INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Harry Potter Play Sells Out In Less Than An Hour, Tickets Resell For Almost £3,000

By Charlotte Sexauer
Published on: 05:01 PST, Oct 28, 2015

Thousands of Harry Potter fans were left disappointed and frustrated after trying and failing to purchase tickets online for the Potter play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, opening in London July 2016. Tickets, which went on sale on October 28 for those dedicated enough to have registered for priority booking, were sold out in less than an hour.

According to Radio Times, many found themselves locked out of the seller’s website, spending hours in the queue to then receive an error message saying the tickets had been removed from their basket. Annabelle Hawkes, from Brighton, said she was able to choose her tickets and a price, but when it came to select them, the page froze.

“I was then taken to my basket, but the selection had been calculated wrong: for two people, not six. By the time I had gone back through and reselected tickets, I was told they had sold out.

“I tried again, and was told my tickets had been secured, but they were charging me £600, instead of the £120 I was expecting to pay.”

Many people expressed their frustration at missing out on the Harry Potter play tickets on Twitter, some with funnier GIFs than others.

The whole debacle worked for the lucky few who purchased tickets only to resell them on other online marketplaces, such as the Ebay-owned website Stubhub. At the time of writing, tickets for the Saturday showing at 2 p.m. were available for a whooping £2,950 — almost $4,520.

Screenshot of the Stubhub website
[Image via a screenshot of the Stubhub website]

The official Twitter account for the Harry Potter play discouraged customers from reselling tickets on those websites and urged them to return them online and get a refund.

Trying to maintain secrecy around the plot, author J.K Rowling had to take to Twitter on multiple occasions to shut down rumors and wrong media reports that were stating the Cursed Child was prequel to the Harry Potter series.

What we know so far, however, is that the play is officially the eighth Harry Potter story. According to the official play’s website, “it’s an official new story that picks up where the Deathly Hallows epilogue left off.”

For those who may need a little reminding, the seventh and last book of the Harry Potter series closed with a brief chapter set 19 years later in which Harry and Ginny Weasley are a married couple with three children: James Sirius, Albus Severus, and Lily Luna. Ron and Hermione also have two children, and the two families meet at King’s Cross station, where they are sending some of them off for their first year at Hogwarts.

Set in two parts, the play promises to explore “how Harry wrestles with his past and how his youngest son Albus Severus deals with the heavy burden of the family legacy.”

A general sale for the remainder of the tickets is organised for Friday, October 30 for the play which will start in July 2016 at London’s Palace Theatre.

(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
[Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images]

Based on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the play was written by Jack Thorne and will be directed by John Tiffany. Rowling is collaborating to bring her most famous character and his surroundings to the stage for the first time.

[Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images]

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