Jen will
try
to talk to Paulette (I think it was the middle of the night in
America... lol). Herma will try to speak to Nicole and the other Dutch
girls.
I will try to talk to Ramona for the final confirmation about the layout
of
the stadium. And we all will try to get a hold of LUDO! LOL I had to
take
few hours off from work and go to the University to find Ramona. She was
at
her classes... I had to break in the class and ask her out... lol She said
that
the standing area is definitely ok. And by that time I think I had also
heard from Jules who's colleague had been there at one of the previous
shows and the information got confirmed again. We all decided to go for
standing tickets!
Ludo placed the order for herself, Paulette, Jen, Ramona and me. The
Dutch
girls took care of themselves and Sonja. Cornelia and Holger also worked
out their own deal. As always, no one stayed without a ticket. :)
We are
so
good at it these days... lol
Jeannette
Getting tickets was kind of panic. No one really knew how fast ticket sales would go and Ludo
and my Italian colleague at work had to be the ones to be in contact with the company who sold
the tickets to sort things out.
After receiving confirmation on our interest for seven tickets for the standing area, I finally
got message that the tickets could be paid for. The money should arrive in Italy within 24 hours
- by bank...we knew that beforehand, but making an assignment to our bank to pay urgently
to Italy on a Friday isn't all that simple, especially in my case: I didn't have my bank
card, my passport or whatever identification, as my bag had been stolen the week before :(
Anyway, the bank people recognized me because of the "difficult" payment to Ęgean in London earlier
that week, so I managed.
Tickets arrived at my place one and a half week before the concert would take place.
Herma
Again I was lucky. My great friend Jeannette called and faxed to Italy and included me on the list for tix. Thanks, sis!
I am not saying I did nothing, but she did almost all of the work.
We weren't sure which tickets to get, some were quite expensive, so what to do. Then Kristine called saying that she had seen the video from last year from the Pavarotti concert and
that the sitting and standing sections were divided at the front of the stage. Since the standing tickets were ridiculously cheap, we could hardly believe that it would be the same this
time. So that cost us a few phone calls. Eventually we all went for standing area. Jeannette ordering for us here and Ludo for a bunch of others. Ludo, yeah, our Italian spy! She had a
hard time booking us into a hotel :), poor girl. We have been known to change our minds a lot, but this was crazy, we sure gave her a major headache. All arriving at different days and
times. But she arranged it beautifully and it all worked out in the end.... Thanks Ludo!
