Tech Forum

With due respect, I write to ask the reason why the process for acquiring tickets to General Conference was changed for international attendees?

This year is the first time I have used the new procedure. I wrote my stake president early January with a request for tickets to April 2020 General Conference. I was advised that tickets would be available later and I will be contacted then. I was eventually informed that my tickets to one session of my choice per day would be registered.

My excitement, joy and relief was unfortunately short lived as a few minutes later, I was advised that all tickets had been allocated and my only option was to join the standby line, 2 hours before the session/s I wished to attend, for a better chance of securing entry, or words to that effect.

My family’s predicament is: Airline tickets, accommodation, rental vehicles have been booked for this once in a lifetime trip to General Conference for some of our family members. Granted, conference would not be the sole reason for a trip to the USA although it was to be the main reason. A visit to other sites were factored into the itinerary to make the trip financially viable.

However, it now appears that tickets to conference are not guaranteed.

In the “old days”, as you are aware, we could only acquire tickets to conference by actually presenting ourselves with our passports to the ticketing office at the Conference Center. I am unaware of the difficulties that process must have created for you, but clearly there were for that procedure to be changed, but what I am wondering now is, how many tickets allocated to stakes might now be taken by members who may not even be attending conference, but have ordered them, ‘just in case’ they attended? I believe each stake was allocated a certain number of tickets, and I doubt all those in my country would have all been taken ... or have they?

We could not have been too late to order as stake president said he would register our tickets as soon as he received notice to register..

Please help me to understand how this has happened, and can I suggest we revert to the old way of acquiring tickets. This new method doesn’t seem to be working for us international members. I live in New Zealand.

PS: I am aware that April conference 2020 is a special one, and tickets were snapped up within the first 24 hours. However, if stakes around the world had been allocated a certain number, I am at a loss to understand how all our allocation could have been taken up by our members when I believe we were among the first to request tickets in our stake.

Hope to hear from you soon. Thank you.

Ann
Auckland, New Zealand.

My apologies if this is not the right or appropriate place to voice my concern. I will delete and re-send it to wherever you suggest I send it to. Thank you.

Given the much larger number of members who wish to attend conference than the number of seats available, it's certain that there will be difficulties no matter how ticket distribution is done. This is a user-to-user discussion forum. As far as I'm aware, nobody reads posts here as part of an official assignment. There's no guarantee that any Church employee will ever see your post. To make sure your concerns are taken into consideration, I'd suggest sending them to your stake president and using the 'Feedback' link or button on either the website main page or on a page more related to General Conference.

rmrichesjr wrote:Given the much larger number of members who wish to attend conference than the number of seats available, it's certain that there will be difficulties no matter how ticket distribution is done. This is a user-to-user discussion forum. As far as I'm aware, nobody reads posts here as part of an official assignment. There's no guarantee that any Church employee will ever see your post. To make sure your concerns are taken into consideration, I'd suggest sending them to your stake president and using the 'Feedback' link or button on either the website main page or on a page more related to General Conference.

Thanks for your response. A family friend has been in touch with their SP and reports that he is none the wiser about how they got to this stage of having no tickets available except for the notice that there are no tickets available and to recommend getting to conference 2 hours early and standing in the standby line. . But yes, I will try to find another site to air my original concern with a church official, perhaps. I have attended many conference sessions over the years as an international visitor, and have never needed to go to a standby line. I have been grateful for that as travel to conference from New Zealand has required more organizing and cost than relatives and friends who live in the USA have incurred, so it has been appreciated that we, via the old system, always acquired seats. Thank you.

There are only 21,000 seats in the conference center but more than 16 million members of the Church, so only one in every 760 members is able to attend in person. The system recently changed to online ticket distribution for members in the United States as well, so the same process is being used throughout the Church.

Not quite sure then where the idea of stakes being allocated a certain number of tickets comes from. I personally couldn’t go online to reserve a ticket else I would have hit that reservation tab the second reservations were open, even if it meant waking at 4 am because of time zone differences. Instead, we had to go through our stake presidents and I have yet to find one person from my circle of friends from my country who regularly attend conference and had proposed attending again in April, to have his/her ticket confirmed. I understand there are millions of members in the church, but I would guess millions of international members would not be travelling to Utah for conference and so the numbers you quote kinda don’t wash, if you know what I mean. But thanks anyway for taking the time to respond. Cheers!