Potter advance tickets fly elsewhere

Tickets to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" are vanishing at box offices abroad a week before the movie debuts.

Here, sales are going slower for the film opening Friday, with about eight tickets sold per opening day screening at Signature Theatres, the Dole Cannery box office reported yesterday afternoon, before the advance ticket sales were widely advertised. Purchases can be done electronically with a credit card by calling Dole Cannery 18 at 526-3456 or Pearl Highlands at 455-6999. There's a fee of $1 per ticket for electronic booking.

Advance tickets can also be purchased at individual Consolidated and Wallace theaters.

In London, where Harry was created, theaters have already sold nearly 500,000 advance tickets.

Kim Holt, spokeswoman for Movietickets.com, said the Potter sales were already five times higher than the company's previous recordholder, "Pearl Harbor." "It's at a historic level," she said.

"Most advance tickets are bought in pairs, and in this case every time somebody buys tickets it's four to five tickets. That tells us that a whole lot of families are planning to attend the first weekend together," said Rich King, spokesman for AMC Theatres, which has 2,792 screens in the United States.

If you do want tickets, don't wait. According to King, "Most advance ticket sales usually peak two to three days before the show."

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