Every week someone asks me some version of: which train, how early, and what do I do with my stuff? Three questions, one post, from someone who’s been riding to Broadway shows since student rush was paper. Here’s the local operating manual.
Which train (by theater, not by luck)
“Take the train to Times Square” is technically true and practically useless. The Theater District is 40 blocks of theaters spread across four avenues; the right stop depends on your house:
- Times Sq–42nd St (1, 2, 3, 7, N, Q, R, W, S) — the default. Right for the Broadway-and-Seventh-Ave spine: the Lyric, the Shubert, the Richard Rodgers, the Gershwin, and most houses in the 44th–47th corridor.
- 42nd St–Port Authority (A, C, E) — better for the Eighth Avenue side: the Al Hirschfeld on 45th, the August Wilson on 52nd. Exits at the north end of the station put you on 42nd and Eighth, two minutes closer than doubling back from Times Square.
- 47th–50th Sts–Rockefeller Center (B, D, F, M) — the east-side secret. Studio 54, the Lena Horne on 47th, anything on Sixth Avenue’s edge. You skip Times Square entirely, which is its own reward.
- 50th St (1) — drops you practically inside the Gershwin’s lobby and a block from the Winter Garden. If your show is north of 49th on Broadway, this beats everything.
Rule of thumb: know your theater’s cross street before you pick a stop, not after. Every ticket and every show page lists it.
How early is early enough
Doors open about 30 minutes before curtain, and that’s the number that matters. Arrive 25–30 minutes out: enough time for the security line, the restroom (the line at intermission is a hostage situation), and finding your seat without climbing over eight strangers in the dark. Arriving 60 minutes early buys you nothing but standing on the sidewalk; arriving 10 minutes late buys you watching the opening number on a lobby monitor, because late seating waits for a break in the action.
One New York-specific note: budget for the last three blocks, not just the ride. The walk from the train through Times Square at 7:15 p.m. moves at the speed of the slowest costumed Elmo. Fifteen extra minutes of buffer covers everything the MTA and the mascots can throw at you.
The bag and coat situation (the honest version)
Here’s what surprises visitors: most Broadway theaters have no coat check. None. These are hundred-year-old buildings with nowhere to put a booth. The actual rules of the road:
- Small bags and backpacks: fine at nearly every house, checked by security at the door.
- Suitcases and luggage: hard no, and they will turn you away at the door. Do not gamble a $150 ticket on this.
- Coming from a checkout or heading to a flight: use a luggage-storage spot. The old-school operators around Port Authority and Penn Station charge $10–15 a bag per day, and the app-based services (Bounce and its cousins) let you stash bags at shops all over Midtown. Book before you show up.
- Winter coats: they live on your lap or under your seat. Every January audience in New York is sitting on its own parka. You’ll fit right in.
Thirty minutes to kill, done right
If you land in the district early — say your pre-show dinner ran fast — resist the chain-restaurant gravity of Times Square. Walk Restaurant Row (46th between Eighth and Ninth) for a pre-show drink where the bartenders actually pace you to your curtain; we mapped the good rooms in our Restaurant Row guide. Or duck a block west of Eighth, where the neighborhood turns back into Hell’s Kitchen and the prices drop accordingly — more of that in our local’s guide to the Theater District.
Better plan: don’t kill time in the district at all. Eat well somewhere calmer and arrive on the 30-minute mark. Our picks for budget-friendly pre-show dinners cover the neighborhood, and this week we made the case for Koreatown before the curtain — twelve minutes south, half the wait, twice the food.
And if you don’t have a ticket yet: the cheapest ones in the city are won, not bought. Start at the Broadway lottery hub.
Matinee days are a different animal
Everything above assumes an evening show. Wednesday and weekend matinees shift the math: curtain is usually 1 or 2 p.m., the subway is on a weekend schedule (check the MTA app for your line — “the 1 is running fine” is a weekday sentence), and the pre-show crowd is heavier because matinee audiences arrive earlier and move slower. Give yourself the full 30-minute buffer plus whatever the weekend service changes demand. The upside: post-matinee, you exit into daylight with a whole evening ahead of you, which is the best-kept scheduling secret on Broadway — dinner after the show at a normal hour, no 10:30 p.m. scramble.
However you slice it, the formula holds: right stop for your theater, 25–30 minutes early, no luggage, and a plan for the last three blocks. Do that and the only drama you’ll deal with is the one you paid for.
