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Royal Ballet 2013/2014 Spring booking


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Well for the first time ever I had priority booking available to me (as a Friend of Northern Ballet) the downside being that I could only book by phone.

 

I was on hold for an anxious 35 minutes.  Sometimes my phone thinks when I am "on hold" that I have forgotten to hang up and cuts me off.  Therefore I had an imaginary conversation with the "on hold" music!  The lady at the box office, when I successfully got through, was very helpful and I booked successfully.  Thanks to BalletCoers for advice on where best to sit.

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I got in, got my tickets, went to pay and forgot to click on agree to terms and conditions. Hit the back button and ticked in the box and everything disappeared. Frantically went back to find more tickets to have them, like Lynette and AnneMarriott, disappear before my eyes.. Stress levels were sky high as you can imagine! Ten minutes later I got an order confirmation for the first set of seats, hotly followed by an order confirmation for the second set of seats. I then spent 40 minutes on hold on the telephone to the box office (more stress) to sort it out. Assistant very helpful and polite and thankfully now everything is sorted. Apparently there were 'issues' this morning....

It's as bad as bidding on ebay........

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I had no problems at all, managed to get tickets in between various tasks at work! But I wasn't buying that many. I wonder what causes the difficulties? I always wait until about 11 and never have any robems. Maybe there is a log jam first thing?

 

Hard to decide what casts to go for for Sleeping Beauty, for which trying to see multiple casts is a bit expensive.  In the end McRae won as usual but I  also wanted to see how the home-grown talent is doing, so Pennefather/Cuthbertson.

 

Winter's Tale is perhaps a gamble but must be worth a try.  I confess the choice of music does rather make my heart sink .

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Janet I'm dying to know what your imaginary conversation was about! I'm still laughing about that, what a clever trick! Must keep it in mind if I'm ever put on hold that long, though I fear I'll never have your patience and hang up before the phone does!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Nice trick indeed! But bear in mind that recording and monitoring of calls ("for your benefit," of course...) sometimes continues while you're on hold, even when music is playing, and sometimes before you've even been connected. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/business/11snoop.html?ex=1263099600&en=567d8bda6d8b4605&ei=5090&_r=0 It's quite an old article, and there have since been changes in different countries' laws and practices for call monitoring. But particularly since you often don't know the location of the call centre that's put you on hold, it's generally best to avoid saying anything that you wouldn't want repeated...

 

Yaffa

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  • 3 weeks later...

It's all those opera bookers, Meunier :(

 

Forgive me, Alison .... but if they are going to send out TWO emails saying that their systems will be up and running for the new booking period at 10.00 am ... and they put a big announcement on their Facebook page ... then ONE would expect the system to be able to handle their custom ... wouldn't one???????   It's not as if they hadn't gone on this particular round before ..... 

 

I don't know .... Perhaps it's a ploy to send more people to an already hugely overburdened A&E ....

 

What is it the PM says:  We're all this together!!!    TOO RIGHT WE ARE!!!!

Edited by Meunier
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Forgive me, Alison .... but if they are going to send out TWO emails saying that their systems will be up and running for the new booking period at 10.00 am ... and they put a big announcement on their Facebook page ... then ONE would expect the system to be able to handle their custom ... wouldn't one???????   It's not as if they hadn't gone on this round before ..... 

 

Of course.  I'd guess that something's gone wrong with their cloud computing solution.

 

In the meantime, the one ticket I have managed to get into my basket will be dropping out again in about 10 minutes.  I can't even get to my basket to pay for it :(

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I'm not even bothering. Dd wants Sleeping Beauty tickets for her birthday but I think I'll phone tomorrow rather than hang on to the "Access Line"* for 4 hours.

 

*General Box Office

 

Just to mention that ROH tweeted this morning that non-wheelchair access tickets will be bookable online from Autumn 2014 booking period.  About bloomin' time!

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I've had the same problems as everyone else - the most frustrating aspect being lack of access to shopping basket with eagerly seized stalls circle standing tickets for Sleeping Beauty.  Got there in the end (two separate transactions) but VERY disappointing. 

 

Well, I'm still getting blank pages when I try to get to the season listing, or error messages for Faust and Sleeping Beauty :(

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I've been looking at a blank screen for 20 mins now and have to get back to work. AAARGH!

 

try 'refresh' or go back to the homepage.

 

Had loads of 'hangs' and errors, but persistence paid off. Can't say it was a smooth experience, but managed to get a good few i wanted, and yes, inc some SCS places

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What a shambles this all has been ... Most uncomfortable .... One would think they are making you struggle with one booking at a time just so you might overlook the initially enforced £3 donation.  NOT!!!!  Where justified yes .... Today they should be paying US methinks. 

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Its seems obvious that the problem is volume related and too many people trying access the system at the same time. So I ask myself why don't they have different days for the opening of general ticket sales for opera and ballet. That potentially reduces the traffic by half and put less strain on the system and on customers stress levels. Not rocket science.

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Presumably because they thought the new cloud computing system was working all right.  But they're clearly never going to split opera and ballet booking.

 

Oh well.  In the last 2 hours 10 minutes I've purchased a grand total of 5 tickets, so I guess my credit card bill will be light this month, which is good.

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