Happy Scavenger Hunt, Or How To Attend A Concert delayed

Late in 2019, I found myself in a happy scavenger hunt: I had bought several tickets to concerts that were going to happen in the beginning of 2020. Naturally, COVID caused the postponement of all of them. I made sure I had the tickets as if I was going to the concert.

Several postponements, and three vaccinations later, the concert with James Taylor and Jackson Browne was finally getting close (next week in fact). I dug through my email and as I struggled to find the tickets, stress started piling up.

Happy Scavenger Hunt for tickets

So I started searching in my personal GMail account for “Jackson Browne”, “James Taylor” or “Maverick”, none of which came up.

After a few minutes of doing that, I jumped over to Outlook and tried using that miserable search, with the same lack of success.

Now I was starting to worry. I remembered seeing an email notifying me of the postponement. I just wasn’t finding that particular one.

Then I noticed the a notification on Outlook that said it was only searching offline items. I couldn’t figure out how to make it go online. I went to the browser and logged into Outlook in the browser, and still no luck.

After that, I recalled sending the information to Karen. I tried searching for things from me to her. Finally I find the notice I was remembering.

Regrettably, I still had no tickets or information, except for the postponement. My note to her stated that the tickets would be mailed before the concert (that was not true as I learned later)

Email wasn’t enough

There was contact information in the email. That email indicated that the purchase was via Smith’s Tix.

So I went to https://smithstix.com. I see this “Account Login” button that looks promising. Give that a try and it goes to an unreachable site (guessing either that site is down, or it’s behind a firewall and is something like an employee login).

So back to the Maverik Center site https://www.maverikcenter.com/home/ and I see the concert information on the page (good sign). Then I Click the “More Info” link (though it is challenging to read as it floats over an image).

Maybe there’s an app for that: Happy Scavenger Hunt

Observing this, I recalled needing to download an app. Two years ago is a long time ago, so no idea what the app was. Clicking on the “Buy Tickets” button takes me to https://www.axs.com/ which tells me I must have made the purchase from them.

Try the “Sign In” link on their site, which brought me to my next challenge. I’m not sure what email I used.

I definitely don’t know what password I used. Occasionally, I get lucky with logins. I often rely on the browser to remember the ones that aren’t super secure. However, this was two years and a company merger ago, so there wasn’t anything in the brwoser.

Again, I look at the email. and it shows my personal email address, so at least I have that half of the picture.

Facing Facebook

Since it was my personal email, I try the Facebook login. Of course, I forgot that I enabled extra security on Facebook, so I quickly become perplexed by additional login challenges and their version of multi-factor authentication, leading me to abandon that approach for now.

Then, I see the tiny “Forgot Password” link, and manage to click it.

Several missteps later I manage to get the email to reset the password. By this time I successfully log. I feel less frustrated and worried. Once there I see my tickets !!!

Back to the app and the Happy Scavenger Hunt

Back to my phone, download the app, and try to log in. Fails a couple of times, so I realize I must have changed the password to something other than what I thought I had.

Luckily, the browser saved the password for me. I go look at it, and sure enough I dropped a letter when typing in the new password. With that information, I successfully log in to the app. Finally see the tickets on my phone.

The app doesn’t give me an option to put them in my Apple Wallet or print them. I made sure to have my phone fully charged, and the app loaded.

Surprise (I had it all along)

And finally after all of that, I find an email about the concert that has all of this information in it. Reminds me that communication needs to be done in more than one channel, and more than once.

If the Maverik Center site had just had a notice on it with the update, or the AXS site had done the same, I could have avoided quite a bit of stress.

Happy Scavenger Hunt got me to the Concert

After all of that confusion, the concert was amazing. It was probably our first large gathering post the Covid lockdown. Some people were wearing masks, and others were not. That definitely brought a bit of stress, happliy we suffered no contagions.

Both artists delivered amazing performances, playing a multitude of our favorites alongside some newer pieces. And also several rounds of James Taylor singing with Jackson Browne on a song by one or the other.