My So-Called Fangirl Life

Total Package Tour

5/17/17
Nashville

"You're gonna kill me."

That was the text Traci sent right after the one telling me that she was able to secure our tickets for the show.

I replied, "OMG what have you done?" I had a few things running through my head, but they were all along the lines of her realizing that the ticket order didn't go through or something.

"I may have bought us ultimates."

DEAD. NOPE. OH HELL NO. WHAT EVEN? THE FUCK, TRACI? These were a few of the words I was screaming in my head, as I was sitting at my desk at work and couldn't say them out loud.

If you're not familiar with an "ultimate," it's an individual meet and greet upgrade you can buy in addition to the regular VIP tickets. Individual as in you have one on one time with the band. But you also still get to do the group photo-op with nine other fans prior to that.

Of course I was more grateful than words can explain. However, I immediately started panicking about it, even though it was months away. And I stressed about it almost nearly every day of each of those months. Knowing what I know now: that it wasn't like I had always heard it was, I wish I'd spent all that energy being excited about it instead. But you know what they say about hindsight.

Speaking of stress, prior to that, we went back and forth a couple of days on exactly which tickets we wanted. A general admission pit option had never been offered for a New Kids show before, so we were a little weary about getting those. Fear of the unknown, I guess. But we couldn't really afford the barstool seats again. But we didn't want to be further away than first row, either. We're beyond spoiled, y'all. So, given the layout of the stage, we thought pit would be a good option, even though we both despise general admission. We were just afraid it'd be super crowded, like the lido deck on the cruises. But that's what we settled for and bought.

It was a long wait till the tour started. But in the meantime, we got some new music. I wasn't too impressed with the two songs that were released prior to the EP release date. But when the whole album was released, I was pleasantly surprised with the other songs, especially Hard (Not Luvin U). Jordan's falsetto gets me every time. And the more I listened to the other two songs, the more they grew on me.

Our plan was to walk to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch beause I had a buy-one-get-one free entree coupon. Mind you, we sometimes don't even finish one entree together, but free food, so yay.

When I first got to the hotel, of course the first thing I had to do was pee. And when I went into the bathroom, the layout triggered a memory. It made me think about an incident from one of our 5SOS trips. The one where I fell in the shower. Good times.

So we walked to HRC and stuffed our faces with some kind of huge BBQ burger. And Traci came up with the brilliant idea of smuggling fajitas into the venue to eat after our VIP experience/before the concert started, because the food they give us isn't great. And so we hid one each in our purses, and took the other two back to the hotel to save for a midnight snack. Also, we had this glorious drink that was way too expensive.

The closer it got to time for us to check-in at the venue, the more anxious I got. I needed another drink. So before we left the hotel for the show, we had another drink at the hotel bar. It was even more expensive than the other one.

So I was feeling pretty good by the time we got there, not really tipsy, but calmer. We were about 30 minutes early, so we waited outside for a bit. We hadn't joined a photo group. But since we didn't care who we got to stand by, we weren't stressed about it. We knew there'd be plenty of groups still needing at least two people to stand by Danny or Jon. Luckily, the people in line behind us needed four people and asked us to join their group. So we took the two Jon spots.