David A.

(After retelling this story in great detail to my cousin, she had some great insight:)
Mormons + Free + David Archuleta = Pure Madness
And that actually, any two of this combination would inevitably cause chaos to ensue, but all three combined was completely out of control and probably a bad idea.

I witnessed this first hand when I got four tickets to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Concert featuring David Archuleta from someone in my ward.  With only a little over a week until the event, my sister had been searching for ways to get ahold of tickets, so I called her immediately with news that she could have two of them.  Jamie and her husband, Shaun, rented a car and drove up from Las Vegas for the concert on Friday night.  We had a fun few days together, and when Friday rolled around we left our apartment two hours before we were supposed to be in our seats.  Bad idea.  It took us the full two hours to get to the Conference Center due to horrendous traffic.  Nate and Shaun dropped us off at the curb while they went to park, and Jamie and I ran across the street with the rest of the crowd.  When we slowed to a walk on the other side and looked around to see everyone still sprinting, we looked at each other and knew we were in trouble.  We joined in the madness and started running for the doors.  Sadly, the lines were still hundreds of people long at each door, so we jumped into one and I went to ask someone if we were in the correct line.  The man I asked responded "It doesn't matter which line you're in, everyone is considered standby now.  Just like the airlines, we overbook." Um, EXCUSE ME!??  So just like the airlines, are we going to be compensated if we don't get in??  He never answered that question..

So I ran to another line and Jamie and I anxiously waited as our lines slowly moved towards the doors.  When I saw hers get close, I ran to hers and called Nate to let him know we were only about 25 people out from the doors and that they needed to sprint to get in with us.  Just then though, the doors in front of us closed and one off to the left opened up.  As everyone slowly started running towards the other door, Jamie and I joined in and got through security.  We couldn't believe we had finally made it in and I quickly called Nate to tell him the new door.  I told Jamie to go save us seats and I would wait for our hubbys.  Within seconds, she ran back out to me with tears in her eyes to tell me that we hadn't actually made it in, it was only the overflow theater.  As everyone else made this discovery as well, voices became raised and tempers flared.  The communication and "overbooking" of the concert was not going over well with anyone.  Nate and Shaun finally made it in with us, and as Shaun tried to comfort Jamie, Nate worked his magic (his communication skills totally came in handy!).

Upon seeing Jamie upset, a few women commented as they walked by on how it wasn't that big of a deal and to just head home.  Well obviously none of them had come over 400 miles to get there!  We couldn't believe that over 5,000 extra tickets had been given out and thousands of ticket holders were getting turned away.  That's the kind of thing you should tell people traveling from all over to attend.

But anyways, after Nate talked to multiple people and used his suave communication skills, we were escorted in to look for seats "being saved for us".  Haha so maybe no one was actually saving seats for us...but when we got in we found two that weren't being saved for anyone!  So Jamie and I grabbed them and the boys stood in the back for the majority of the concert.  I couldn't believe everything we went through that night, but I'm glad that my sister got to see David A. and had her Christmas wish granted.

In addition, it took us two hours to get home after the concert.  Craziness.