I just had to get on here and rate/explain my WHOLE experience because this site helped me in my research to get the tickets in the first place. If I add my story in, it could help more people, so here it goes:

In our party, we had a couple mid-aged adults and two teenagers. I swear they look for certain things in the description on iota because I wasn’t seeing any other 16 year olds towards the front of the show (the standby tickets are usually the tickets for the back). Anyway, I had one adult and both of us teenagers request tickets to the 25 of June taping on I think the 5th of May or something.
* i highly recommend that if possible, and you got onto the site early before the shows sold out, to try for more than one date per account. Remember the more the better. But you can only have 4 in your party!
So we got a couple emails that were updates of when the show was taping and such weeks beforehand that would get us all excited because we thought they were a ticket approval, but it wasn’t until the 23rd (two days before) that we got an email saying that they could not honor our ticket request.
I still wasn’t taking that as an answer, so after many hours of research on where to go, how to get standby tickets, and looking at other stories on TripAdvisor, I got almost everyone up at 6:00 and we headed out the door around 8:00 the morning of the show, at the lineup spot around NBC studios. The information is all on the site.

We arrived at 8:20, but with about 50 people in front of us we were pretty discouraged about getting the tickets. They distributed the tickets at 9 but not before they actually split the line in front of us in half because some people were there for Seth Meyers! We ended up getting numbers 27, 28, 29 and 30. We were told to come back at 5:45 I’m pretty sure, in the NBC store.

When we came back, (after taking a large nap in between) we lined up and waited for the Seth Meyer standby ticket line to clear out. When they did, we organized very tightly by number. And to my surprise, there was at least 30 others behind us trying for tickets. As we all waited anxiously to see if we got in, a lady came back and informed us that we could keep the first 69 bodies for the show. She tapped people on the shoulder until she got to 69. Then, a couple minutes later, after much hooting and hollering, she came back to tell us that the first 50 people can go into the show!

At that moment, things went very fast and we went through a small security process and shut off our phones, crowded in a little room for a short amount of time. The whole team was very energetic throughout this whole process, and we all were very excited. There were people in the start of the line that said they got there at 6:00. In our case, we were very lucky that they were able to get these tickets because sometimes they take much less than 50. It all depends on the need for filling seats if people that got tickets didn’t show.

When we got to peacock cove, a big area with a whole bunch of people in it, and screens of celebrities that have been on the show, they had people go in based firstly by the letter on the back of their ticket, then by number, then by SB (or standby)! The whole process was very smooth and fun, with lots of associates asking if we were ready and a big, enthused YEA! That sounded back. A lady would describe the process before it all happened, and mentioned the 3 people that were scheduled for the show on that day, (comedians Trevor Noah, and Sebastian Maniscalco, and magicians Penn & Teller) then they also mentioned that you never know if there is a special guest!

We ended up getting seated in the very back but close to the left aisle! We’re not in any audience shots, but managed to get a great camera shot at the end of the show. All four of us got to high-five Jimmy Fallon because of our spots in the back, and got a great 5 seconds of fame through the process lol.

It’s so cool to listen to the fun music from The Roots, look at how everything is done behind the scenes, a person talks to the audience as everyone is being seated before the show, and you can even see Jimmy ask for a redo of a shot and get to see how it all works with the camera people, etc!
It wasn’t until the moment that Jimmy wanted to “redo” a shot because he “forgot” a guest that once he announced the first 3, he then went on to say NICKI MINAJ will be on the show! And you could see the curtain move, and there she was! If you’ve seen that episode I’m literally the high pitched scream in the background, which I didn’t even know I did! It was one of best surprise moments ever!

So you never know who will come out from behind the curtain once you finish reading my long review, research standby tickets, get there early on show day, and get hopefully get lucky enough to finally be seated! No joke, praying also works too! All jokes aside, it was the best experience I’ve ever had, and I hope that my long story (if you’re still reading it) will help people know what to expect more if they need to be informed better, and I wish you all luck in getting those standby tickets! Don’t lose hope!

- your friend from Michigan