I
woke up even earlier than normal, just before 5:00 A.M. on November 11 and
groggily realized it was the second phase, first come first serve day for World
Cup tickets (we had actually missed the first window). I logged on to fifa.com
while the coffee brewed. I clicked
around, trying to figure out the set-up and layout of the website. Since we had tentatively decided on almost a
week in Salvador and another in Recife, I wanted to grab tickets in those
cities first. As I maneuvered through
the website, though some games were already sold out of available tickets, I
got two of the projected games on our tentative itinerary, an early game in
Salvador and a later one in Recife into our “cart”. It was then that I noticed a clock ticking as
you only had fifteen minutes to make a transaction and I was down to less than
five! I clicked to checkout and one of
the first things they needed was passport numbers. Crap! I scrambled upstairs in the dark, trying not
to wake my dogs or Amy. I softly bounded
down the stairs and got the numbers input along with my credit card info and
BOOM! We were off to Brasil!
I went upstairs and gently shook Amy
to give her the news, plus we had to decide if I should grab another game that
was still available in Salvador, around the time we were planning to go to
Recife. We agreed to just get it. We now had tickets to three games and the
trip was officially a go!
A
few weeks later, the Saturday morning a week before the draw came out, Amy
starting looking at flights and hotels.
At first we were a bit dismayed as it appeared prices were even more
expensive than we had first anticipated.
She played around with flight possibilities all day on numerous sites
and airlines. She was eventually able to
reserve our round trip to Rio de Janiero, through Houston, on United Airlines,
getting most of one ticket on miles (only having to transfer and buy a few
thousand miles). We would wait to
schedule inter-Brazil flights on domestic carrier TAM until we knew draw and
finalized the itinerary. When she
finally clicked on the confirm payment a few days later, we were really going to Brasil!
That
next Friday, December 7, the full World Cup draw was announced. I was checking twitter constantly all day at
school to figure out what games we had gotten.
When the draw was complete I logged on and closely checked our three
games. When I realized we got
Italy-Costa Rica I had to double-check it and cover my mouth to keep from
yelling out in the library. When I saw
that we got Portugal-Germany I actually did “whoop!”and had to triple-check
it. The third game was Bosnia-Iran, not
quite as attractive of a game, but I had always said any World Cup game would
be awesome. I scoured the draw the rest
of the afternoon, focusing on Mexico, USA and any other Spanish-speaking
countries. We quickly realized that
Recife would be hosting both the key Mexico-Croatia game, as well as
USA-Germany, and we shifted our itinerary, to arrive there a little earlier and
stay longer. In order to go to Recife in
time for the last Mexico matchup meant we would be trying to sell (or just eat)
the Bosnia-Iran game in Salvador. No
worries! We decided to end in Rio and
try to attend the round of 16 knockout game there. If we could see Mexico, USA
and a knockout round game at Estadio Marakana, the trip would absolutely perfect!
The
next ticket window was a random draw beginning on December 8 and going through January 30. We applied for the Mexico-Croatia,
USA-Germany and the knockout game in Rio on June 28. I logged in the first day, and we had to seemingly
wait forever to find out if we actually got anything. A couple of weeks later, I saw a message on
Twitter that if we put in for tickets, we should check our credit card, and
indeed there was a charge and I knew we had one more game in hand, we just didn’t
know which one. Finally, when I logged
into my FIFA account on the morning of February 26, in order to get some info
for this blog, I saw that we indeed were awarded the Mexico-Croatia tickets! I
almost ran upstairs to wake up Amy. This
leaves just trying to acquire tickets to the June 26 Recife USA-Germany and the
round of 16 knockout game in Rio on June 28.
Once
we knew the draw, we set our full travel itinerary, made a calendar and started
looking at hotels. We would fly out of
DIA to Houston, overnight to Rio, then onto Salvador. After four nights there and the
Germany-Portugal matchup, it would be on to eight days Recife and hopefully
three games (Italy-Costa Rica, Mexico-Croatia, and please please USA-Germany). We looked at a lot of options here, including
apartment rentals since we would be there for so long. There were a few that seemed great but
included strange extra things like daily electricity charges, or a two-page contract
in Portuguese, and we just never felt confident with any of it. We finally settled on a FIFA-recommended hotel
near in the Boa Viagem area. For Rio de Janeiro,
we got another FIFA hotel near Copacabana Beach. The last part was scheduling
the flights within Brasil on local carrier TAM.
We have one 6:20 AM flight that will suck. There have also been many problems with
airports, flight patterns and schedules so we are hoping there are no major
problems with our flights. I have heard
that others have had flight times changed already, but we have not received any
notifications.
For
the next to last round of tickets, I was trying to clarify if we were even able
to apply for the same games again, so when I tried to log on just before 5:00 AM on March 12,
I wasn’t even sure if we could apply.
Since there was such demand it took a few minutes to actually get logged in. I quickly checked game the June 26 USA-Germ,
and it appeared there was no problem-they were only counting confirmed
games on your record we were indeed “eligible”-however, only wheelchair accessible
tickets were left; when I clicked to the knockout game there was nothing
available there either. I was a dismayed and mildly depressed that it all ended
up a moot point anyway. Oh well.
A
little later I was just skimming the whole list of games again to see what was
available in general, I noticed that USA-Germany appeared to be the only
non-Brazil team or Rio or Sao Paolo based game that was sold out-damn!??!? But then I also noticed that there were suddenly “low
availability" on the Rio knockout game-OMG!
I frantically clicked and it allowed me to do it (I guess some had been in queue and run out of time) so BAM! We are
also going to fabled Estadio Maracana!
The
“Last Minute Sales Phase” starts April 15 and goes through the games
themselves. This is where FIFA will be
facilitating, and trying to control, the re-sale of any returned tickets, and
not let scalping get out of hand. This
will go on throughout the tournament and people can try to re-sell their
tickets until up to three days before the match. I will log on early and continually check in to see if I can somehow procure those elusive USA-Germany tickets, and try to unload my Bosnia-Iran. However, I have already seen tickets being
offered on Twitter and some ticket sites. My friends who went
to South Africa said there were similar pre-event procedures, but once people
had tickets in hand, it was a free-for-all selling tickets at the airport and
on the streets. If the Bosnia tickets have not sold I will just take them and unload them in Salvador. And once I am in Salvador, and especially in
Recife, I will always have some reales* in my shoe just in case I
encounter anyone selling a USA-Germ ducat or two.
Our
last logistical step was to get our Brazilian Visa. This had actually been a pain in the ass when
Bobby had to apply, even going through a Courier. I figured that Brazil would make it easier for
people, especially UnitedStatesians* and at first, it appeared they did with a
special World Cup Visa that is cheaper and supposedly easy to get as long as
you have proof of travel and tickets. They
did, however, make it a pain in the ass to put together the documentation and
get approved. We had to send it to a
company (Travisa) in Houston who takes care of it and the processing actually
costs more ($70) than the actual Visa ($25).
It was also recommended that we register with the US Embassy in Brazil,
which also cost. Then, we forgot to sign
our new passports, nor did we notarize the copies of our Driver’s licenses (a
requirement at the Houston site only).
When we finally had all that taken care of (after paying an extra round
of FedExing), it turns out I hadn’t printed out the page correctly that
documented our World Cup ticket purchase so that had to be re-done and mailed
in. After that was finally taken care of and we were assured everything was in
order, we were put into a long queue for finalization; in fact, Rachid, our extremely
patient and helpful Travisa agent, said it was taking so long that he was
advising new clients to just pay more for the regular Tourist Visa. But now, we should truly be ready to go! All we need now are those USA- Germany
tickets for a perfect itinerary! We are Copa Bound!
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