Ticket Buying

Buying tickets to Sundance movies is no easy feat. Unless you have oodles of money and/or connections, you have to jump through a series of hoops.

First you must register your intent to buy tickets with the festival box office. This enters you into a lottery for a time slot in which you can try to buy tickets. If you do get a time slot, you may log-on at any time after your appointed time and date (remembering that everything is based on Mountain Time) and you have 30 minutes to buy your quota of tickets. Each purchaser is allowed no more than 20 tickets and no more than 4 tickets for each movie.

We had five people register to buy on-line tickets and got four time slots. I do all the ticket buying because I have the time and it's easier if one person manages the schedule. Our first time slot was yesterday at 10:30AM. Yesterday was also the first day of on-line ticket sales. Woo Hoo!

Because all Sundance movies are being shown for the first time ever, we rely on the on-line film guide (sundance.org/festival) to figure out what movies we are interested in seeing. We also need to take into account when and where they are playing. We are not there for the entire 10-day festival and we really hate 8:30AM movies after an 11:30PM movie the night before (that's right, they show movies from 8:30 in the morning until after midnight.) The theater location is also an issue. Park City gets extremely congested during the festival and while the shuttle system is always running, it can still only go as fast as traffic allows.

So, yesterday I sat down at my computer right at my appointed time of 10:30AM with a seven- page typed document outlining the movie/scheduling possibilities during our stay. There are a total of 205 films playing in multiple time slots and theaters in this year's festival. Thank God some are not playing while we are there, as I need some system for narrowing the field.

Unlike in years past, the computer system worked quickly and as it was supposed to, so I was able to get 20 tickets to 7 different movies in about 6 minutes. And, because it was early in the on-line ticket buying week, I got what I think will be some excellent movies.

Today we had three different times to buy tickets, beginning at 9:30 AM. From yesterday to today, however, lots of showings sold out. Even with my revised document outlining the time slots where we could add movies, I had to do a lot more searching for available films. I filled in the holes and bought another allotment of 20 tickets. During my 1:00PM time slot availability was not the problem, fitting anything more into our schedule was. For this reason, I only bought 14 more tickets for a total of 54 tickets to 21 movies. I don't think I will even bother with our 4:00PM time slot.

I'm not even sure if I can handle 21 movies in six days. We have learned, however, that it is easy to sell tickets once you are there, so I would rather overbuy than purchase too few. Last year, we talked to people who came to the festival with no tickets in hand. We have also met people who had a small role in a film and were not able to get tickets to their own movie. It's a bummer that you have to book your flight before you know if you will get tickets or not.

So, the research, experience and planning paid off and we are going to Sundance to see movies, not stand in line!

Here's our schedule:

You can read a brief description of each movie on the on-line film guide on the Sundance web site (sundance.org/festival.)

Friday, 1/18
Shorts Program I
Slingshot Hip Hop
Young@Heart
Saturday, 1/19
Frozen River
Good Dick
It’s a Good Day to be Black and Sexy
Sunday, 1/20
Shorts Program I
Sunshine Cleaning
Be Kind Rewind
Smart People
Monday, 1/21
The Last Word
Ballast
Diminished Capacity
Tuesday, 1/22
Choke
Anywhere, USA
Death in Love
Wednesday 1/23
Pretty Bird
Alone in Four Walls
The Wackness
Thursday, 1/24
Phoebe in Wonderland
North Starr