Summary of my experience, you can check my previous post for the comments
For those who are panicked about the whole situation I’m just gonna rundown what happened to us in May.
We initially went with the intention of staying 1 night in AC.
We left Cusco at 3am May 6 on a private transfer that we booked online, and arrived at around 4:40 in the PeruRail station in Ollantaytambo. The train departed at 5:05am and we arrived in AC at 6:40am.
We immediately headed to the ticket office. The line at the square was for pre-ticket holders, while the line up the mountain was for those who had just arrived.
We lined up from 6:40am to 11:30am, and then we were issued, #236 for pre-ticketing. We were told to arrive back at 6am to buy tickets the next day.
The next day (May 7) we arrived back at the ticketing office and it was very chaotic just a crowd gathering and a man with a loud speaker calling the numbers, please learn spanish numbers or else you’re screwed.
By around 7am we got our tickets printed, in the photo above I took a picture of the booth attendant’s screen. Even at my number of #236, all time slots for the coveted circuit 2A were available for our entire group of 4.
And tomorrow (May 08) we will finally get to see the ruins.
The pre ticketing thing is new the day before I arrived, so we did not expect to stay 2 nights, we only brought one set of clean clothes lol. We had to extend our hotel stay by one additional night. Also don’t buy your train tickets to go back to Cusco until you’ve obtained your Machu Picchu tickets, since you won’t know what time you will finish. We met a family who bought the train ticket already and said they couldn’t refund it.
We also met a woman who came at 5pm and got number 700, so for those who come in the afternoon, you will most probably get to see the ruins but probably not the most ideal route.
If you’re a student, bring your physical ID, it’s like half price 152 SOL to 77 SOL.