Enjoy Broadway Without Breaking the Bank

People often talk about buying rush and standing room only tickets as the best way to save when you want to see a Broadway play. The best advice I can give when it comes to those two are, avoid them! I love Broadway and I certainly don't have $100 to spend on a three hour show. The bad thing about rush tickets is that you have to stand in line all day in Times Square and tickets are still not a guarantee. They go on sale right before the performance which doesn't work out if you're visiting and you have a lot that you want to do. You could stand in line every day you're in town and still not get tickets. You wasted all that time that you could have been doing better things in the Big Apple! Even worse are standing room only tickets. Who wants to wait in line all morning to then keep standing all throughout the show? But fret not, there is a better way!

That is definitely not the way to go. The Theatre Development Fund has booths set up, called TKTS booths, which sell Broadway and off-Broadway tickets cheap. There is one in Times Square that usually has more of a line. The other one is located by South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan. You might have to travel a little more to go to that booth, but it's well worth it. It's usually empty because not as many people want to go out of their way to get tickets if they're already in Times Square but it's a 20 minute commute and you can potentially save yourself hours of standing in line.

You can research online to see what shows they usually have tickets for and have a few picks in mind when you go down so you can talk to someone at TKTS and compare prices. You can get tickets for up to 50% less than their actual price. And you can usually get good seats. I've seen Rent and Chicago. We had front-row orchestra seats for Chicago and very nice aisle seats for Rent. They are just tickets that haven't been sold or claimed.

The best part about the South Street Seaport booth is that you can buy tickets for day of performance shows the the next day's matinee shows so you can pick up your tickets in just half an hour and plan the rest of your day or the next day. You'll have real seats instead of having to stand and there's no rush. Enjoy Broadway the right way!