Christmas ball tickets sold out in an hour

Don’t underestimate how much we love Harry Potter.

It began at midnight.

By 3am, it had passed the Union.

By 5am, it was at Macintosh.

By 8am, the queue of nearly 700 had hit North Street.

Ridiculous

Why do we do this to ourselves? Standing on the street in the cold, in the dark, in the rain, all to pay £35 for a ball ticket?

On one hand, the theme is Harry Potter. The Mermaids have promised us everything from Butterbeer to chocolate frogs, offering us the opportunity to finally attend Hogwarts, even if just for a night. The thought of a St Andrean Yule Ball appears to have been just the incentive needed to drag an army of tired and hungover students from their beds this Wednesday morning.

To their credit, the Mermaids do attempt to alleviate some of the boredom of queuing, with hot chocolate and live entertainment provided for their potential ticket buyers.

They could not have foreseen the demand, however, for this year’s ball. Just yesterday, the sheer amount of people attempting to purchase one of the 400 online tickets crashed the Union’s website before selling out in what could have been a record thirty seconds.

Today, with 1400 tickets on the line, students turned up in droves, some waiting for a full nine hours before the sales began.

People who queued from 5am did not get tickets. This includes the Tab St Andrews’ own co-editor Hamish Docherty, who woke up at 4:30 am.

He said: “I arrived at 5.30am and the queue was around the union and all the way down hope street with people in sleeping bags and under cardboard boxes.”

Now all tickets have sold out.

Relieving the boredom with a queue selfie

Better luck next year, folks.