Royal Ballet Autumn 2022 Bookings

[San Perregrino]

The Diamond Celebration doesn’t yet seem to be among the shows going onsale this morning in that one can’t access the seating plan and prices even though 5th July is the supposed onsale date. Nor is it listed under my Friends Autumn 2022 events …. Hmm?

[EVWS]

I could access it to book as a Young Friend today - first night looks to have sold well, only tickets left are in the amphitheatre unless they're holding some back for when general booking opens? 

[Bruce Wall]

All good with the booking today.   More clicks involved in the new system - but overall greater clarity.  One is grateful that it simply works.  

[San Perregrino]

1 hour ago, PeterS said:

The Diamond Celebration doesn’t yet seem to be among the shows going onsale this morning in that one can’t access the seating plan and prices even though 5th July is the supposed onsale date. Nor is it listed under my Friends Autumn 2022 events …. Hmm?

 

at 9am it went onsale but weirdly not via the Friends Autumn 2022 events list. Scant availability and not a single SCS so hopefully General Booking will free up more seats.

Edited July 5, 2022 by PeterS

[jmhopton]

I too was in and out very quickly. Was logged in and waiting at 9am and only had 1 minute wait on the new system. I went in via the Friends email reminder to save scrolling through all the other events as the website still doesn't seem to prioritise main stage booking even on an important booking day. I only wanted 3 Mayerling tickets so was able to book fairly quickly. Seat view working and drop down menu and 45 mins to book. The only things I'd say is that if you have a gift voucher you now have to click on a box that says gift voucher rather than the box just being there to fill in. However, if you have already logged in and have ROH vouchers from returned tickets they are there with the total so you don't have to rummage for numbers, just click on them. A friend had also given me a voucher and I just clicked on Add new voucher (or something similar) to put in her voucher number. Also, when you have added an item to your basket I don't think the drop down date menu is there to return to but I just clicked the back arrow and it took me back to the auditorium plan and drop down dates. All in all, a positive experience.

Edited July 5, 2022 by jmhopton

[Lynette H]

No queue at all. Is this now a thing of the past ? 

[postie]

Perhaps summer hols affected the queue ... Anyway, painless process, apart from 'pay now' button.

 

For any opera crossover-types, if you haven't yet been, suggest you make your way to the Linbury for Lucretia as it's very popular.

 

 

[Beryl H]

My first session took a long time and eventually seized up, so I quickly paid for what was in the basket and started again without being able to find how to apply Gift Vouchers. Second session was better although the wrong seat view kept appearing, but I was able to get the performances I wanted and use the Vouchers (agree this aspect is less clear than before). The most booked up performance in the amphi for me was Marcelino Sambe's Mayerling 🙂

[JNC]

Yes booking surprisingly smooth this morning! As mentioned seems to be lots of click throughs though and couldn’t find a simple way to go straight back to booking more performances (any tips or am I being silly?). Ended up researching for the production and going back in to book more tickets that way. 
 

Very very pleased to see seat view is back!!! 
 

But the Diamonds bill has sold well so feel bad for those waiting for general booking. Pretty much everything sold out apart from top half of amphi and the slips for all dates, best availability seems to be the Saturday evening performance (is it because Lamb/Hirano are doing diamonds rather than Nunez/Clarke? Despite casting being very important for me I am ironically always surprised when I see it playing out strongly in sales. 
 

I am always grateful ROH do their best to let us know casts in advance of booking - everything always subject to change but helps with my decision making enormously as a night can vary hugely on this. 

[Amanda Liu]

Have the tickets to the morning class on 16 December been sold out? Was expecting a large number of tickets as it is on the main stage…

[bangorballetboy]

8 hours ago, Amanda Liu said:

Have the tickets to the morning class on 16 December been sold out? Was expecting a large number of tickets as it is on the main stage…

this hasn’t been on sale yet

[Amanda Liu]

18 hours ago, bangorballetboy said:

this hasn’t been on sale yet

Ah ok thank you. When I clicked on more information, it says all tickets are sold out.

[Guest oncnp]

10 hours ago, Amanda Liu said:

Ah ok thank you. When I clicked on more information, it says all tickets are sold out.

 

and now morning class on 16 December seems to have disappeared entirely. 

[bangorballetboy]

I checked with the Friends office earlier and the 16 December in class event will be in the Winter booking period.

[Angela Essex]

On 05/07/2022 at 16:55, JNC said:

But the Diamonds bill has sold well so feel bad for those waiting for general booking. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Angela Essex
😭😭😭😭 fingers crossed there will be something left by 27th July when general booking opens 🤞🤞🤞

[postie]

Worst case, you'll still have Friday 11th and 18th November when, presumably, all three performances will be on Rush.

Edited July 12, 2022 by postie

[JNC]

16 hours ago, Angela Essex said:

 

I would think so unless a spate of friends pick up lots of tickets in the next couple of weeks. As mentioned Friday rush is always a good try and people might return tickets closer to the time as well (either on this forum or via the main webpage) so keep checking if you don’t get anything initially. 
 

given it has sold so well I wonder if they should have scheduled more than 3 performances - 4 or 5 even would satisfy I imagine. It’s interesting as in theory no different to a “normal” mixed bill in a lot of ways, and it’s more than just a one off gala so I wonder why 3 performances? I guess just to be glad we got 3 rather than 1 I suppose as otherwise it likely would have sold out before general booking and probably for lower tier friends as well. 

[alison]

My booking experience this morning has been fairly abysmal: for the second booking period in a row, the system decided to empty out all the tickets I had in my shopping basket, and they were all irretrievable   But, worse than that, I was getting all sorts of what didn't appear to be errors but actually were.  So, selected a ticket for the Diamond Celebration from the seating plan, carefully clicked on "Add to basket" or whatever it's called and went back to the seating plan to change the date.  Selected another ticket for another performance, but got some sort of "do you want to leave this page / sacrifice the ticket you've already got?" message.  No, I didn't, so I cancelled.  An "Update your basket" message appeared bottom right, where the "Add to basket" message usually appears, so I updated my basket.  Went back and tried again - same thing.  Eventually concluded that this (the ticket sacrifice bit) was probably being caused by trying to book multiple performances of a bill by changing the date in the drop-down menu in the seating plan, because if I backed right out onto the production page and then went in again I didn't appear to get it.  (This all wasting time while tickets were disappearing rapidly, of course).  Then of course I decided to take a look at my basket, and realised that not all the tickets I'd Added to Basket were showing up in there, including the times I'd Updated My Basket, so had to re-add a few.  Rather lost track of what I'd already added, because by the time you've scrolled up and down through the expanded Mayerling casting to find dancers you did want to see it's difficult to see the date.  Then I thought I'd better go into my basket and see how much time I had left - i.e. whether they'd extended the standard half-hour period as they did last time - and got "Your basket is empty"!  All the tickets that I'd seen in there on my previous visit - all gone!  Hoped that the box office would be able to retrieve them for me, but apparently no joy there.  And of course by this time there was a distinct shortage of stalls circle (or any other) standing - and the seats where I used to sit, as others had already commented, were now quite eye-watering!

 

I realise that the box office may have been short staffed due to the rail strike (or do they work from home these days anyway?), but it may well have been something of a blessing in disguise that the public booking emails hadn't gone out, because I dread to think what it would have been like with a full complement of people trying to book.

 

This was all on Edge in Windows 10, btw.  Last time, I used Firefox ...

 

All I can say is that the design of the production pages needs a tweak.  There's far too much white space - especially for people scrolling on phones - between individual performances, making it impossible to get more than a few dates on screen at any one time which, when you have multiple casts, is not a good experience.

Edited July 27, 2022 by alison
To remove first sentence, as it's no longer relevant

[alison]

1 hour ago, alison said:

but it may well have been something of a blessing in disguise that the public booking emails hadn't gone out, because I dread to think what it would have been like with a full complement of people trying to book.

 

 

I take it back: just found an email in my junk folder.  Perhaps they had to set up a new email address after the WordFly breach.

[Emeralds]

A thank you to members who warned about the Diamond Celebration tickets selling fast. I had no problem booking tickets for it, but it felt very surreal that 

a) tickets for Diamond Celebration, a mixed bill, were more expensive than Nutcracker across a range of seat areas,

b) harder to find seats in certain areas for a mixed bill than for Nutcracker, La Boheme and Tosca (on nights with big name stars dancing or singing).

 

PS I noticed that the casting for Diamonds at the Saturday matinee has changed on the website from Nuñez/Clarke to Lamb/Hirano (who are also listed for the evening performance). Should we presume the new casting is (barring injury/illness/emergencies) is more accurate? 

 

Booking fairly straightforward and quick compared to some years when there has been a very long wait in the queue (or website crashing) before being able to book. I only waited 2 minutes. 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Emeralds

[alison]

Ah, thank you, Emeralds, for bumping this one.  I knew there must be a thread somewhere, but it didn't come up when I searched.  I'll move my posts over.

[Emeralds]

3 hours ago, alison said:

I think people have reported varying booking experiences for Autumn 2022, but I don't think we've got a dedicated thread as such, so I'll borrow this one.

 

My booking experience this morning has been fairly abysmal: for the second booking period in a row, the system decided to empty out all the tickets I had in my shopping basket, and they were all irretrievable   But, worse than that, I was getting all sorts of what didn't appear to be errors but actually were.  So, selected a ticket for the Diamond Celebration from the seating plan, carefully clicked on "Add to basket" or whatever it's called and went back to the seating plan to change the date.  Selected another ticket for another performance, but got some sort of "do you want to leave this page / sacrifice the ticket you've already got?" message.  No, I didn't, so I cancelled.  An "Update your basket" message appeared bottom right, where the "Add to basket" message usually appears, so I updated my basket.  Went back and tried again - same thing.  Eventually concluded that this (the ticket sacrifice bit) was probably being caused by trying to book multiple performances of a bill by changing the date in the drop-down menu in the seating plan, because if I backed right out onto the production page and then went in again I didn't appear to get it.  (This all wasting time while tickets were disappearing rapidly, of course).  Then of course I decided to take a look at my basket, and realised that not all the tickets I'd Added to Basket were showing up in there, including the times I'd Updated My Basket, so had to re-add a few.  Rather lost track of what I'd already added, because by the time you've scrolled up and down through the expanded Mayerling casting to find dancers you did want to see it's difficult to see the date.  Then I thought I'd better go into my basket and see how much time I had left - i.e. whether they'd extended the standard half-hour period as they did last time - and got "Your basket is empty"!  All the tickets that I'd seen in there on my previous visit - all gone!  Hoped that the box office would be able to retrieve them for me, but apparently no joy there.  And of course by this time there was a distinct shortage of stalls circle (or any other) standing - and the seats where I used to sit, as others had already commented, were now quite eye-watering!

 

I realise that the box office may have been short staffed due to the rail strike (or do they work from home these days anyway?), but it may well have been something of a blessing in disguise that the public booking emails hadn't gone out, because I dread to think what it would have been like with a full complement of people trying to book.

 

This was all on Edge in Windows 10, btw.  Last time, I used Firefox ...

 

All I can say is that the design of the production pages needs a tweak.  There's far too much white space - especially for people scrolling on phones - between individual performances, making it impossible to get more than a few dates on screen at any one time which, when you have multiple casts, is not a good experience.

Ouch- that’s unlucky and sounds most frustrating, Alison! I wonder if it might be prevented next time by booking just a few shows at a time and then restarting a new booking? As ROH doesn’t do booking fees or charges, you won’t get charged extra for booking them in several batches. 

 

The only “glitch” I got was when I was booking for the Crystal Pite ballet, there was a section of seats in a funny colour- they weren’t grey (meaning unavailable) or their usual colour. When I clicked on them, they offered me the seats but I couldn’t add them to my basket. I picked another date in the end. 

 

Or maybe it’s the software- I used Safari today. I agree about the new design of the production pages not being great when booking. 

[Sophie_B]

Thanks for all these experiences. It took AGES for the confirmation emails to arrive and for it to show up in events but it did all appear, and apart from that the system seemed to cooperate. 

 

Personally one of my more dramatic ticket purchases since I'm in the US for work. Set an alarm for 3am (!!) to book tickets... Despite the internet in my accommodation being extremely patchy I managed to get all the ones I wanted, between 3G on my phone and intermittent computer internet. A miracle really

[LinMM]

I’ve only booked two shows at the moment. A Nutcracker and the Diamonds celebration thing. 
There were very few tickets left for those three performances ( hadn’t initially appreciated there were only three!) but got a “restricted view” seat in Balcony at £100!!!!! 
It doesn’t look too bad though and as I’m tall should manage to see most of the stage if I sit up straight lol! 
There was absolutely no problem booking which I only did a couple of hours ago and email confirmation came through almost immediately. 
But apart from BRB at the Wells and the Giselle at the Colisseum in September that might be it for me in the Autumn. 
I might see if can get a cheaper seat for Mayerling eventually but right now I can’t make my mind up which cast to see but certainly don’t want to get into the £100 mark to see it. 

Edited July 27, 2022 by LinMM

[emmarose]

I've had a bit of a hell of a time with it.

 

I had some credit, multiple ones. I was ordering for Nutcracker at the same time as Diamonds, I checked out Diamonds, then Nutcracker and got no confirmation email, kept the windows open and noticed that one credit was used on both orders. Only Nutcracker email came through. I called them up, was on hold for 3 hours, at the end of it they had a recorded message to say I wasn't getting through, so they would disconnect and call back when they could, still no call back. I've also emailed. Absolute mess, and I have more credits remaining too. At least I do have a ticket for the first night, but still, it's stressful.

 

I bought another Diamonds ticket, to make sure I at least had one, I bought 2 front row circle, this is one 2nd row stalls, I would like the 2 though.

[Angela Essex]

I almost had a nightmare but ended up okay in the end. I didn’t want to risk trying to add multiple performances to the basket before checkout only to find my seats unavailable by the time I got to checkout so I booked and paid for each performance individually.

 

I booked diamonds first - all SCS gone for the date I could attend and luckily got a balcony standing in row C - quite near the centre.

 

Next was Mayerling ended up accidentally booking twice for each performance I wanted as initially nothing was showing up in the ‘events’ section of my account and no confirmation of booking e mail arrived so I assumed I hadn’t completed the booking. Now I’ve double booked.

 

Lastly and most annoying was trying to book 4 seats for my husband and I to take the kids to see the nutcracker on New Years Eve. The booking system kept emptying my basket of seats and for some reason it wouldn’t add 4 seats to my basket at once. I had to individually add each seat to the basket in the end. All of this faffing meant that we can no longer all sit together now - we are front row of amphi at right of centre but there is a person in the middle of us with 2 of our seats on either side of them. Very frustrating as at the start of trying to book there were 4 seats together in this location. 

 

I thought about booking the Lost Dog and Crystal Pite too, but didn’t as there wasn’t much information explaining what they were like on the ROH website. Any ideas anyone?

[Angela Essex]

4 hours ago, Emeralds said:

Ouch- that’s unlucky and sounds most frustrating, Alison! I wonder if it might be prevented next time by booking just a few shows at a time and then restarting a new booking? As ROH doesn’t do booking fees or charges, you won’t get charged extra for booking them in several batches. 

 

The only “glitch” I got was when I was booking for the Crystal Pite ballet, there was a section of seats in a funny colour- they weren’t grey (meaning unavailable) or their usual colour. When I clicked on them, they offered me the seats but I couldn’t add them to my basket. I picked another date in the end. 

 

Or maybe it’s the software- I used Safari today. I agree about the new design of the production pages not being great when booking. 

Hello Emeralds, do you know what the Crystal Pite ballet is about or what it’s going to be like? I couldn’t find much about it on the ROH website so haven’t booked yet. Any info would be very much appreciated. Ditto Lost Dog. Thanks in advance x

[postie]

For those of you with empty basket syndrome, are you logging in before you go shopping - not saying it's the answer but just a thought.

[JNC]

I can sympathise with the delay on email confirmation but it did used to be near instantaneous? 
 

As already mentioned, it’s unnerving that the tickets don’t appear on your account, or credit you’ve used appears to still be there meaning you do worry if the purchase has gone through. 
 

I do wonder if you tried to make another purchase whether the credit would show up correctly and you could end up using up more credit than you had somewhat? 

[Dawnstar]

6 hours ago, alison said:

I take it back: just found an email in my junk folder.  Perhaps they had to set up a new email address after the WordFly breach.

 

I haven't had anything from the ROH today to say booking is open. Not that it's a problem for me, as I've had 27th July memorised since the season announcement, but if those less obsessive about ticket booking haven't had an email then not everyone might realise.

 

My booking this morning wasn't ideal but the problems were at my end rather than the ROH's, which makes a change! I'd had no wifi since yesterday so couldn't use my laptop & had to borrow my mother's desktop which is phyiscally plugged into our router. 5 to 9 I had everything set up ready then a screen came up about Windows 8.1 not being supported from January & I couldn't get out of it. I ended up having to turn the computer off & on again, by which time it had just gone 9. Then 5 agonizing minutes staring at that sofa in the new queue system before I could finally start booking. Surprisingly, considering that, I managed to get all the dates I wanted & most of the seats. I had to go second to lowest price side stalls circle benches for the Diamond Celebration as the lowest price seats had all (I say all, there's only 5 each side) gone so that was a bit more expensive than I had hoped but I got lowest price side stalls circle benches for everything else, apart from treaing myself to one lowest price stalls for Mayerling with Morera & Ball. As it'll almost certainly be the only time I get to see Morera in Mayerling I'd like to see all her performance rather than only part of it!

[LinMM]

Angela Essex as long as there would be no change in view of stage if I was the person in the middle of your family I’d offer to move!! You may be lucky and find the person who is piggy in the middle may have no objection either. 

I always book tickets with my Apple iPhone so don’t know whether this is an advantage when booking with ROH as touch wood I’ve never had a booking problem with them so far. 

Edited July 27, 2022 by LinMM

[emmarose]

54 minutes ago, JNC said:

I can sympathise with the delay on email confirmation but it did used to be near instantaneous? 
 

As already mentioned, it’s unnerving that the tickets don’t appear on your account, or credit you’ve used appears to still be there meaning you do worry if the purchase has gone through. 
 

I do wonder if you tried to make another purchase whether the credit would show up correctly and you could end up using up more credit than you had somewhat? 

 

For me, I had used the credit checking out and they'd left it there so it was used again as I didn't notice the numbers. I have no idea what's happened to that original purchase because I got an initial confirmation of purchase and order number but nothing further.

[alison]

2 hours ago, postie said:

For those of you with empty basket syndrome, are you logging in before you go shopping - not saying it's the answer but just a thought.

 

YES!  I didn't last time, so when I lost all my tickets there was no way of identifying them.  I'd learned my lesson this time - not that it made a blind bit of difference.