My sister and I decided to go and watch M!Countdown live show during our family trip in Seoul. We had to pay for our tickets cause we didn't want to lineup early for free liveshow tickets from MNET.
We purchased our ticket from viator.com and they are a bit more expensive than the tickets from smtowntravel.com. If you're on a budget, I suggest you lineup at CJ E&M center to avail the free tickets they give out as early 8am if I'm not mistaken. If you also don't want to lineup for them like us, you can avail M!Cultour tickets from smtowntravel.com for a cheaper price. The only reason why I didn't avail from smtowntravel is because the date that we wanted (April 16) was not available and they weren't selling tickets for that date.
If you purchased an M!Cultour ticket, you need to be in CJ E&M Center before 5pm. We were there at around 4:30 and the guards told us to go to the 1st floor to get our tickets from the M!Cultour desk. From there, you will be given a sticker that you have to put on your phone and will be asked to go to a certain group according to the language you speak. There are 3 groups: Chinese, Japanese, & English. On that day they asked the Chinese and the English group to merge so the guide first explained in English then Chinese. At around 5pm they will tour you around the MNET studio. In my opinion, it wasn't that interesting if you're not fascinated in media and arts. The tour is mostly focused on where they edit the videos and the broadcast materials as well as where the team have their meetings.
Once the studio tour is over, you will be asked to go back to the M!Cultour desk and make 2 straight lines per group. They'll be asking a volunteer to represent each group and do rock paper scissors. The winning team will be the first to go inside the broadcast studio. In our case, no one volunteered so the tour guides did rock paper scissors. Luckily, our team won! Yaay! And I was first in line as seen in my sticker! Once you enter the staircase, the guards will write a number on your sticker that will indicate the order of the audience. Once your outside the studio itself, you will hear the girl groups and boy groups doing their rehearsals/prerecorded performances. We waited for about 10mins before getting inside and we could see rookie girl groups and boy groups going inside and out. I saw Lovelyz, The Ark, CLC, & JJCC after they did their rehearsals/prerecorded performance. I was so happy to see Lovelyz! ❤️❤️❤️
A few minutes passed 6pm, and we were finally able to get inside the studio. The first people I saw were the MCs and they were GOT7 Jr. and BamBam, CNBLUE Jungshin, & SHINEE Key. The MC Stage is at the back near the monitor and I chose to stay there because I wanted to cheer on Jr. :"> The best spot to stay at If your bias group made a comeback is the left side of the stage because that's where the idols enter and exit. I wasn't able to take photos, but the experience I had is so memorable! I interacted with Jr. so many times and also BamBam❤️ It was nice to see Jr. working diligently in everything that he does.
All in all it was such an unforgettable experience for me and my sister. We watched EXID Ah Yeah Comeback stage, M&D Debut stage, Lovelyz, CLC, Niel and Juniel, K.Will, miss A, Block B Bastarz, JJCC, FTIsland, and a lot more rookie groups! :))