ApproximatelyInfinite

Usually a pair of tickets in one of the first rows. If the tickets themselves are going for $120 each, the VIP package will probably cost about $600. I got upgraded to a seat like that via R#42 in 2008, and the ticket they traded my old, standard one for said $600 on it I think, and it was part of a pair, so now that I think about it, it was probably a leftover VIP package seat that never sold. Something tells me those prices have gone up too, but I could be wrong. Other bands have done VIP bundles like that for about $250 in recent years, but I really think Coldplay's will cost more.

Agree! I know Phil/some of their team peruse the board sometimes, and that's why I always try to be honest in both my absolute fangirlish adoration of them and in my criticisms of a lot of their business choices, while still being fair. At this point, I'd just like to let them know how hard it really is to see them live in this country, especially in a preferred way. Yes, they tour the US like three separate times per album, more than any other country, but with a combination of the scalper problem and the sucky breakdown of venues in terms of seating, it's really not anything like seeing them in Europe or the UK. I wish every Coldplayer could go to a really kick-ass UK/Europe etc show someday, because those have always been by far the best for me.

Aaaaaannnnd all my frustrations and annoyances were renewed after that presale, with Coldplay's team AND with Ticketmaster. Went with a shitty seat in presale rather than risking the general sale, which is just bad news bears for anyone in an arena-sized venue these days, really. Also just increasingly frustrated about the arena setups, which allow VIPs and suits in the front and keep most of the "real" fans in the back, miles away. To me, the frequent lack of GA sections in the US is probably why the band prefer playing gigs in UK/Europe/Latin America/Asia...because the biggest fans are right in their faces and throwing all the emotion back at them. I've been to 14 Coldplay shows in some form as of right now, and all of the best shows I've seen them do have been in other countries, save for ONE in the US, which is the one Coldplay gig in the US I've been to that had GA. To me that says a lot. I know Ticketmaster/Live Nation gets major say in how to break up the arena into sections, but I think Coldplay probably has enough weight as an artist and as a cash cow to say "listen, we want there to be GA" and have that be a point of negotiation. But I don't even know if they think that the seating in a venue has any relation to the crowd vibe, and therefore to the performance. To me, it really does and it frustrates me that as a practice, they often stick to the setups where the people that pay outrageous sums of money waltz in and keep those of us who would willingly sleep on the street out of the best spots. Does a GA ticket sell for less than a VIP package? Yes. But I also think GA sections often makes for a better show (and for a better fan experience), and I'd like to think that's a priority of theirs too.

I got a ticket in section 103--wish I'd checked here earlier for the password! :bigcry: Bottom line is, I got a ticket in the Amex presale because general sales are a JOKE these days and I don't trust them for a second. I'm sorry to tell that to anyone that has to wait for the general sale, because the odds aren't with you. If I get a job I'm currently in the interview process for, I'll try and get a better seat scalped later, and for more shows than just this one. Or better yet, I'll probably save and go see them at the Emirates in London, which to me is just more appealing than this arena tour in about five ways. Sigh. I didn't expect to be satisfied or anything after this morning, even if the site WAS working from the getgo, but I'm just hit with my annoyance with their decisions all over again.

I agree, I mean, their tickets were never going to be cheap, but I just feel like it was probably possible to some degree to have the most expensive tickets be more like $80. That's still wildly expensive when you think about it, but I think that would have been a bit more pleasing for most people going for these tickets. I don't think the glowbands jack up the price THAT much. Their merch prices have gone up too, I think I've heard, at least on the UK tour. Sigh. I feel like I knew all of this was coming, but I feel a bit bitter about it every time I think about trying to plan my strategy, especially over the GA thing.

Ugh, I feel your pain...I have interviews for a job I think I might get next week, but of course, the tickets ALSO go onsale next week so I won't know if I have the job or not until AFTER I buy tickets and make plans :dozey:. I think this is such a dumb move on their part, to have a presale right before the holidays for gigs that are SO far away anyway. I don't see why they didn't just wait to have the sale til January/February when most people aren't spread as thin because of gifts...especially in this economy. To me, that sounds like a section for contest winners/friends/family etc, if it really was that small and GA wasn't on the floor plan or for sale to the general public. I personally have really low hopes for GA being available on this tour--none of the default floorplans show it on Ticketmaster so far, and when they did some of these same venues on one of the NA legs of the VLV tour, there wasn't GA either. SIGH. They almost definitely will--despite the fact that it's a bad time of year for a lot of people to be shelling out this much money for tickets, it's Coldplay, and scalpers are more vicious than ever. If you can get in on the Amex presale, do that to guarantee yourself there. If you have to wait til the general sale, take whatever the thing first coughs up for you. To throw away the first tickets that come up in a general sale, thinking you might get better ones when you try again...that's often the kiss of death. WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY DOING? I understand tours cost money, especially with the kind of things they do with the glowbands and the cool lights and the big stage and everything, and I understand that touring is really one of the only ways left to make money off of music, but...I really am disappointed that they didn't try to keep the fans and the economy more in mind when agreeing on a price for these shows. Keeping it under $100 should have been more of a priority, I feel.

No problem! :nice: And I'm short as well, so floor seats really are a no-go for me unless I could somehow get to the front, or it's GA and I can assure I can be in the front by waiting all day :P. I just did another Amex presale for Arctic Monkeys and The Black Keys at MSG a few days ago (ANOTHER reason I'm not quite ready to shell out for another gig for awhile) and they had I think 4 sections (maybe more, but I only saw three) up for the presale: two in the 300s, which were not great seats at all, and two in the 100s, directly across from the stage, so it's far, but a dead-on view. I got two tickets in the 100s, the first tier, but I had to buy two separate tickets rather than two together because there were no pairs left by the time I was ready to buy. I just really didn't want to duke it out in the general sale, especially with the prevalence of scalpers these days.

Right now it doesn't look like there's going to be GA, but that could change--it has before, anyway. And on the Viva tour, R#42 used to go around the nosebleed seats and give front-row tickets to people that looked like big fans that got bad tickets. I knew they did this, so when I saw them doing this at the Izod Centre, I got up all my courage and asked, and he gave them to me. He had four left and we got them...and then we sat in these nice front-row seats and who comes out but Gwyneth, her mother, and two other people...and they saw their seats were taken so they had to go somewhere else on the side :lol:

For reference: when Coldplay last played the Izod Centre in NJ, I was lucky enough to be upgraded by R#42. The tickets he handed me, which were in the very front row of the floor seats, aren't even onsale to the general public. The first 5-ish rows are usually saved for family/friends/corporations/contest winners etc. I think the same will be true for this tour.

According to Ticketmaster (which is subject to change, though), there's not going to be GA, and on one of the legs of the US Viva tour, at some of the same venues like the Izod Center etc, there weren't GA sections then, so I don't know what I think about the odds of that happening this time. But Ticketmaster could change the info they have up too, we'll just have to see.

Oh, and I saw a few people asking about how the presale works. I'm pretty experienced with that, so I thought I'd help out: You HAVE to have an American Express card to participate, obviously. The "preferred seating" is something else, unless you know what that is already and have the proper code, ignore that. There are a specific number of tickets allotted for the Amex presale, so people without Amex, don't worry--the whole gig can't be eaten up just by people with Amex cards. The disadvantage to a presale is that only SOME tickets are available, and often not the best ones. When you run a search for tickets on the presale, you're not searching the whole stadium for what's available, you're only searching in a few sections (I think usually 3-4, maybe more) for available tickets, and they're not usually the best/closest sections. So you'll get tickets, but often kind of mediocre ones, whereas if you wait for the general sale, it's much more of a bloodbath with thousands of other people trying for tickets too, but ALL of the arena (minus what's already owned by corporations and the like) is onsale, so you could end up with better/closer seats. I have no idea why some of the dates aren't currently on the Ticketmaster presale list, but they might be added in the coming days via Ticketmaster. I want to know too, because the show I want to go to isn't there currently! :uhoh:

I have such a love/hate relationship with their tour announcements, sigh. I'm happy about the East Rutherford date, and I was hoping to go to DC and maybe Philly too, but then I saw the ticket PRICES, which are pretty ridiculous, AND when they go onsale, which is starting next week (I won't know til I have a job or not til the following week and therefore whether or not I can to go more than one show at around $127 a ticket :dead:). I have no idea why they're selling them so early, what advantage that is for them. I feel like they could announce it now and have the tickets actually go onsale AFTER Christmas/the holidays, when more people might have more money to spend. I was actually hoping for stadiums in the US as was rumored, not arenas. Stadiums at least almost guarantee GA (none of these shows seem to have GA sections at the present moment), and slightly less drama in ticket-getting, since there are so many more available. I'm the committed type that would sleep outside for a full day and enjoy it to get front row at a stadium show in GA (and have done it several times before), and am kind of let down that now, despite that willingness, I'm going to be subjected to whatever the Ticketmaster computer coughs up for me. That almost always means shitty seats, because if you get shitty seats turning up on the search, it's a risk to throw them away and try for better when thousands of other people are searching at the same time. And the PRICES, dear lord. In this economy, and because they're not exactly a struggling band, I feel like they should have tried to keep it under $100 WITH fees for the best tickets. Dave Holmes even mentioned that in the Billboard article this year, but it doesn't seem like they're following that ideal anymore. Sigh. I just think $127 for something that's not nosebleed is really steep, no matter who the artist.

Exactly, well said. I would love them to play for longer--I think they're capable of it, and I don't see why they don't at least try it out. But at the same time, it's not like we had any reason to suspect they'd play for longer this time around. I think they're always going to be a band that sticks to a setlist for a long period of time with only small changes, and they're going to be a 90-minute band for the forseeable future. We should all either know that already or get used to it, really.

This is SO COOL. I hope they bring them to America (and the rest of the world). This year at the Coachella festival, Arcade Fire did a similar thing with beachballs to bop around and it was SO awesome (despite the fact that I got a bit suffocated by them), but I really like the idea of everyone having one to keep. Anyone that was there: you don't have to cut them off, do you? I'd want to keep mine intact forever and I feel like showering with something like that would zap me or something :lol:

People are trolling, yall :lol: (about the nekkid thing, I don't know about White Shadows but :freak:)

There'll be stage pics, guarantee it :wink: UGH I can't wait for bootleg videos of DLIBYH (and Daylight and SITS, but we've heard those before, as excited as I am to hear them again!)

Still can't get over the size of those battery packs...I feel it would be like wearing a fat pillbox on your wrist :P. I bet they're going to look really rad all lit up though :wacky:. I hope they have them on the US tour...and that they're not permanent wristbands, the kind you have to cut off.

I actually did this in a linguistics module once...of course I forget the details but there's some proof somewhere that the American way was actually the original way, at least with one or two certain conventions :P *talks self into a hole because I have no proof* SO HOW ABOUT THOSE WRISTBANDS AND THAT SETLIST! :wink3:

Haha I know, I just clicked the link on Twitter for the pictures of the wristbands and I scrolled down a tiny bit and there was your post :lol: You people and your superfluous U's :angry:

Whoa...those wristbands! They're really cool looking, but that battery pack or whatever it is is huge :freak: :angry: :P

With the announcement of the new Black Keys tour with Arctic Monkeys opening, I'm definitely going to give it my all to get to the MSG show! :dazzled: Tickets go onsale on a few days :wacky:

:sweatdrop: :dance:

:freak: I CAN'T WAIT :dead:

CONGRATS CHRISTA :heart: :kiss: :dazzled: :hug: So honored to pass the title to you, of all people :wacky:

So evidently Julian's never heard a Coldplay song in his life... [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4lXmdsRCRA]The Strokes - New York City Cops - Live (Fuji Rock Festival) - YouTube[/ame]