For the last two years my January’s have been a mad focus on one specific task: secure tickets for Tomorrowland. “How hard can it be?” You may ask. It’s actually an extremely complicated process with tickets selling out completely in about 3 seconds every year. That’s 180,000 tickets, whoosh, gone. 

Step 1: Have a major credit card with at least $1500 available on it. 

Step 2: Registration. Every year the first 20 people to register from each country get a designated link that allows them to buy up to 4 tickets. In 2018, Registration opened on January 9. Because there are so many people trying to get tickets in the states, it’s pretty hard to be in that initial group of 20. 

Step 2: let your credit card company know ahead of time the exact day that you’ll be charging a lot on your card from a company located in Belgium in the early hours of the morning. The worst feeling is to get to the point where you have your tickets in your cart and you check out and *whomp whomp* your card is declined. 

Step 3: OPTIONAL – purchase a Global Journey ticket. This is how I did it every year. Paid a little extra to include transportation (2016- Train from Amsterdam 2017- Shuttle Bus from Eindhoven) but ended up being able to snare tickets and camping without too much stress. Global Journey tickets go on sale on January 20th in 2018, Worldwide Pre-Sale happens on January 27th, Worldwide Sale happens on February 3rd. To make sure I got exactly what I wanted, I practiced going through the store picking my specific trip, so I could do it quite quickly when the storefront opened. 

Step 4: Test your Internet connection. It is important that you have the fastest download speed possible when you’r trying to get these tickets. I tested it at work, at home, and at a friend’s house, and luckily my home internet was the fastest. 

Step 5: wake up super early and wait for the storefront to open. I woke up at about 6am, made coffee got comfortable and waited with the Tomorrowland screeen open. I checked the Tomorrowland refresh rates the night before, and refreshed the page 9 seconds before it was supposed to open. DO NOT REFRESH ONCE IT TELLS YOU THAT YOU’RE in line. Just be patient. It took about 30 mins for me to get into the store, and even though it was tempting to refresh, I didn’t. 

Step 6: Buy your tickets! If you do Global Journey or any of the Easy Tent options, you’ll need to at least buy a pair of tickets – they don’t sell them in singles. There are no payment plan options, and you can’t pay for it with anything besides a credit card. 

Step 7: Getting to Belgium… see next How To Posting.