Howdy guidonietmann,
Your solution in the second post is exactly what I would have done. There are a number of options there, but one way or another a customer will have to sort through them. The way you did it they can look at them all one page and with one click make their choice.
If you did want to split it up into a two step process that is doable but it is going to require quite a bit of customizing. Keep your current setup on the backend with those 5 tickets the same. You would want to hide the WooTickets section from this event via our APIs. Then you could recreate a custom ticket area however you want it setup. Then via the WooCommerce API you could add the relevant product/ticket to their cart based on their selection. Certainly going to be very complicated to do, but it would allow you to make it exactly how you want.
Does that answer your question? Let me know if you have any followups. Cheers!
– Brook