AnneMarriott Posted December 4, 2012 Share Posted December 4, 2012 Today was advance booking for standard Friends. I was in and out in record time and there were plenty of stalls circle standing for most dates. Wonderful! I hope everyone else was as successful and that the opera buffs have an equally satisfactory time tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mallinson Posted December 4, 2012 Share Posted December 4, 2012 My experience too. Couldn't believe it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Margaret Posted December 4, 2012 Share Posted December 4, 2012 Booking was quick and I got the Mayerling ticket I wanted, but again no tickets available for the 'In Rehearsal' dates - I have not managed to get any of these in any booking period this season - very disappointing. Margaret Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnneMarriott Posted December 4, 2012 Author Share Posted December 4, 2012 My experience too. Couldn't believe it! Fingers crossed for the future ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Q Fan Posted December 5, 2012 Share Posted December 5, 2012 All went OK for me at lunch time much better, didn't "quite" get the exact Mayerling seats I wanted but they'll do! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 Well, a bit of a disaster this morning thus far. The calendar basically not responding to being clicked on, so I lost out on tickets for 8th April in the Clore - they were clearly still there at 10.05, but the 3 minutes I lost when the site wouldn't respond clearly lost me them. Went for the Acosta performances next: found some really good standing (surprised), put one in my basket, and got "Your basket is empty: continue shopping" or words to that effect. Thought I must have lost out to someone else, so went back and put another one in. Ditto. Put another one in, ditto. So I have an empty basket. Then suddenly top right it claims I have 2 items, then 3, in my basket. Attempt to login. Unable to do so. Refresh page: "your basket is empty". Then suddenly 4 items, then 0, then 3, ... you get the drift. Basket is empty again. Where have all my tickets gone? Go and book some Alices instead: am about to checkout when I suddenly decide to go back and see if those vanished tickets have reappeared online. Yes, they have, so dump just one of them in my basket and manage to pay for it this time! Second go: Bayadères and Mayerlings. Get half-a-dozen reasonable tickets in my basket, including a nice close-to-the-stage one for one of the performances. Notice the discrepancy between what my shopping basket says and what it says at top right, so click on "update basket", refresh and what have you until they say the same. Realise I've got an extra ticket I don't need, so click on the "X" to get rid of it. It doesn't go, so I click on it again and this time it does. I update the page again, and proceed to checkout. Go through checkout, and suddenly get a message to say that the payment amount doesn't match the cost of the tickets (from which the deleted ticket hadn't been deducted!), so the entire transaction is being cancelled. Yes, cancelled. No opportunity to go back and put things right - my tickets are just ceremoniously dumped somewhere, and by the time I get back into the system and have remembered what I'd booked and where, they've all gone. I thought the system had improved, but behaviour like this is an utter disgrace. I've wasted 1 1/2 hours of my working time doing this, and for what? 5 tickets, I think I managed to get in total. Or was it 4? (Oh, and if anyone has anything cheap going spare for the first night of Bayadère, please let me know. That was one of the ones I was unable to retrieve) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 I've just booked 2 tickets for Mayerling. Glad I was checking the Forum and noticed Alison's posting because I had forgotten that general booking opened today. Had no problems whatsoever and struck lucky with 2 tickets at the side of the front row of the stalls which should be fine for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Wall Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 Alison, you are not alone. I have had many of the experiences you describe above --- and am it must be said DEEPLY, DEEPLY FRUSTRATED with the (forgive me .. but bloody) ROYAL OPERA HOUSE. I had an excellent selection in my opening basket - having been there on the dot of 10.00 am and having my requirements neatly detailed on paper sitting next to me. My take even included two Don Carlos tickets. I was delighted. But, no, the computer said their (e.g., the ROH) figures did not agree so I must pay - and had NONE, nulla, NOTHING at all. Finally, .... after MANY efforts --- and after much screaming at my innocent computer .... I went back and booked each ticket individually and signed into the ROH website again individually between each booking. I did get places for all the dates I wanted but I got nowhere near as good places as I had originally thought I had got having been dutifully primed... and honestly so ... and, as it happens, I spent HOURS - to wit THREE ... undertaking all of this. The price I fear ALWAYS rises. Good thing I took the morning off, huh. I did in the end get one Don Carlos standing ticket - to the opening as it happens - so I suppose I should not complain. I look forward to hearing the experiences of others. RANT NOW OVER. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Wall Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 Just got a note back from the said ROH after I fill out the form after one of the many failures I received this morning. It simply said 'sorry' ... that they were 'experiencing difficulties with the site' .... and suggested that I 'phone fhe box office'. As my mother was wont to say: it speaks for itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Wall Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 Sorry, meant 'filled' ... and, of course, can't go back here and correct ..... or at least don't know how ... Still, I hope you can get my drift. I think you can. This is one of those days where NOTHING seems be going right. Bring on tomorrow I say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan McNulty Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 You can edit a posting within half an hour if you hit the edit button at the bottom of the posting. I find it a bit misleading because it is always greyed out but it does work for those 30 minutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Wall Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 Thanks so much for letting me know, Janet. Bless you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmhopton Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 I too had a similar experience to Alison and Meunier; had seats and then hadn't got them; error messages, money not tallying, extra tickets I'd booked to replace ones that were lost but then re-appeared later, had to sign in and out and really worried because I was at work and it took me over an hour. Finally, I did manage to sign in and get the tickets I originally wanted. The whole thing took about 10 minutes when it's working well but I had to go without lunch and breaks all day to put back the time I had lost when trying to book. Joan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted January 16, 2013 Share Posted January 16, 2013 And I'm busy working at the computer as I "speak" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Arrowsmith Posted January 16, 2013 Share Posted January 16, 2013 As usual - now, on the day after public booking opens, there are more seats showing as avaialble than yesterday when the scrum to fill your shopping basket means many seats are out of circulation. I have managed to book for Don Carlos anyhow! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted January 16, 2013 Share Posted January 16, 2013 Thanks, Paul. And I was amazed to find I could get a half-way decent balcony standing for La Donna del Lago. Nothing for Zauberflöte, though - I never used to have a problem getting stalls circle standing for opera. Have managed to get a few of the ballet tickets I missed out on, but this time the site didn't actually wait for me to confirm the booking . I was still getting a different number of tickets showing in the right-hand corner from the list on the main page, but that didn't seem to make a difference this time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zxDaveM Posted January 16, 2013 Share Posted January 16, 2013 ah - i thought it was me! Lost tickets in basket when I tried to logon (had to eventually get the password reset from the 'forgotten password' link), but of course, when I was back in, the SCS tix I had, were by then gone, and the "are they/aren't they" tickets sort of appearing for Clore events, were definitely weren't by the time i got there again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alison Posted January 16, 2013 Share Posted January 16, 2013 Doesn't look as though I mentioned that the system resisted me logging in, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mallinson Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 Apologies and an explanation from the ROH for the recent booking problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Margaret Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Thank you for the link, it has some interesting discussions. I do hope they do not combine the Friends Booking for ballet and opera to one day, as suggested - it is much better as it is. The increase in the volume of friends booking will make it much more difficult for the website to cope. It would probably be better to split the public booking to two days to reduce the volume of traffic. Margaret Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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