Philly Swifties duke it out for ‘Eras Tour’ presale tickets, complain of Ticketmaster crashes

Did you hear that noise? It’s thousands of Taylor Swift fans hyperventilating to the rhythm of “Labyrinth” while they stare at a Ticketmaster landing page.

Tuesday marked the launch of Swift’s presale for tickets to her upcoming Eras Tour, the singer’s largest tour to date.

Philadelphia is set to host three dates with Swift — May 12 to 14 at Lincoln Financial Field. Phoebe Bridgers and GAYLE are the supporting acts.

» READ MORE: Swiftie Night Football: Taylor Swift is the reason your non-sports fan friends suddenly care about Thursday’s game

Dedicated Swifties could sign up ahead of time for a presale code lottery, which would give them access to sales Tuesday at 10 a.m. General admission tickets go on sale Friday.

Within minutes, the queue to purchase presale tickets was over 2,000 deep for the Philadelphia dates, two people who spoke with The Inquirer and several tweets said. It’s unclear how far past 2,000 the queues for each show extended or how the queues breakdown per show.

Notably, Washington, D.C., is not getting any shows, which may have prompted additional interest in the nearby Philadelphia dates.

On Twitter, some Philadelphians complained of being at a standstill in the queue for over two hours. They mentioned the site crashing or booting them out before they could purchase tickets. Ticket queue hangups are fairly common for high-interest shows.

Earlier this year, Bruce Springsteen fans complained about similar issues.

The Inquirer reached out to the ticket sales platform to ask if the issues are widespread or if Philadelphia can truly say “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem.” A spokesperson responded with a link to a tweet citing a “historically unprecedented demand.” It advised those still in line to “hang tight.”

Mariah Keener got in line whenthe queue’s waiting room opened at 9:30 a.m..

Ticketmaster said she was behind “2,000+” people.

“It was moving steadily for about an hour,” she said. “Then it froze halfway and stopped moving.”

Keener said the queue froze for an hour and a half before beginning to creep forward just before 1 p.m.

She’s hoping to score tickets for the May 12 date for her and her partner. They’d be attending with friends as a double date.

“I just want to experience one of the greatest songwriters and one of the most clever marketers of our generation,” said Keener, a singer-songwriter who grew up in central Pennsylvania. “To witness that would be a gift.”

Alexa Aulisio from Scranton was also still stuck in the queue Tuesday afternoon. She’s hoping to go with five friends as part of a bachelorette party.

“[We plan to] tailgate beforehand and sing and dance the night away,” she said. “We are getting anxious because tickets are going extremely fast, but we have hope.”

Kelly O’Mara, who grew up in Bucks County and now lives in Santa Barbara, was one of the lucky ticket buyers. Now, she’s trying to share her luck with others. O’Mara wrote a short guide on Twitter about her purchasing experience in hopes it would help others feel more prepared once they got past the queue.

O’Mara set an alarm for herself Tuesday morning and even timed feeding her infant around getting into the ticket queue. She’ll be attending the May 14 show — which happens to fall on her first Mother’s Day. She’s even considering bringing her son, who would be 9 months old, for his first concert.

She’s seen Swift before, during the 2011 Speak Now tour, her first time performing at the Linc.

“I remember she talked about how cool it was to play at the Eagles’ stadium since she grew up watching them with her dad,” O’Mara said about the Reading-born pop star.