The Broadway musical version of The Lion King opened in New York on November 11, 1997 and it was an immediate smash hit. Tickets were darn near impossible to get unless, say, you wanted to sell a kidney or one of your children. Or if, as in my case, you had a friend who worked high in the Disney organization and needed a favor.
I had a trip planned. I was to be a guest at Mid-Ohio Con, a fine convention that was held annually in Columbus, Ohio. Another guest was my friend, the fine actress Brinke Stevens. The con was on November 29 and 30 of that year and then we were going to fly to New York City for several days of me visiting publishers, Brinke seeing friends in town and both of us attending Broadway shows. I wanted one of those shows to be The Lion King but I didn't want to pay what people were paying for decent (or even indecent) seats. So when the aforementioned Disney exec asked for a favor, I asked about (*ahem!*) House Seats to The Lion King, maybe? Pretty please?
It was the longest of shots and I was quite prepared for an "Are you outta your friggin' mind?" Instead, I got a surprising "Let me see what I can do," followed hours later by an even more amazing "I checked with someone and I think we can arrange that.". I would have to pay for the tickets but I would be paying the price printed on the tickets, not the price that some scalper was demanding. I think the former was around $70 a seat and the latter added a zero. That's per seat.
The exec could arrange two and (amazingly) not way in the back balcony, which would have satisfied us. These would be fourth row center — one of the greatest bargains I ever scored. Ah, but there was a teensy downside: The only date he could get them for around that time was Sunday evening, November 30. At 6:30 PM. In New York. We had planned to leave Columbus the next day and fly to New York.
It was too good an opportunity to pass up so we decided to leave Mid-Ohio Con a little after Noon on Sunday. I booked plane 'n' limo reservations that would get us to our hotel in Manhattan in time to change our clothes and hurry over to the New Amsterdam Theater on W. 42nd St. by the curtain time of 6:30. It seemed tight but doable.
A few days later — the same day I received the tickets in the mail — I got a call from my old buddy Ken Gale. Ken hosted a radio show about comic books that was done live in New York on Sunday evenings and he asked when I might be back there again to do his show. Without giving the matter a whole lot of thought, I said, "How about Sunday evening, November 30?" He said that would be fine and to be at the studio by 11 PM. Again, it seemed doable.
We flew to Columbus on Friday, November 28. Saturday was a full day of Mid-Ohio Conning and we both had a fine time.
Sunday morning, I packed my bags, checked out of my room, checked those bags, hosted a panel from 11 AM to Noon, then met Brinke (with her bags) in the lobby at 12:15. We hopped into a taxi for the short drive to Port Columbus International Airport, which is now known as John Glenn International Airport. By 12:40 PM, we were in line to check in for a 2:15 flight to Newark, New Jersey. Plenty of time…we thought.
And we thought that for quite a while in that line. It was moving quite slowly and some of the folks who'd reached the check-in desk seemed to be arguing a lot. We found out why when we finally got to the head of that line and a fight attendant person broke the following to us in what was not a gentle manner: Our flight was oversold and we would not be able to fly on it.
You may be wondering which airline this was. I think I recall but since I'm not 100% certain, I won't mention a name. Whichever one it was, they said they'd try to get us on a later flight that evening, possibly on another carrier. If they couldn't, they were willing to put us up in some hotel near the airport that night and fly us to New Jersey or even New York City the next day. There were a lot of probablies and maybes in their offer. No remuneration for screwing up our lives was offered though I imagine there would have been something…an extra bag of peanuts perhaps. Or a one-time discount on a future flight just in case I was stupid enough to fly that airline again. Which I've probably done.
I, of course, began arguing…though not as severely as some of the others who were in the same boat (i.e., not getting on the same plane) had been arguing. I decided that being calm and understanding and reasonable might be the better way to go in this situation…as I find it usually is in most situations.
And maybe I shouldn't but I somehow always feel sorry for someone in the position these airline employees were in, defending and being yelled at for a problem they personally did not cause. People were cussing at them and vowing legal reprisal as they explained, over and over, that the plane only held X number of people and somehow, more than X number of us had been allowed to purchase and pay for seats on that flight.
Folks in their place usually appreciate someone who isn't acting like the Wolfman beneath a Full Moon. And also, I had something the other arguers didn't have. I had two tickets to The Lion King in about five hours.
I pulled them out of the little carry-on bag I had which also contained my laptop. I politely explained that if we couldn't use those tickets that evening, the airline was going to have to buy me two new tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway over the next few days.
The lady with whom I was talking looked puzzled for a second. This was new to her so she went off to talk to some sort of manager who, lucky for us, seemed to have been a theater buff of some sort. I actually heard him exclaim, "Tickets for Lion King? For tonight???"
He came over and asked to see the tickets…and there they were. Two for The Lion King. The New Amsterdam Theater on W. 42nd Street. For that evening. With a slight tremble in his voice, he read off the seat locations — D108 and D109 — and said, "Those sound like real good seats."
Calmly, I informed him, "Fourth row center." He swallowed hard. They were good seats. See for yourself…
The poor man just stared at those tickets like I'd flashed the Hope Diamond or The Holy Grail or something one can go one's entire life without ever seeing. He moistened his lips and asked, with a slight tremor in his voice, what it would cost to replace them. I could tell he knew how precious they were. I said, "At least a thousand apiece. I can't be certain because the scalpers don't usually advertise seats this good."
For a second, I thought of adding, "Plus, I have to guest on Ken Gale's radio show and talk about Silver Age super-hero comics for two hours." But I figured that if the Lion King tix didn't get us on the flight, nothing would.
He swallowed hard and said those same lovely words my friend at Disney had uttered: "Let me see what I can do."
I did not think I had any legal basis to demand they buy me new tickets…and actually, Brinke and I had tickets for every other evening we'd be in New York. I just thought the man might decide this was a special matter that was deserving of special consideration. He went away and made a phone call, then came back a few minutes later.
Taking us aside so that no other complaining travelers could hear, he whispered, "I can get the two of you on the flight but your seats won't be together. Would that be all right?" By this point, Brinke and I were willing to squat on our suitcases in the cargo hold so we agreed. Making sure no one could see, he slipped us two boarding passes. And then he said — in my memory though perhaps not in reality — "Hakuna Matata!"
The folks who had been bumped from the flight but had checked luggage were getting their bags pulled off the plane. All the way to Newark, I worried that ours might have been yanked along with the others…but things were starting to work out for us. When we got to the Baggage Claim there, ours were the first things down the conveyor belt…and the limo driver I'd booked was waiting with a little sign that, like all little signs with my name on them, spelled it wrong.
We landed around 4:30. By 5:30, we were in a suite at my favorite New York hotel back then, the Rihga Royal on 54th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. The hotel is still there but it's no longer the Rihga Royal and I no longer stay there. By 6:20, we were in seats D108 and D109 at the New Amsterdam Theater and from those seats, we damn well saw The Lion King.
After the show, I took Brinke for dinner at Ollie's Noodle House on W. 44th Street. It's no longer there either but there are plenty of other Ollie'ses in New York, along with thousands of better places to get Chinese Food. We walked around Times Square a bit looking at this and that, then I hailed a cab to take us wherever the hell WBAI Radio had its station then. Brinke demonstrated a patience I would not have had in her place by listening quietly as Ken Gale and I talked about comic books until the wee small hours of Monday morning.
It was quite an amazing day, starting as it had with breakfast and a panel at the Adam's Mark Hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if I'd liked The Lion King. I know almost everyone else has. It will soon celebrate 25 years of playing to packed houses and it's the third-longest-running play ever on Broadway and the highest-grossing ever. But I just didn't like it and you have no idea how much I wanted to, especially after all we went through to get to it.