A true music fan should have no problem with traveling out of town to experience their live performance. For some that are not familiar with all of the ins and outs of attending an event like this, there are some important things you need to know. From the time tickets are purchased until the concert is over, there are important decisions that need to be made.
Purchasing Tickets
To be prepared, one should always buy tickets in advance. No one wants to drive hours away from home and then the show be sold out. This happens more often at indoor shows than it does at outdoor concerts and festivals.
When purchasing tickets, it is a good idea to go through a Web site like ticketmaster.com. From here, one can easily purchase tickets with a credit or debit card and then the tickets can either mailed to your home, held at Will Call or they can be printed directly from the site.
The downfall of ordering tickets online is that the Web site gives you what is called the "best available seats," which may not actually be the case. It may be a better idea to view the venue's seating chart and figure out where the best seating would be. Then a call can be made to a Ticketmaster representative and he or she can put in specific seats if they are available.
It is also not a bad idea to sign up to the band's mailing list before the tickets go on sale. The bands will often send a code that can be used to pre-order tickets, which makes it easier to get the best available seats. On top of that, the band will sometimes give you special offers with pre-order tickets which often include digital downloads of albums to free stickers from their web store.
Travel Plans
While looking through a band's tour schedule, it is best to find the venue that is closest to home.
Once this has been done, it may be a good idea to use Google maps or Mapquest to check out the directions from home to the destination city. This will not only give an idea of the route to take, but it will also give an estimated travel time.
The estimated travel time becomes important when deciding whether to acquire a hotel room for the night. For the most part, rock concerts start somewhere between seven and eight o'clock at night and don't let out until somewhere around midnight. This means that concertgoers typically get home in the late night/early morning hours. While this might not be for everyone, it is a good idea for those who are strapped for cash or would rather spend money on that $30 concert t-shirt rather than a hotel room for the night.
If one would decide to spend the night in the destination city, it is not a bad idea to do a little research on that city and see if there are any other events going on that might lead people to take up those valuable hotel rooms. If there is, it might be a good idea to book ahead of time.
It is a good idea to leave home early, it is easier than one might think to get lost trying to find the venue. Even with a map and directions, being in an unfamiliar and usually large city it can be easy to get turned around or lose the way. This extra time affords the ability to stop and ask for directions and then find the way back to the venue before the opening band takes the stage.
Justin Hawthorne can be contacted at hawthorne2@marshall.edu.
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