How I got Taylor Swift The Eras Tour tickets for Toronto 2024 in the Ticketmaster surprise drops

Wanted to publish this publicly because I got a lot of messages through my IG where I shared stories of the whole process from queuing to running for the train to being at the Rogers Centre within the span of two hours. Disclaimer: if you are not a die hard Swiftie, this is not a mission for the faint of heart. You’re really going to need to consider the time/money trade-off.

This whole thing is a lottery within a lottery system that seems to be totally based on luck so, I have even made a survey to see if there’s any pattern, and I will share the results: here is the survey!!!

I was so, so fortunate to see The Eras Tour in May 2023. I’ve been a verified Taylor Swift fan since she introduced Taylor Swift Tix or whatever the system was called in 2017. I bought multiple copies of the CD, merch, whatever it took to advance my position for a better chance at getting tickets. I didn’t spend hundreds of dollars, but I spent what I could! I even had a giveaway for tickets to raise money for mental health on bloo’s Instagram account and on this blog! However, for The Eras Tour, it didn’t matter. Ticketmaster crashed and canceled ticket sales. I was so, so bummed. But! I was contacted by Ticketmaster to enter into a ticket lottery system. It was a form saying which tier of ticket you wanted (price), and how many (quantity). Later, I got an email asking if I’d like to accept 7th row tickets. It was more than I had ever spent for a concert ticket – $450 USD!! But in hindsight, it was the deal of the century. I knew I would probably never get tickets that good ever again.

Me and my parents drove to Boston to stay in my sister’s one bedroom apartment. Parents camped out with the dogs, and Laura and I set out at noon to Foxborough. We couldn’t get a reserved parking spot in the main lot, and additional public transit options sold out. Driving early enough to get a parking spot when the lots opened was our best bet. Btw, this stadium is in the middle of nowhere. There’s one traffic light and 2 lanes in each direction. I brought my laptop to work on startup stuff from the Starbucks until the venue opened. Then we sat there for HOURS until the countdown clock came one. At least we had lots of time to line-up for the merch we wanted. After the concert, we queued for almost 3 hours to get out of the parking lot. The whole ordeal was a 14 hour affair.

My best friend and fellow huge Swiftie since debut era, Eryn, was determined to see Taylor in Toronto. I lost hope of seeing her in Canada because our largest stadium has the capacity of 30-50% of most NFL stadiums. The Eras Tour tickets somehow became even more sought after as the show continued to tour, and more people signed up for a chance to get an access code for the Toronto dates than there are people in the whole country. For a CHANCE to get a code for a CHANCE to queue for tickets. It’s a lottery within a lottery. No one we knew got a code. Everyone was waitlisted. I still haven’t heard of anyone getting an access code.

And yet… Eryn did. not. lose. hope.

It’s not over until it’s over!!!!!!!!! And that’s the moral of the story here folks.

Eryn spent 2 weeks studying how the ticket drops work. She did nothing but search for tickets with delusional optimism like it was her day job from Monday-Thursday the week of the Tay-ronto. She was in the fb groups, resale sites, messaging strangers… no stone was left unturned. She had her scammer-radar HONED in.

We didn’t have Ticketmaster accounts that could get in the queue and surveyed everyone we knew to see if their account maybe worked. The hard part is that you don’t know what account is going to work until that tiny little window where the queue opens. We got tickets through Eryn’s former co-worker’s account.

Step 0: Make sure you’ve turned off your VPN, reset your browser cache/cookies, and turned off private browsing settings. Wiki how here.

Rule 1: You had to be waitlisted for Toronto.

There was no texted code or email to let you know you might be able to access the queue for surprise ticket drops.

Rule 2: It is totally random who gets access

It seems like account history doesn’t factor in to whether you get access. Your previous Taylor Swift ticket history doesn’t count. I had Taylor Swift Tix verified status from reputation era, which helped get tickets for Lover Fest (if I got to ask Taylor anything, I would ask about what her vision was for the East and West shows). My sister’s account where she had already bought tickets for The Eras Tour 2023 was able to get into the queue.

I’m trying to collect data via this survey to see if there’s any sort of pattern.

Rule 3: You need to be chronically online. Turn on your notifications for Swifties Want Tickets.

By the time the notification telling you the queue is open, it might be too late… but there’s a chance you get a good enough spot even a couple thousand places in.

Eryn kept getting in the queue, and then the tickets would sell out and you’d just get kicked out. This happened for 2 days. Even if you make it to the front, your hopes and dreams will just go poof. But if the queue is still open, tickets are available. Each night opens and closes at seemingly random times. This is a multi-device endeavour. Use a different device for each night.

Rule 4: Refresh!

Eryn happened to refresh the page as the site was changing over from “sold out grey box message” to “join the queue button”. All of a sudden she could see the map, and pick tickets but then the page realized she didn’t queue first, and then was put into the queue.

Even when she got to the front of the queue there were disappearing tickets. You do not have time to pay attention to what you’re buying or how many. You just click NEXT as fast as you can and hope the timing works out. She just bought 3 tickets blind 2.5 hours before the show. 

We got the 5pm drop. We paid under $640 for face value floor seats. They were like a random section with seats at the edge of the floor and they were amazing because there was a big gap so we could see over people. Everyone in that section couldn’t believe their luck.

The kid who got the 22 hat N1 was in our section, so I think the venue people know that our section was like the last minute delusionally optimistic and despy Swifties.

This little pink section felt like a little club of Swifties who didn’t give up hope and couldn’t believe their luck.

If the queue has not closed, there’s a good chance there’s still inventory. Stay in the line. Stay on the map. Refresh. Get an error? Refresh.

My cousin was able to get tickets even after this scary message. I told her to refresh and she got two tickets! Different seats, not the ones pictured here. Remember, you just pick whatever is available because by the time you click “next” they might be gone. There are no guarantees in this fucked up game of ticket roulette.

Rule 5: Embrace getting booted out of the queue.

According to a quick Google for Glassdoor reports, Ticketmaster software engineers are making ~$100K. Which is objectively quite good, but for a senior software engineer, it’s kinda on the low end. They are not competitive for top talent, is what I’m getting at.

I’ve been kicked out once I’ve reached the front, been identified as a bot, or for being queued on another device. All of which was not true. I don’t even understand the point of queue IDs if we can’t report these errors. I’ve seen people reporting these same bugs from YEARS ago, so they are known issues. It’s not you. It’s Ticketmaster.

Keep refreshing and may the odds ever be in your favour! Or just cave and get very very last minute resale tickets with purchase protection because scammers are everywhere.

Rule 6: If you have a magical account that can get into the queue, get more tickets and pay it forward – give it to a deserving Swiftie in your life.

If you get to go to The Eras Tour, I hope you have/had the night of your life!!!! I’m stupidly grateful I got to see V1 and V2. I felt guilty going the second time, but Eryn really wanted me to go with her like very, very badly. We hadn’t seen Taylor together since RED. Taylor’s music means so much to us. We just happened to be the right age so that we always had a song for what we were feeling/going through as each new album released.

We were not cool middle-schoolers. We were into robotics and went to book signings instead of school dances. We were listening to the “Australian version” of the Taylor Swift album because that’s all that was available on the Canadian iTunes store in 2007. I remember having just gotten my learner’s permit and driving my family’s old minivan going and buying Speak Now after school and putting it into the retro-fitted CD player (because the car pre-dated CD players as a standard feature). I cried to All Too Well in my dorm room when I had no friends and going through a breakup that would take me years to get over. We were Swifties when it wasn’t cool throughout school, post-1989, and are still in the habit of being “underground” Swifties. We don’t want to talk to people about it because there’s a chance we might get our feelings hurt or people think we’re like the crazy stalker fans. We are firmly in the camp of “we respect Taylor Swift as a human being and do not participate in gossip about her life for entertainment”. So we keep our little fan club of 2, where we never, ever listen to new albums/songs without each other.

We got to share our love for her music as we were going through all the growing up stuff, all those little milestones, and the big ones too. Eryn managed to keep the fact she was walking down the aisle to Love Story as secret until she was actually doing it because she wanted to see me get extra emotional (I’m not typically a crier – I kinda wish I got that sense of relief I hear about that people get after a good cry).

I took lots of videos for my sister featuring all her fave lyrics from her fave songs. The acoustic set just happened to feature her fave song from TTPD and her senior year theme song.

We were both able to share the accounts we used with queue access to get more tickets for people who have been dying to go. We both had to hold back tears from the very big feelings we were feeling as Taylor took to the stage. We were still in disbelief the following day.

One of my favourite new Taylor memories is from Eryn’s three year old who after watching videos from the night before said that he is glad he didn’t go because it was really long and he would want to go home away from all the people but mommy and auntie Karen would have made him stay. 😆