My Wicked Experience

Chris and I were planning on going to the temple this week with some friends. I found out on Sunday that the temple is closed for a couple of weeks and so all of the sudden we found ourselves with a completely free evening--something that rarely happens. One of the things I wanted to do this summer was to take Trevor and Branden to see Wicked. Chris and I had taken Kelsie before, but I wanted to take the boys before Wicked left LA. Since we had this free evening, we decided to go to the Pantages and see if we could win some lottery tickets. Before each performance a lottery is held and if you are picked, you can get two front row tickets for $25 each and receive my "I won the Wicked lottery" keepsake pin.

I have never tried to get lottery tickets to the Pantages before. It's almost like The Price is Right! You go there and at 5:30 you can put your name on a piece of paper for the drawing. So, Chris, Trevor, Branden and I each put our names down. At 6:00 they start drawing names. There were about 125 people there who had entered the drawing. They draw 13 names. I was feeling pretty optimistic about the lottery because Trevor was with us. Trevor is one of those lucky kids who wins everything. Everytime there is a raffle or drawing at school, he comes home a winner. They started drawing names and on the ninth name drawn I heard it, "Lori Oberender." It was as if I heard "Lori Oberender, come on down!" and just like the Price is Right I jumped up down and ran to the front to purchase my two front row tickets.

The performance was not sold out that night so they let anyone who had not won the lottery purchase tickets for $20 less than face value, which was pretty good since you didn't have to pay Ticketmaster fees or handling charges. We bought two more tickets so that we could all go. Branden and I started out in the front row and it was amazing! It was pretty close--like sitting in the front row of a movie theater, but they would actually look you in the eye and sing right to you. You could even see them spit and sweat. At intermission (Chris calls it half-time) we all switched seats so that Chris and Trevor could experience a better view.

It was another great performance of Wicked. Branden really liked it, and Trevor, who I actually had to take kicking and screaming, even said it was "OK." The lottery was pretty fun. It didn't take very long, and I would do it again even if I hadn't won. But I did. I was a Wicked Winner! And they were the best $25 Pantages seats I've ever had.