I was so happy that the tour of WICKED came to my city and I was able to win tickets to WICKED.  The last time the tour came I didn’t win, so I was bumped out by that.  I had received the special preview sales from Broadway Across America and I was debating whether to purchase tickets.  But due to budget issues I thought twice about it and poured full force into finding ways to win tickets to WICKED.

I was able to win ticket to WICKED through my local radio station’s member contest.  As I previously recommended, join your local radio station and local TV station’s websites.  The tickets were for great seats on the front row of the mezzanine section.  I have never won bad seats to any event, so enter the contests and try your luck.

I wish I could have seen WICKED when it first opened up in 2003 with the original cast of Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, and Norbert Leo Butz.  But trust me that the touring company of WICKED musical delivered a heart stopping performance.  The cast for the main rolls was composed as follows:

Glinda played by Chandra Lee Schwartz
Elphaba played by Jackie Burns
Nessarose played by Stefanie Brown
Boq played by Justin Brill
Madame Morrible played by Randy Danson
Doctor Dillamond played by Paul Slade Smith
Fiyero played by Colin Hanlon
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz played by Mark Jacoby

I wish I could list the entire cast but it would be an extensive list; but they rocked. The set was awesome.  There was a huge mechanical dragon that adorned the upper frame of the stage; it was breathtaking. For those who have read the book on which the musical WICKED is based on, you would have recognized this as the prophetic clock of the time dragon; keep that under you witch hat or tiara as a nice trivia question.

During the intermission I braved the crowds to check out the merchandise.  They had a nice assortment of T-shirts, jackets, hats, key chains, and the cd recording of the original cast.  The T-shirts started off at $25 and the cd was the same price.  I opted to treat myself with a T-shirts although I wanted the cd too.  But I had an idea on how to get the cd cheaper or even get the songs for free.  I’ll share that adventure in an upcoming post.

Part 2:  Tips on how to win tickets to wicked, win concert tickets and other events.

I know it seems tedious to make those radio station lists but once you have that initial setup you don’t have to do it again.  So you don’t drive yourself crazy, use the same login and passwords for your radio station memberships.  The reason why I suggest this is that a handful of companies control all the stations on the radio so essentially your membership is to one parent company and it just makes entering the contests easier if you have to remember only one login and password.

I like to enter contests that are simple to sign up for.  I am not a fan of radio contests where you have to be the lucky number call, or where you have to answer trivia, or the phrase that pays.  For me, that is too complicated and I don’t have the time for stuff like that.  I am also not a fan of the new trend of radio station contests in which you have to accumulate points in order to enter the contest.  Two of my local radio stations have switched over to this method and I hate it.  I had previously won concert tickets, won tickets to Disney shows, and other sponsor prizes very regularly, but since this change I haven’t had any luck. Don’t think that it is the same people winning all the time because most radio contests have a clause that if you have won a prize from them, you can’t enter or win anything for at least 30 days.

Whenever you enter a contest, read the rules to see how often you can enter.  Most radio and TV contests are one-time entries.  The contests run for the week, so make it a point to login every Monday to see if there are any contests you want to enter.  In the case of radio stations, since the contest runs for the week, they pick a winner by Thursday.  Local TV stations vary in terms of how long the contests run, so read those contest rules.  As I have mentioned before you will have to fill out tax forms for your prize, which will require a social security number.  Wait to provide this information when you are at the radio or TV station to pick up your prize.  If your prize is around $900 or over, it will affect your tax returns because that is the time Uncle Sam will ask for his portion.  I found this out after winning a hair laser removal package valued over $900.  So our tax return for that year took a little hit.  But I was ok with that, laser hair removal is super expensive so it balanced out in my eyes if all I paid was the taxes.

In part 3 of this series I’ll share some more tips on keeping track of your contests.

Part 1: Tips on how to win tickets to wicked, win concert tickets and other events.

I was very lucky that in 2011 I won tickets to WICKED.  I wanted to share some tips on how to increase your chances of winning tickets to WICKED and other events.  A good amount of the prizes I have won have come from online radio and TV contests.

I would first recommend making a list of all the radio stations on your FM dial.  You will find the easy listening stations, hip-hop stations, classical, top forty stations, and other speaking language stations.  Even if you are not a fan of that genre, I would still check out their websites and head to their contest page to see what type of contests and prizes they have.

They will have contests to win concert tickets, win movie tickets, win a car, win cash, win prizes to local events, and win prizes from their sponsors.  The main thing is not the music played on the stations, but the type of contests they run; so I would suggest becoming members of as many as you like.

The same applies for your local TV stations.  Check out the websites for your local news affiliates and most will have a contest page.  If they have a membership, sign up.  Your local newspapers are also a great source of contests.  Check out their websites and if they have membership, sign up.  I encourage signing up only to make entering the contests later on easier.  You just use your login and password and you’re good to go.

If you are a sporting fan, switch over to the AM dial and make a list of your local sports stations.  They run contests to win sporting event tickets.  You can win basketball tickets, win baseball tickets and tickets for other sporting events.

I would recommend creating a second email account just for the purpose of entering contests. If you don’t mind receiving all those newsletters to you inbox, then don’t bother with a second email address.  You can always go into each website’s user account and select how often and what types of emails you want to receive.  They usually have a newsletter that is just for promotions and contests.  You can opt just to receive that.

Stay tuned for part 2.