New ROH website - 2019 and 2022 versions

[alison]

One problem is the one I encountered yesterday while looking for the first night of Onegin: I clicked on the date in the calendar.  That done, I clicked on "see dates and times" or whatever it is. With the old system that would I think have taken me to all the performances, but now it just leaves me with the first two because the date filter hasn't been removed.

[bangorballetboy]

1 hour ago, Dawnstar said:

 

I think this is a very good point, especially for those who see both ballet and opera and need to work out how best to fit seeing them around each other.

 

I see both ballet and opera and have no problem in working this out (but then again, all the dates are in the season guide, though a few have changed, and the dates are also listed in the ROH magazine - twice!).

[Lizbie1]

7 minutes ago, bangorballetboy said:

 

(but then again, all the dates are in the season guide, though a few have changed, and the dates are also listed in the ROH magazine - twice!).

But aren’t these only sent to Friends?
 

With a number of other companies to work in, I’m heavily reliant on spreadsheets, myself.

[Dawnstar]

1 hour ago, bangorballetboy said:

 

I see both ballet and opera and have no problem in working this out (but then again, all the dates are in the season guide, though a few have changed, and the dates are also listed in the ROH magazine - twice!).

 

Given the summer ROH magazine arrived yesterday & I can't book for the summer season until 11th March, the likelihood of my having the magazine to hand 2 months later is pretty low! I certainly won't have it if I'm at work on the booking day. I also only joined the Friends scheme this past summer so have only had a couple of magazines (& am not sure whether I'll be renewing my membership, as some of the benefits I was hoping for haven't really materialised).

Edited January 8, 2020 by Dawnstar

[MargaretN7]

5 hours ago, alison said:

One problem is the one I encountered yesterday while looking for the first night of Onegin: I clicked on the date in the calendar.  That done, I clicked on "see dates and times" or whatever it is. With the old system that would I think have taken me to all the performances, but now it just leaves me with the first two because the date filter hasn't been removed.

There is a box with your chosen date filter shown and an x to remove the date and get all.

[alison]

I know, but you actively have to do it.  If I click on "book - see casts and dates" (note the plurals), I naturally assume that that will show me all the performances available, not just the two on one date.

[Lizbie1]

I’m finding the rather hit and miss loading of newly announced events and productions quite frustrating. The Netrebko recital, NBoC Sleeping Beauty and WNO Bluebeard, none of which had been publicly confirmed by ROH until the Summer magazine, have now made their way onto the website, but there’s still nothing about the 20th May gala. Not only have we known about this gala for months, booking is due to open in under 3 weeks.

 

Also: as has been asked elsewhere, where are the promised details about the Next Generation Festival?

[bridiem]

A slightly different issue: in the magazine a new Print on Demand service was advertised for ROH posters, directing those interested to the shop on the website. I went to the shop on the website but no matter how hard I looked I couldn't find anything about it. Eventually I emailed the shop and received a (prompt) reply saying that the service had been delayed and would be available at the end of January. So there does seem to be a bit of a disconnect between advertising in the magazine and immediate availability of details/products on the website.

[AnneMarriott]

7 hours ago, Lizbie1 said:

 

 

Also: as has been asked elsewhere, where are the promised details about the Next Generation Festival?

 

Now available on the ROH website (with a few programmes still to be confirmed).  See my posting under Next Generation Festival in News and Information.

[alison]

As far as I can tell, based on my observations today, the ROH website now appears to be open for online bookings right until curtain-up, which is perhaps a little excessive, but makes sense from a practical point of view.  Has anyone found to the contrary?

[alison]

Hmm, it's also rather looking as though it automatically updates any seat availability without you having to refresh - I thought that's what I was experiencing the other day, but wasn't certain.  Both positive developments.

[Geoff]

For those booking the Gala this morning, one special feature to note is that two "generous philanthropic" supporters are shown. The first is the Laidlaw family - but the second is, yes, the "Website Redesign Team". 

 

Maybe putting some money back into a show is their way of trying to make amends?

[MJW]

44 minutes ago, Geoff said:

For those booking the Gala this morning, one special feature to note is that two "generous philanthropic" supporters are shown. The first is the Laidlaw family - but the second is, yes, the "Website Redesign Team". 

 

Maybe putting some money back into a show is their way of trying to make amends?

 

I noticed that when booking this morning - perhaps they gave up their Christmas bonuses?

 

[Rob S]

1 hour ago, Geoff said:

For those booking the Gala this morning, one special feature to note is that two "generous philanthropic" supporters are shown. The first is the Laidlaw family - but the second is, yes, the "Website Redesign Team". 

 

Maybe putting some money back into a show is their way of trying to make amends?

 

 Screenwashing!! 😮

[alison]

I'm very glad you mentioned the gala, Geoff - I had to go back in and do another booking, because I'd forgotten all about it.  My ticket was 40% more expensive than for the Fonteyn gala last year  - must be all those pesky opera singers!

[JohnS]

I’ve been trying to get a ticket for the Dante Insights evening 27 April and saw last night that there were c80 tickets available but when signing in as a Friend it was showing ‘all sold/returns only’.  This morning I thought I’d check and again got both messages.  I also got the ‘general booking’ opens today message so thought as I’d logged in I’d just refresh the page and see what was happening.  At 8:58 I refreshed the page and found I was in the queue, number 700 plus.  I managed to book my ticket by 9:05 which was great.  

 

Two points then:

What time can you join the queue as it’s clearly well before 9:00?  It seems a bit odd to me to be able to join a queue in advance of booking opening or is this normal?

Clearly some Insight tickets are held back for general booking - as well as the Dante I think there would also have been a handful of tickets for ‘In conversation with Francesca Hayward’.

[bridiem]

24 minutes ago, JohnS said:

What time can you join the queue as it’s clearly well before 9:00?  It seems a bit odd to me to be able to join a queue in advance of booking opening or is this normal?

 

If you can join a queue early that would obviously (and unbeknownst to them) disadvantage those who only log on to book at the stated opening time of booking. So I would be interested to know the answer to JohnS's question.

[Rob S]

What page do you have to be on to be considered ‘in the queue’? I’ve been on the site an hour before opening in the past and not felt like I gained anything in terms of queue position 

[RuthE]

The current version of the ROH website doesn't activate the queue until the moment booking opens, or (as you suggest) a minute or two sooner.  I presume that anyone refreshing their browser at that time then gets a random allocation - yes, you do have to refresh once the queue is live in order to be in it - and all who join from that time onwards take their place sequentially

 

Certain other institutions have software where being in the queue early pays off. 

Edited January 29, 2020 by RuthE

[JohnS]

1 hour ago, Rob S said:

What page do you have to be on to be considered ‘in the queue’? I’ve been on the site an hour before opening in the past and not felt like I gained anything in terms of queue position 

But were you given a queue number? I had a queue number at 8:58, never refreshed the page at that point, and (after 9:00) quickly moved up the queue.  Given the broadband speeds in rural Cumbria, London time was probably 8:57 when I joined.

[Rob S]

58 minutes ago, JohnS said:

But were you given a queue number? I had a queue number at 8:58, never refreshed the page at that point, and (after 9:00) quickly moved up the queue.  Given the broadband speeds in rural Cumbria, London time was probably 8:57 when I joined.

 

No, I've never accessed a page prior to 9am that has told me I'm in a queue and over the last year or more I've tried being on every page connected to the booking of a ticket and none of auto refreshed to indicate booking status has changed, even several minutes after 9. I've always had to refresh it myself....this morning I very quickly got to book though

[JNC]

33 minutes ago, Rob S said:

 

No, I've never accessed a page prior to 9am that has told me I'm in a queue and over the last year or more I've tried being on every page connected to the booking of a ticket and none of auto refreshed to indicate booking status has changed, even several minutes after 9. I've always had to refresh it myself....this morning I very quickly got to book though

 

I'm the same as Rob - I've never managed to join the queue before 9am (surely you can't as it doesn't exist yet as you can only get in the queue once you click 'buy now'?). 

 

When it turns to 9am the page selling tickets seems to automatically refresh and then you can click the 'buy now' button (which previously you can't click and says 'not yet on sale'). I am then usually placed in a queue. Is this not how everyone else does it? To me this seems the fairest way to do it - surely we shouldn't be expecting people to turn up on the page and join some sort of pre-queue before 9am...! 

 

I think the ROH system works well. What I do find annoying is that sometimes you can select seats, but by the time you click add to basket (even if it's near instantaneous you do this) they are no longer available - even though the seat map is showing that they are still. So I've been in situations where I've tried to add various seats to my basket, and failed, and then gone back to other ones and the same thing happens and by the time I've worked my way round a few then they're gone! But I appreciate this is a limited situation and it must be hard for the website to keep up with seats being added to baskets (in some cases presumably numerous people trying to do this at the same time...see Fidelio!). 

 

[JohnS]

2 hours ago, JNC said:

To me this seems the fairest way to do it - surely we shouldn't be expecting people to turn up on the page and join some sort of pre-queue before 9am...! 

That’s what I’d have thought but it was not my experience today as I was definitely in the queue at 8:58 and RuthE also suggests the queue can be joined before 9:00. It rather brings into question when people should try to join the queue.

[RuthE]

To clarify, it sounds as though it may have opened a couple of minutes early this morning. Usually it’s dead on the specified time - I know, because I’ll have been pressing refresh repeatedly for the previous few minutes in case it comes on early!

[alison]

The website was showing a "technical error 500" a few minutes ago when I tried to use it.

[Rob S]

On 29/01/2020 at 08:42, Geoff said:

For those booking the Gala this morning, one special feature to note is that two "generous philanthropic" supporters are shown. The first is the Laidlaw family - but the second is, yes, the "Website Redesign Team". 

 

Maybe putting some money back into a show is their way of trying to make amends?

 

 

Looks like the website design website has taken its money back😀

[Geoff]

8 hours ago, Rob S said:

Looks like the website design website has taken its money back😀

 

Just checked, you are quite right Rob: that line about the “Website Redesign Team” has indeed disappeared now. This is hilarious. It seems these clowns can’t even do something this simple without messing up.

 

Either they were not in fact supporters, in which case they put the line on there by mistake, which is a strange thing to do. Or they wanted to support in some way, but were told this was not legitimate. Or it was some kind of odd gesture by a rogue employee trying to make a point, whatever that might have been. Or some other equally idiotic mix-up, typical of the confusion they have put us through in this year (has it been that long?) of unintended “beta testing”. 

[alison]

Excuse the rant, but I am sick and tired of this website.  That's 3 weeks running it's screwed up my attempts to book Friday Rush tickets.  I've been moved from the front of the queue to (presumably) the back, just when I've been told that I'm about to enter the website, suddenly find myself queuing again, and then this week, well!  I was assuming that the site had crashed and that everyone was equally affected (just when I was right at the front of the queue, too, it seems), so waited patiently for things to right themselves, but accidentally switched to my "The Cellist-monitoring" window and found that the tickets had been released and were disappearing.  I managed to grab a couple of higher-priced tickets for two performances, and then a few minutes later, somewhere about 1:20, so no way out of my 30 minutes, they vanished from my basket!

 

GRRRRRR!!!  

[Rob S]

Yes there was a lot of page hanging and 503 errors this week. 

[capybara]

6 minutes ago, Rob S said:

Yes there was a lot of page hanging and 503 errors this week. 

I couldn’t see my Upcoming Events and followed the reporting instructions given with the 503 Error message.. But that trail took me not to a website manager as expected but to Graham Boland in Customer Services who seems to be the recipient of all complaints.

[San Perregrino]

3 hours ago, alison said:

Excuse the rant, but I am sick and tired of this website.  That's 3 weeks running it's screwed up my attempts to book Friday Rush tickets.  I've been moved from the front of the queue to (presumably) the back, just when I've been told that I'm about to enter the website, suddenly find myself queuing again, and then this week, well!  I was assuming that the site had crashed and that everyone was equally affected (just when I was right at the front of the queue, too, it seems), so waited patiently for things to right themselves, but accidentally switched to my "The Cellist-monitoring" window and found that the tickets had been released and were disappearing.  I managed to grab a couple of higher-priced tickets for two performances, and then a few minutes later, somewhere about 1:20, so no way out of my 30 minutes, they vanished from my basket!

 

GRRRRRR!!!  

yes. the site crashed for me too and I kept getting error messages. it’s frustrating but it’s not personal.  it happens frequently on other sites that have massive surges in demand. I suppose that on the ROH site today, frantic opera lovers overloaded the site trying for Fidelio tickets 

[alison]

On ‎15‎/‎01‎/‎2020 at 19:59, alison said:

As far as I can tell, based on my observations today, the ROH website now appears to be open for online bookings right until curtain-up, which is perhaps a little excessive, but makes sense from a practical point of view.  Has anyone found to the contrary?

 

Um, I think I have, now.  Just logged on to find that for the 12 pm matinee today the website claims there are 38 tickets available.  But when you click on the "Buy" button you get the "Sorry, no tickets available" message.  It's surely unrealistic to think that 38 tickets have just vanished.  So what I'm guessing happens is that you still can't book within 2 hours of the starting time, but you can see that there are tickets available, so you could either risk turning up in person or ringing the box office.  A bit disappointing for anyone who's done a late return of tickets, though, as I guess their chances of a resale are reduced.  Still, not the ROH's problem, I suppose, although in this day and age of people booking things on their phones I don't necessarily see why online booking couldn't continue until much nearer the starting time.

 

Now waiting to disprove this hypothesis ...

[annamk]

It seems that the ROH website has now migrated to the new seat selection system, only the whole auditorium seat map appeared which at the moment doesn't even seem to work - trying to "grab" a seat is getting me nowhere.