I'm going to see Grand Sumo live!
So I found out recently that the Royal Albert Hall would be hosting a 5-day Basho this year, and decided that I'd probably have to go if the tickets weren't ludicrously expensive.
I scouted hotels, considered prebooking but decided I dislike the red-tape of cancellations more than missing out on options, and bought the "friends of the RAH" membership so I'd get access to ticket presales.
Then my partner learned that a friend from Hong Kong was moving to London this summer, and our plans coalesced - now even without sumo tickets, we can justify the trip. The Basho is during her holidays anyway so it was always planned as a trip together, but now there was an option if tickets were prohibitively expensive - just buy one, and she goes and gets sushi with her friend that day. Sumo is very much my obsession right now, not hers.
So we decided that we would play it by ear, and this morning I got into the queue, got given a terrible spot at random (600th in line, eesh), and had a whole host of website bugs before getting access to the Sunday (final day) tickets, where all the best value seats were already taken. I moaned a bit, then grabbed what looked like the two next best seats for the optimal price we agreed on.
Bugs notwithstanding, it went well and I'm extremely stoked for October now! Moreso than for the Rocket League LAN I'm going to in 3 weeks - there's something about the way this whole thing came together, natural contingencies keeping my nerves at bay. I hate online ticket purchasing these days, and this would have been horrible had I not been comfortable losing out.
Anyway, if you're interested yourself, general sale goes up on Friday 7th March at 10am, and you can find the link to the main page here.