I have a good friend who recently took a trip with her Mom. Both have been longtime Celine Dion fans, and decided to hop on planes and rendezvous in Vegas to see Celine in concert. My Mom and I both followed the highlights of their trip on Facebook and said to each other, "we should do that someday, too".
Well, someday kept getting put off. The months piled up and before we knew it, it had been more than a year since my friend had done her trip with her Mom.
One day last summer, my Mom mentioned in passing that one of her favorites, Bette Midler, was starring in “Hello Dolly” on Broadway. I told her that was cool, and didn't think much of it...
No joke, the very next day, I happened to hear on the news that Bette Midler had just announced her final date on Broadway would be January 14th. I called my Mom immediately and told her we had a reason, and perhaps more importantly, a deadline, for our own mother-daughter trip: we were going to New York City to see Bette Midler live. My mom was on board, so before she could overthink it and come up with reasons not to go, I quickly bought tickets for “Hello Dolly”. We were set! Once we had our reason to go, the plans came together rather quickly, and believe it or not, the weekend of our mother-daughter trip is upon us!
We chose to head to New York just after the New Year, figuring that the post-holiday crowds may be a little more manageable. And Broadway ticket availability was a little better, too!
So if you are also considering a mother-daughter trip, my biggest piece of advice would be to book something. Today! Otherwise those months may keep piling up for you, too!
If you'd like to follow our lead and head to New York to catch a show, here are a few tips on how we went about getting our Broadway tickets to kick off our mother-daughter trip:
- Plan ahead. If you’re going to see a certain actor (as we are with Bette Midler), do some research to see when their off-days are — for Bette, her understudy was performing each Tuesday, and the show doesn’t happen on Mondays at all. This helped us think about when to go and how Bette’s schedule aligned with ours.
- Not all tickets are priced the same. Identical seats could sell for very different prices depending on which site you purchase them through. My suggestion is to find the official show website to see where they link out to for tickets. We bought our tickets on Telecharge, which was linked to from the official website, ended up being the cheapest, and had the best availability.
- Figure out where you’d like to sit. We did some research to see what the views would be like from the different options — orchestra, mezzanine, balcony — there are slightly different views and price points, and in some cases, there may be slight obstructions. We used these websites, A View from my Seat and Vivid Seats to do some research. Turns out the very popular Matilda had just finished at the Shubert Theatre, so many people had reviewed the seats for us. We ended up going for Mezzanine left tickets
- Decide what types of printed tickets you want. Since this is a special trip, we figured we might want to keep our tickets as mementos, so rather than printing them at home, we are going to pick them up at the box office. We’ll have to get there a little early, but it will be worth it.
- Figure out a pre-theater dinner plan. I did some research, as there are lots of options, from the high-end, to the grab-and-go, and according to Yelp, some rip-offs as well. Many of the restaurants in the theater district seem to not take reservations, so we have a couple options, including Dutch Freds, which looks more low key, yet fun. We are planning on a 6:00 dinner before our 8:00 show.
- Don’t plan on getting last minute tickets to the popular shows. However, there are some shows that do last minute lotteries. I have been lucky enough to see “Book of Mormon” twice this way, in both London and San Francisco. Front row, for maybe $10-30. I just heard that "Hamilton" has a lottery, so we may take our chances with that, but I’m sure everyone else will be doing the same!
And that is how we bought our tickets to the Broadway show! Finally, for a hotel, we decided to stay near the Shubert Theatre. I found a great deal through Booking.com, putting us just a few minutes' walk to "Hello, Dolly", and various other low-key sightseeing that we might brave in the cold.
Follow along on Instagram and we will be sure to report back on what our experience was like!
