TIFF 08 - Pick Up

Today the box office opened at 10am for advanced ticket holders to pick up their selects. As I mentioned in my last post, I was extremely lucky to get all of my first picks since they drew box 9, I was in box 34 and the total number of boxes was 78, now I just had to go pick them up. Last year I went to go meet some friends in line (which was incredibly kind of them to let me sneak in since they had already been in line for an hour), and the total wait time just to give over a stub to get the tickets to each movie (I want to make sure this is very clear - all this involves is a person running back to a room to grab your tickets, but for some reason this takes a ridiculously long time) was over 3 hours.


This year we decided to get in the line at 9am. After fortifying ourselves with Starbucks we encountered the line, which wrapped around a city block already. We asked one woman in line what time she had arrived to be within the first group of people, and she said about 7:30am. Well, that's just not something I was willing to get up for this morning, especially since it was a long weekend. It was a beautiful day, and I got a little sun as I waited patiently to wind all the way to the front of the line. We waited for 2 hours, much better than last year. I think the most significant change was that the box office moved from College Park to the Toronto Life Square made the wait more doable, you didn't have to serpentine 17 times before you finally got to the front.

I now have all of my normal screening tickets, and I still have to go pick up my Gala tickets, and then I will be all set for the festivaling to begin!