It’s the most wonderful time of the year again… No I don’t mean Christmas. I mean it’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE SEASON 42! Political sketches, Mockumentary clips and music videos featuring the Beck Bennet, Colin Jost, Leslie Jones, new comer Mikey Day, Bobby Moyniham and Kate McKinnon who might I add just wON AN EMMY FOR HER SNL PERFORMANCE! If you’re like me and count down the days until it’s your favorite celebrity hosting the show then you might as well try to see it in person right? What I'm saying is that you can get into the coveted studio of 8H. Yes, you read that right; you can actually see SNL right before your eyes without paying anything. The only thing you will be forking over for admission is your patience and precious hours of your young life. But you've got plenty of time left in that young life so lets get you prepped on how to do it!
As a 5 time veteran of attending the show, (i'm literally insane I know) I didn't have the luxury of knowing what to bring while waiting on the streets on NYC. This is where I'm the kind person that I am and tell you what I wasn't so lucky to know.
Tip 1:
Wear clothes that are great in any weather condition. You will be staying in one place the whole time your waiting on the streets and NYC Fall weather is super sketchy. It can be breezy one minute, blazing hot another and then freezing the next. Don’t forget the absolute worst weather condition of them all, Rain. That brings me to…
Tip 2:
Tip 3:
Bring Snacks. You will be in line a long time and you will get hungry. The 24-hour drug store across the street is way to expensive for a bag of Chex Mix and M&M’s. Plus it’s 4 in the morning, nothing else will be open. And for the amount of money you paid, you shouldn’t see a cockroach with a piece of Chex mix in its mouth running away while you sitting right next to it (yes this happened, yes we screamed, and yes we stayed). Quite an enjoyable moment for a girl who is afraid of ants.
Tip 4:
Try to bring some sort of cheap chair to sit in so you’re not on the ground with those roaches. It’s also nicer to sleep up against a chair than a bike post.
Sleeping is another thing to conquer. Do you want to sleep for most of the waiting time and then wake up in time for NBC Pages to hand out standby tickets? Or do you want to hit an all-nighter and then go to sleep when you get home from waiting? If you’re choosing option 2…
Tip 5:
Bring something to do and charge your phone. The time I waited for Elizabeth banks for 7 hours, I completed a 6 page paper and a presentation. If you’re waiting for that long, be productive. I brought my laptop and everything! Listing to music and live tweeting/instagraming/snap chatting your experience can drain your battery in a snap, literally. Make sure before you leave your home that it is fully charged at 100%. You don’t want what happened to me where my roommates phone and mine was on 1% for 7 hours. We prayed it wouldn’t die just in case of an emergency where we needed a call. If there was a need for a call I probably could have asked one of the many standby friends we made which brings me to…
Tip 6:
Make friends with the people around you. With the amount of time you’ll be spending there, it’s always nice to talk to people from different states that come to wait for the show. It also helps to pass by time!
When you start to feel like you’ve survived the apocalypse, want to give up and go home, just keep holding on and wait for 7am when they give you your standby ticket. This is where I leave you with one final piece of information…
Tip 7:
Bring your license! You need it to get a standby ticket because they need to know that your age is above 16 and to have your name written on their list and on the back of your ticket. If you don’t have your license, you don’t have a ticket. Don’t let those 7 or more hours go to waste by forgetting something so simple.
The line works where everything is done in numerical order. First people to wait and have waited to longest will get approached first on whether they want live show or dress rehearsal. When you come back later that night, you will be arranged in the order of your number on the back of the ticket.
The live show is exactly what it means. You would be sitting in on the real live broadcast of SNL but that is the one that everyone will want to go to and is very hard to get into depending on who is hosting. Dress rehearsal is essentially the same exact thing except that it is done 3 hours before the live so that the host can really practice before the live. They also use the dress to test out the sketches and other material on audience members to know if they should cut certain sketches which makes the dress show that much more fun. You will be seeing about 4 or 5 more sketches than what the live show audience and audience at home will see. They even treat the dress rehearsal like the live show. You really have to feel out the standby crowd of the people in front of you on whether they do dress or live because you have to take what you feel you will get in. For my first try it was a stroke of luck that we got into live on number 39 and 40, but the host wasn't as popular. I waited for Amy Schumer and The Weekend and did dress rehearsal because I knew the popularity of her would be too much to get into live. For Amy, my friends and I waited 21 hours(stop saying I'm crazy, I already know that) and was number 8 for dress rehearsal, 7 hours for Elizabeth Banks and was number 32 for dress rehearsal, 14 hours for Drake and was 25 for dress rehearsal and most recently 15 hours for Lin-Manuel Miranda and was 58 for dress. We got in for all of those, but it really does depend on the host, time of arrival or your spot in line.
I really do hope that these tips help you if you’ve always wanted to try and wait for standby. This is the time of your life where doing something crazy like this is acceptable and rewarding! Don’t be afraid to try it because you think you might not get it. Believe you will and be crazy enough to wait on the street and you will be happy you did it! Sure I lost 65 hours of my life in total sitting on a street getting asking every 5 minutes what I was waiting for, but walking into studio 8H watching them bring my favorite show to life brings me more life changing memories than I could have asked for in those lost 65 could ever bring me.
GOOD LUCK!
