Stephanie and I love to eat. Between bagels, biscuits, cupcakes, cheese bread, cannoli, and hot dogs, our birthday trip was becoming a food trip! But I promise you there were small segments of the day when we stopped stuffing our face. One of these moments was to see Mean Girls the Musical on Broadway. I know I know, Broadway tickets are expensive, so this is not really a “happy wallet” sort of activity. However,I married a theatre nerd. If we went to New York and I refused to take Stephanie to a broadway play, I might as well contact my divorce attorney (which would probably be me).
Broadway on a Budget
Broadway tickets are incredibly expensive, but there are ways to save money on them. Most of these strategies involve waiting until the last minute to get your tickets and will risk you not getting your first choice in show. So, if there is a particular show you want to see, buy your tickets in advance. We did not have a particular show in mind so we used the following strategies.
Ticket Lotteries
Many shows, including in demand shows like Harry Potter and Hamilton, will run online lotteries. The theater makes a few tickets each day available at extremely discounted rates to randomly selected entrants. We entered several lotteries but unfortunately didn’t win any. This will run you about $40 a ticket, but some shows, like Hamilton, are as low as $10. Ticket lotteries can be found at playbill.com.
Rush
Every morning theaters will sell their remaining tickets at a discounted rate. The theater sets a number of these tickets aside for rush. They sell Rush tickets, like lottery tickets, at deep discounts. If you are interested in rush it is good to line up at the box office well before it opens. We tried to get Mean Girls Rush tickets, but we started our day later than expected and there was already a significant line by the time we go to the theater and Rush tickets sold out by the time we got to the window.
Discount Ticket Booth
If all else fails TKTS Booths located in Times Square, Lincoln Center, and South Street Seaport, provide same day broadway ticket sales at a discount. Generally these discounts are between 30% to 50% off face value, but the selection is limited. This means that not all shows will be available everyday. To help with this TKTS has real time availability listed on their website and their app.
How We Got Our Tickets to Mean Girls
When the lottery failed us, we decided to attempt getting rush tickets to mean girls. We started the morning a bit late, I overslept, I tend to that. By the time we got to the theater 30 minutes before the box office opened, there was a good 50-100 person line in front of us. We decided to wait it out. By the time we got to the window, the $40 rush tickets sold out. However, they were selling their single availability tickets for $80 each. This meant Stephanie and I didn’t get to sit together, but it got us in the door with some really good seats. Stephanie’s seat was in the second row. I was about 15 or so rows behind.
Mean Girls
If you have seen the movie, you know exactly what mean girls is all about. Cady Heron move from her life in Africa to North Shore High School and is looking to find friends. She finds them in Janis and Damian, who set her on the path of bringing down the queen of the school Regina George. She slowly becomes one of them, and all hell breaks loose as the girls at the school all start to tear one another apart. Hilarity ensues.
Tina Fey, who wrote the original movie, wrote the book for the show, so you know two things 1) it keeps the spirit of the original movie; 2) it is going to be funny. Mean Girls did not disappoint I was laughing through most of the play. While I did not find it as funny as Puffs!, this was likely because puffs is more up my alley than mean girls.
When seeing a broadway show you know you are getting the top singers, actors, and performers in the United States (if not the world) and everyone lived up to that role. Every single actor was out of this world good. After seeing mean girls, there is no doubt why it was nominated for 12 Tony Awards. If I had to complain about one thing is the show felt a little bit front loaded. The best songs and jokes were in the first act; it took a little bit longer for the second act to really hit its stride.
Overall
If I wanted to leave New York with my marriage intact, I would have pay to see a broadway show. Mean Girls was a fantastic show, and completely lives up to the movie.