Friday, February 15, 2008

T In The Park 2008

This Saturday the last batch of "T In The Park" tickets went on sale and i was adamant that i would get my hands on one.

After coming home from college on Friday afternoon I told my dad about how the tickets were on sale the next morning at 9 when he broke the news to me... our internet wasn't working. This obviously didn't help my plans at all so I opted to ditch my Friday night plans in an attempt to get my Internet up and running again for the 9 o'clock deadline the next morning. But alas, it wasn't to be. At around midnight I'd finally given up hope when my uncle suggested I go round to his house in the morning to use his own computer to buy tickets. Putting a smile back on my face again.

So Saturday morning, I turn up at my uncle's house at around half 8 where he already had Ticketmaster up and running on the computer ready for me. I went to the page where the tickets would be on sale and spent the next half hour frantically hitting the 'refresh button in the hope it would make me one of the 1st people through. And it worked like a charm, as soon as the tickets went on sale I quickly picked the ones i was after and straight away i got through, they were holding two tickets for me but i only had 2 minutes to fill in all my details before I'd lose them and they would be put back on sale. This would be a tough task for some but luckily for me I already had a Ticketmaster account with my details already stored on their database, all i needed to do was log in and select which card i wanted to pay with. But I should have known it wouldn't work like that, at least not for me anyway. After typing in my e-mail and password it wouldn't let me in, saying my password was incorrect. I begin to panic seeing as time is not on my side. This time I type in my password extra carefully just in case the I had accidentally hit another key the last time but it still wouldn't let me in.

The time eventually runs out and i am redirected back to the home page. Out or sheer desperation I try again but this time seeing as thousands of people are now on the site and trying to get the same tickets as me I'm forced to wait in a 15 minute queue. The wait is painfully slow and at the end of it i see the message I'd been dreading "Sorry, we couldn't find any tickets matching your request", basically meaning they were sold out. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement, this would've been my first T In The Park and I was really looking forward to going.

After being redirected to the original page I had a brainwave. I saw another package "weekend + camping (with bus)", it was £30 more expensive but I was more than willing to pay the difference. I thought to myself "maybe that would work", so I decided I'd give it a bash. I was put through to the ticket details page where it displayed zones for the bus pick-up I saw Dundee in one of the zones and thought "that's close-ish" so I went for that. If I hadn't been in such a panic i would have realised that if I had scrolled down I would have seen a bus leaving from Aberdeen which I guess would have been a bit more suitable. I was a man on a mission though, I had no time for scrolling.

Amazingly enough my idea had worked, they were holding the tickets for me again and this time when I tried to log in it actually let me. So I then pick the card I'm using then attempt to get to the next stage where I encounter me next problem. Seeing as the tickets with bus were £30 more expensive I didn't have quite enough money to pay for it, so obviously it wouldn't let me buy the tickets with money I never had. This could only happen to me. But like before I was able to overcome this hurdle, my uncle stepping in to be the hero yet again. "Just use my card", he said. He didn't need to tell me twice, I wrote down the card details and completed the deal just before the time limit. The relief I felt was incredible. The emotional rollercoaster was finally over and I was going to T In The Park. Bring on July!

PS sorry for the long wait for a post, I hope this helps make up for it.