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ROH snow refunds?


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Here's a turn-up for the books: http://www.roh.org.uk/news/heavy-snow-what-to-do-if-youre-not-able-to-attend-la-boheme-or-the-london-international-mime-festival-on-18-january

I'm not sure I've heard of any other venues offering this. I'm slightly surprised, given that they don't usually allow exchanges within 3 days, and won't normally accept tickets for resale if they're not physically at the box office.

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Well that's great but I've never heard of the like before!

 

Years ago we had front row stalls tickets (the first time I would ever have been outside the amphi so a big treat) to see Altynai Assylmuratova in Manon and London was snowed in. We had no way of getting there even though there wasn't a flake of snow between here and Watford but ROH weren't interested and said the performance was going ahead so tough. One of our friends was able to get there on the tube and there were, in her estimation, less than 600 people in the audience.

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Although it hasn't snowed again yet, still deep snow in the garden and the pavements are icy and slippery, buses very few and far between, goodness knows what the train situation is, so have E-mailed the ROH for a refund, could be lucky as it's sold out tonight, I have another chance to see Cojocaru/Kobborg on 2nd Feb.

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just curious: how "heavy" and "deep" is this snow? The National Ballet of Canada never refunds because of snow... they'd be out of business! But then our transportation systems don't collapse because of snow either.

Edited by toursenlair
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just curious: how "heavy" and "deep" is this snow? The National Ballet of Canada never refunds because of snow... they'd be out of business! But then our transportation systems don't collapse because of snow either.

 

That made me laugh. I'm not sure what the official figures are, but it probably isn't deep by Canadian standards. The problem is we only really get snow for a few days a year, if that, so we are completely ill equipped to deal with it when it arrives. They talk about investing in some of the methods Canada, Scandinavia and Russia use to deal with their winters, but what's the point when such infrastructure won't be used for most of the year?

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Exactly ChrisChris. We hardly ever get snow on Merseyside so how could the local councils possibly justify the expenditure for a couple of days every couple of years?

 

Katherine - is that because most Canadian cities seem to have as much below ground as above?

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Well, the metro services in southern London seem to be basically okay (although there are a lot of scheduled engineering works today). There do seem to be some problems further out, but not much.

 

Don't forget, the ROH is only offering refunds if they re-sell the tickets. Not a bad idea, perhaps - there are probably others who'd like to see the production and haven't been able to get hold of tickets, and it's a win-win situation for the ROH, isn't it?

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I think the snow was about 9 inches deep, it's going down now, that's deep for England but then one inch of snow causes travel chaos here which is why we dread it.

 

I got an immediate E-mail reply that the ticket was going on sale and it isn't online now so looks like it has been sold, good idea but you have to look under News.

 

 

 

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Exactly ChrisChris. We hardly ever get snow on Merseyside so how could the local councils possibly justify the expenditure for a couple of days every couple of years?

 

Katherine - is that because most Canadian cities seem to have as much below ground as above?

 

Well really it's only Montreal and Toronto that have huge underground shopping etc networks, and that's only downtown. The opera house here does have a direct underground connection to the subway but not to anything else. Mostly we deal with snow because we have to! (and oh yes, we're hardy souls). So we have the snowploughs, the salters, etc, and snow tires on our cars, and sturdy boots for our feet... and we just learn early how to clamber over snowbanks! Having said all that, ironically Toronto has no snow on the ground at the moment. But Montreal and Ottawa have had lots of snow and Winnipeg had a blizzard last week (and when I say blizzard, I mean blizzard, 30 cm of snow, wind chills in the -30s, howling winds reducing visibility to zero, etc. When Winnipeg has one of its real blizzards, everything grinds to a halt.

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I think the snow was about 9 inches deep, it's going down now,

 

My goodness, that's awful. Central London, as usual, was virtually clear by the time I got there at Friday lunchtime, and we only had a couple of inches max "down South".

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It's nice ROH have offered refunds but it's laughable that yet again this country can't cope with a bit of snow.

NYCB have a snow policy - the show goes on regardless and in my experience it does!

 

I think the ROH have offered refunds to people who can't get there. They haven't cancelled the show. The problem here is that we don't usually get the extremes of weather experienced in some other countries and, as I said before, councils would have a hard job justifying the cost for what in reality is a few days each year, if that.

 

When Birmingham was snowed in a couple of years ago, BRB did go ahead with the scheduled performance of Cyrano. I think there was about 50 of us in the audience at the start and about 600 by the end. The performances started with half an orchestra and a modified score to cope and ended with the full orchestra. Before the performance people were offered the opportunity to book for an alternative performance if they wanted to try and get home but I don't think anyone moved and we had a truly wonderful performance to enjoy. The snow had all gone by the following morning!

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When Birmingham was snowed in a couple of years ago, BRB did go ahead with the scheduled performance of Cyrano. I think there was about 50 of us in the audience at the start and about 600 by the end. The performances started with half an orchestra and a modified score to cope and ended with the full orchestra. Before the performance people were offered the opportunity to book for an alternative performance if they wanted to try and get home but I don't think anyone moved and we had a truly wonderful performance to enjoy. The snow had all gone by the following morning!

 

I was at that performance too! A unique experience in my ballet-going life. Remember how David Bintley came out in front of the curtain and asked everyone in the circle to c'mon down to the stalls to fill things up! And the assistant conductor, as I recall, had to fill in on the tympani, and there were no horns till the second act. One of the dancers apparently had walked two hours through the snow to get to the theatre.

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