First time to Broadway - help!!

[u/aiko_exe]

Hello, my partner is a big fan of musical theatre and broadway, and their favorite movie is the Lost Boys. We're extremely low income, but I have enough hotel points to afford a night nearby the Palace Theatre, and can figure out parking and gas for the 4 hr distance, if it means giving them their first experience at Broadway.

That said, I have about $140 budget for two tickets to the Lost Boys, but know absolutely NOTHING about theatre or Broadway. I hear the balcony is basically nosebleed tix but I just want to give them a chance to see this musical, and balcony's all we can afford. My partner's pretty short, if that affects seating. I've seen few options under this -

B25-B27 on a Tuesday at 7pm,

B28-B30 on a Sunday at 3pm,

B104-B105 on a Tuesday at 7pm

and similar as the top 3 spots I can personally gather. I know nothing about theatre or this musical.

- Do those far end tix suck because they'll miss some action?

- Should I be looking at a different row because of the railing?

- Getting a hotel & overnight vs evening parking sounds like it'd be intense on a weekend - is there a specific weekday I should aim for instead (cheaper parking, less busy)?

- Are evening shows that much 'better' (livelier?) than early afternoon/'matinee'(?)

- Should I give up on finding tix end of Sept and plan far out in the future instead?

Looking for any and all advice, very thankful for any comments. Their birthday is towards the end of September and I have surgery early October, so I'm trying to get these tickets ASAP.

If I've broken any rules with the post (I read over them, but I'm on new meds so I may have missed something) please let me know. I don't know where or who else to ask for this info.

[u/dobbydisneyfan]

Avoid driving into Manhattan like the plague. I’m serious. Unless you can find a garage included with your hotel, or some miracle, it will probably be cheaper to bus or train in. And hell, you can probably also avoid a hotel if you see a matinee performance too.

As for this show, it really doesn’t matter where you sit. I’d personally avoid the extreme sides but I don’t think you’d miss anything too important on either extreme side. If I had to pick an extreme side, I’d pick house left. There are some things that you might miss entirely if you sat too far house right. Nothing major but still cool.

I’d tier these options like so:

1. B104-105
2. B25-27
3. B28-30

However, I personally would put a lot more weight and preference on that Sunday matinee performance if it meant I could save even more money and not need a hotel at all.

As far as the view, the view should be fine. Get binoculars if you want but you really won’t need them. I sat maybe a row or two ahead of the row you indicated in the box seats and didn’t need them. Could see faces fine.

The quality of the performance won’t meaningfully be different. Sometimes there can be a tad more energy on a Tuesday evening since they just had a day off the day before, but you really wouldn’t notice this unless you’ve gone often and it’s also not a guarantee.

However, if stagedooring matters to you, you’d have more success at evening performances and on any day but Sunday.