Photos: Trying To Score 'Hamilton' Tickets In Chicago Was A ClusterF*ck

By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 21, 2016 5:30PM

Hamilton fever is running high in Chicago, with thousands of fans lining up around the Loop for hours to buy tickets to the acclaimed musical—not to mention the countless office-bound theater fans who have been fruitlessly refreshing Broadway In Chicago's ticket website since 10 a.m. (We foolishly thought we were in the queue for a couple tickets by 10:01, but nearly two hours later, we're out of luck.)

Toyia Peters might still have a chance. Peters, 43, of the South Suburbs, has been in line since about 9 a.m.—a line that has been slowly snaking clockwise around the block from the box office at Monroe and State streets to Madison and Dearborn streets and back around to State. Peters, an educator, is off work for summer, so she's ready to devote most of her day to getting a ticket.

"I'm really looking forward to trying to get a ticket," she said. "I looked into tickets in New York [earlier this year] but the prices were outrageous."

Line for Hamilton tickets in the Loop Tuesday morning.

Just behind Peters in line, Janet Maher, 55, of Villa Park, was having a little more luck. She scored two tickets on her phone while waiting in line—but she's hoping for six tickets total. "I got booted off the site twice," she said. "I tried for six, then for four, and now I have two. They're in the last row, last seats, but every seat's a good seat, really." She's not optimistic about getting tickets at the box office, but she's going to stick around and try, she said.

Several hundred people ahead in line, Tomas Bernal, 20, of Cicero, was waiting with a group of friends in the shade of the Chase Bank building around 11:30 a.m. He's also off work for the summer, so "it doesn't matter how long I stay here." Bernal said he's never been to a professional theater production before, but the enormous hype and stellar reviews around Hamilton caught his attention.

"The reviews are all great," he said. "So I want to see it for myself."

Line for Hamilton tickets in the Loop Tuesday morning.

Tickets straight from the box office typically range from $65 to $180—though obviously, it’s hard to get them there. As we noted in a previous post, bots from resale sites like StubHub and Vivid Seats can buy up scores of tickets to popular shows like Hamilton within seconds. It’s a problem Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a New York Times editorial decrying—and those bots are illegal in New York. They’re not here, according to the Illinois attorney general’s office, so it’s no wonder Ticketmaster is glitchy and tickets are selling out fast.

This batch of tickets is only for performances through March 19, 2017, though—so if the run lasts longer than that, there will be a second round of sales. Hopefully, this isn’t necessarily the last time Hamilton tickets under $100 will hit the market, either.

Broadway in Chicago and Ticketmaster may have been a clusterfuck this morning, but fortunately for unrequited Hamilton-lovers, there's still Twitter: