Parents go to extremes for Hannah Montana tickets

[Brian Damage]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some U.S. parents, desperate after Disney star Hannah Montana's concert tour sold out in minutes, are going to extremes with some paying $3,000 a ticket and fathers donning high heels in a race to get in for free.

The demand to see Hannah Montana, the TV alter ego of 14-year-old singer Miley Cyrus, has made the show the hottest ticket of the year, with seats reselling at an average of $240 -- topping the Police, Bruce Springsteen or Van Halen.

With the 54-date "Best of Both Worlds Tour" kicking off in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday, local radio station Y98 offered dads the chance to be their daughter's hero by putting on heels and racing 50 yards to win four tickets.

"We got a couple of hundred phone calls from people asking questions about where to get high heeled shoes big enough for husbands and about 150 men turned up in high heels," Mark Edwards, director of programming at Y98, told Reuters.

He said the field for the "high heel derby" was narrowed down to 50 runners and won on Wednesday by Matt Austin, who was competing on behalf of his boss who has a young daughter.

Edwards said everyone had been taken by surprise by the demand for tickets to see Cyrus, daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who plays a teen-ager living a double life as a young rock star on the hit Disney Channel show.

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"We knew the show would be big but not this big. There's been an outcry as it's been impossible for regular people to get tickets with scalpers using software to get them first," Edwards added.

The Walt Disney Co may have hit upon one way to quell the uproar. Disney's movie studio division said it will film the early "Hannah Montana" concerts using new digital technology.

Then, for one week starting on February 1, 2008, it will screen the film in movie theaters using new three-dimensional technology.

"This is going to be an exciting 3D motion picture event experience for everyone who loves 'Hannah Montana,'" Dick Cook, chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, said in a statement.

Cook said the plan was conceived last winter, well before the controversy over ticket sales erupted.

There have been reports of scalpers seeking between $2,500 and $3,000 apiece for tickets that, in some cases, have a face value between $26 and $66.

A U.S. judge barred an automated software that makes it easy to buy tickets quickly after they go on sale and the uproar over the fast sale of the tickets has led to investigations in at least three states -- Missouri, Arkansas and Pennsylvania.