How Not To Buy Tickets to the Dallas Theater Center’s Midsummer’s Night Dream
Based on a very strong recommendation from a certain 10-year-old, I decided to go to Midsummer Night’s Dream. So the easy thing to do — am I right? — was to go to the DTC website, pick my dates, pick my seats, and buy the tickets. On the seat selection page, there’s a neat little diagram that shows the different tiers (labelled as Area I, Area 2, etc.). This being my first time at the Wyly and having read how the layout changes from the production to production, I clicked on “best seats available.” Voila! Next page showed that I had tickets A104-A106. That was nice. Except that it didn’t tell me where A104-106 are. What does A represent?
So I called the ticket number to find out. After a interminible message (”The box office is open on Mondays from 7:20 a.m. until 7:30 a.m., on alternate Tuesdays from 2:15 a.m. until 4:07 p.m., on Jewish high holy days from 10:00 a.m. until 10:01 a.m…”), it told me to call another number. Just as I was about to hang up to call that number, it told me to dial zero to speak to a ticket agent. I hit the zero. A very nice man came on the line, and I — not, admittedly, in the best frame of mind — told him of my frustration with his web site, which, he told me, had just gone up the night before. During the course of the ensuing conversation, he also informed me — very nicely — that this ticket service was for subscribers only and I needed to call the AT&T PAC office for single-performance tickets. Memo to DTC web manager: let’s add a little note to that effect.
So I called the AT&T PAC ticket number and got a busy signal. Do businesses still have busy signals? Having given a good 15 minutes to the enterprise already, I decided to retreat and redouble my efforts later. Last night, I went to the AT&T PAC site and, after five minutes of searching, found Midsummer Night’s Dream (it’s near the bottom of “playing now”… other DTC performances are ahead of it, so at first I didn’t see it). I clicked on the “buy tickets” button. This time there was no diagram accompanying the seat selection. I again clicked on “best seats available.” Once again, the selection was A106-108, this time with an important if cryptic notation, “balc.” I do not argue with destiny. I bought the tickets.
Next time it might be simpler to just show up and try my luck.
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Given that one of the big things about Wyly is that it’s a completely-reconfigurable space, there probably isn’t a general seating diagram. I suppose it would be up to the host of each particular production to design the seating and provide a diagram.
The DTC ticket page appears to indicate that the configuration for this one is “Wyly Theatre Thrust VOM”, and has a general diagram of the seat layout for this configuration, but no seating numbers.
Maybe if there are a set of default theater configurations, DTC or ATTPAC can provide default seating numbers. Based on the pricing, my guess is that “A” designates a row or general area, and the first digit of the number designates the level (1-floor, 2-1st balc, 3-2nd balcony). Of course, that doesn’t seem consistent with your “balc” notation — but you should be able to figure out what “area” you’re in based on the price per ticket.
The AT&T PAC Website is a disaster.
the information is Poorly organized and they have the worst Ticket buying system I have encountered in 15 years of internet usage.
By comparison Bass Hall wins the internet website game hands down.
The most obvious thing wrong with the AT&T PAC site: there are no buttons on the homepage simply for “Dallas Opera” or “Dallas Theater Center” — the two resident companies. I don’t get it.
I got an email that said “tickets as low as $15″. Finding this difficult to believe, I went to the website, where sure enough, it said to click here for “tickets as low as $15″. Is spent the next 10 minutes… well, just clicking around never knowing what I would come to next. I finally said “this is a disaster; maybe they need some more time” and closed the window.
“What fools these mortals be!”
I emailed them a week or two ago that their directions to the PAC were wrong, at least for the “from the DNT” route — it claims that the tollway “turns into” Pearl.
Of course, that’s just not true — southbound tollway becomes Harry Hines, from which you can turn left onto Pearl/Moody — or not, and end up still heading toward downtown and Harwood.
They’ve neither responded nor fixed it.
Wow. Their website is that hard to understand? I just went though the seat selection process, and it seems easy to me.
So, after you select your section and quantity, it takes you to a shopping card page (it says so, right on the page). The second column is Description. For me it days, “Balcony Right – 3B” and Seat(s), “A-307, A-306″.
The Internets, they be hard.
I don’t find their website difficult to navigate, and I love that I can buy tickets for most of the events in one place. But it is difficult to use for those of us who plan with a calendar (so we don’t double-book or leave our children at home with a babysitter every night for 2 weeks). If you click on “Performances and Tickets on sale now”, you find yourself confronted with a list of all of the wonderful programs available. But none of them have dates. You have to click on each event to find out when and where it’s playing. Which would be fine if they were in chronological order. Which they’re not. And, as far as I can tell, there’s no overall calendar to check, which would make planning very quick and easy (and presumably lead to more sales). Very frustrating. And yet a small price to pay for the privilege of enjoying our wonderful new venues!