Registration and payment have always been required to consider your process complete - and seating assignments for mainstage productions in the Lied are based on the date when BOTH are submitted.
Going back several years, I had small groups, and I would just do the registration for 2-3 of us on my personal credit card. The district didn't like that - so the next year, I requested a check. When I did the credit card payment, we had great seats down in front... the year I requested the check, we were up in the balcony. (And that was before the 2-track system, where if you were even later in registering, your seats all week were in the Kimball.) The only difference was that it took several weeks for the check to be cut, mailed and processed. Still a small group, same timeline, etc. So I think that this has really always been the case for past practice.
Now, I still handle all of the registration business personally - but I use the district business manager's credit card to process the payment. I want to ensure that we are good-to-go (because the registration timeline is always during a crazy time for show production here) - and to do whatever I can to hopefully get good seats! Although there really aren't any "bad" seats in the Lied - it's a beautiful theatre.
The move to Indiana for 2020 will help improve the travel part of the process for me, since I'm in PA. It will be a 10 hour drive, rather than a flight - which should help to reduce our costs. But registration should improve also, since it is a larger campus, from what I remember.
Either way, it is a fantastic week - so I hope that you'll be able to go! Fingers crossed that it works out!
Missy