Discounts for any group of 10 or more are available. Group incentives include priority seat locations, easy payment procedures, and event planning assistance. Group tickets are not available for purchase online.
Early Bird tickets provide early access to shop the Market starting at 8:30 AM on Thursday and Friday and include repeat admission to the Market all weekend. Tickets will be $60 at the Market (cash or check only)!
Where To Buy Nutcracker Tickets
The resale of event tickets in Texas is legal. You may well find event tickets on sale at ticket brokers. Though brokers are never the primary sales point, they access tickets by purchasing them in the same way as the consumer. Please keep in mind, when you buy from a broker:
Marie and the Prince arrive in the Land of Sweets and are greeted by the beautiful Sugarplum Fairy and all the other inhabitants of her realm. The Prince tells the story of the battle with the mice, describing how Marie helped him defeat the Mouse King. Everyone is delighted that the Prince and Marie are safe, and the Sugarplum Fairy leads them to a glittering throne, where they can enjoy cakes and candies. Everyone dances for the two children: Hot Chocolate from Spain, Chinese Tea, Coffee from Arabia, the Candy Canes, the Marzipan Shepherdesses, and Mother Ginger, with her eight little polichinelles. Then comes the Waltz of the Flowers, with a shimmering Dewdrop dancing among the lovely blooms, and finally, the Sugarplum Fairy returns with her Cavalier to perform a majestic dance.
Nutcracker tickets are very popular so the show never officially offers any discounts on the Nutcracker ticket options on regular tickets sales. Group tickets sales are discounted by up to 30%. The show producers set the basic ticket price of the show as if it were a single event. What is more confusing is that on their website at the check-out page there is an opportunity to enter a discount code - but (according to the David H. Koch Theater at the Lincoln Center box office), this box should not appear on the web site as no discounts are ever available for individual ticket sales for The Nutcracker. We tested a number of promotional codes that have been used for the repertory ballet in the past and found none of these codes actually worked for The Nutcracker.
If you buy tickets in person at the David H. Koch Theater at the Lincoln Center you will avoid the service fees that are applied to internet and phone orders that are often up to $15 per ticket.
Another advantage of buying tickets directly at the box office is that often they will have access to tickets that do not appear online or over the phone - usually they are cancellation tickets that have been returned or tickets that have been held back to thwart ticket brokers and have not yet been listed in their database of available tickets for sale.
This year the service fee is $3.50 per ticket and the facility fee is $7.50, so the total fee is $11.00 per ticket. The service fee was in line with standard Broadway show ticket fee pricing a few years ago but has once again increased their pricing. This extra fee is surprisingly expensive when you consider Broadway shows are forced through a for-profit third party like Ticketmaster or Telecharge, whereas Nutcracker ticket sales do not have to provide a profit to their internal ticketing service, just cover the basic costs of ticket management and printing. The $3.50 service fee can be avoided completely by purchasing the tickets directly at the David H. Koch Theater box office at the Lincoln Center at 20 Lincoln Center Plaza (Columbus Avenue at 63rd Street). In addition to the service fee, there is also a facility fee that cannot be avoided and is currently set at $3.50. It is not quite clear what the difference is between the service fee and the facility fee as both ticket fees go into the central Lincoln Center's fund. Perhaps, it just sounds better to break the extra charges into two smaller multiple fees than saying that there is a $11.00 per-ticket fee, which seems expensive on its own.
At every performance of The Nutcracker at the Lincoln Center, there are a few Nutcracker tickets that go unsold. During the most popular performance dates and times, these seats are usually single seats that have been orphaned by ticket sales of groups or other larger parties (as The Lincoln Center will not allow sales of two or four ticket that will orphan any single seats). These single seats often remain unsold (who wants to sit by themselves anyway) and often no one ends up sitting in them during the performance. The David H. Koch Theater will not sell these tickets for less than their face value closer to the performance time because they are more concerned about protecting the brand, name and value of The Nutcracker, as this is their cash cow that keeps all the other ballet shows running for the rest of the year. Having the proletariat running around their theater during the holidays is bad enough, but discounting the remaining seats close to the curtain is just too much. The Lincoln Center has decided it would rather take the loss in ticket sales than damage the overall brand of The Nutcracker and thus they leave the seats empty.
Bucking the trend of the modern Broadway theatergoer, many well-heeled Upper-West-Side New Yorkers will often see the show twice. Each time from a different vantage point in the theatre. It has also been known for a few a the very rich patrons to buy two sets of Nutcracker tickets to different sections on the SAME actual night and move position between the seats during the intermission to get the full effect of the show. Their ultimate goal is to see the close ups of the dancers from the orchestra in the first act and then experience the glorious large dance ensemble in the 2nd act from the 1st ring, especially for the later scenes in the show.
The Nutcracker show is not suitable for children under 5 years old, even if they are asleep the whole time. The show is a long two hour ballet. If you insist on bringing your under 5, they can go on your lap (but they will get bored very quickly) Lincoln Center requires you buy Nutcracker tickets for your under 5, even if they are asleep the whole time (some old people nap too, but they still have to pay). Did we say don't even think of bringing your under 5. OK we just said it again. Just don't bring your under 5. Doc McStuffins doesn't like ballet tutu's that much and neither will your fellow audience members like you very much when your little precious bundle disturbs their enjoyment of this perennial New York ballet favorite. Not sure why Lincoln Center doesn't just come out and just ban the under-fives just like Broadway theatres already do, but they probably just want to appear family-friendly to everyone, even though they are decidedly not in this case.
Groups of 20 people or more will receive group discount rates for George Balanchine's The Nutcracker at a 30% discount on the face value of individual tickets.
Other than just discounts, group ticket purchases also come with some other benefits:
Ticket brokers often buy group tickets, leveraging the group discount and the returnable nature of the tickets if they do not pay the remaining second 50%. The do not usually have to forfeit their deposit.
By the time each November rolls around, the best Nutcracker tickets (including the first few rows of the orchestra and the front rows of each of the rings) are long gone. Those tickets are usually snapped up by the various groups that have special ticket access before everyone else. These include senior patrons, guild members, inner circle and other priority members in the pre-sale that happens during the summer months prior to the show. These groups do not usually get a discount on the tickets, but they do get to buy all the good seats prior to the general public sale.
Many ticket brokers also have these memberships and they try to buy as many Nutcracker tickets as they can to resell on ticket services like Stubhub. The brokers also leverage the group tickets process to increase their yield on ticket resales. The NYCB does little to curb these actions.
The general and open public ticket sales for The Nutcracker usually starts in early September and continues throughout the run of the show into January the following year, although by late November almost all the ticket inventory is sold anyway. As the show progresses through its season, many cancelled tickets become available at the box office, but these tickets are often not available by telephone or internet.
Single seats are often left unsold to protect the brand and the NYCB eats the loss of these , rather than sell them at a discount and devalue the brand of The Nutcracker
HOLD AT BOX OFFICE: Pick up your tickets at the box office when you arrive at the theater on the day of your performance. For more details about how to pick up your tickets at the theater box office, please visit the Box Office Information page.
NORMAL DELIVERY METHOD: Tickets ordered at least two weeks before a performance can be delivered to shipping addresses in the United States via First Class Mail by the United States Postal Service. We are unable to mail tickets to international addresses.
PRINT AT HOME: Once your ticket order is confirmed, you will receive an order confirmation email and a second email containing a PDF file of your ticket(s) to the email address associated with your account. Please print this file and bring it with you to the theater to gain admittance to your performance. If your ticket type includes complimentary add-ons, the coupons for these services will be mailed to the billing address on your account, or held at the box office for orders placed less than two weeks before a performance.
The fifth ring is a very odd location to see The Nutcracker. The location tends to offer better views of the ceiling than of the actual stage and therefore the tickets are priced accordingly. The "bleacher creatures" in those outer reaches are usually there to listen to the amazing orchestra and are more interested in celebrity-spotting than to actually see The Nutcracker performance itself. If you suffer from vertigo, these seats are also not recommended as people have been known to faint or throw-up during a performance as the stage is directly below you and the whole experience can be uncomfortable at best, nauseous at worst. It is like being a skydiver falling onto the stage, but never actually landing on it. The fifth ring is perfect for Extreme Games fans, but terrible for your Grandma.
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