London theatre bookings - total shambles
Ok why is it soooo hard to book seats for a play in London?
Oh it is very easy to book bad ones - but how do you book the good ones - i.e. the central areas of the middle stalls.
Seemingly different seating blocks are allocated to different agencies on a seemingly random basis. Very very hard to get the ones you want. I have no idea who has the middle lot - it seems like some extremely dodgy cartel operation. Ticketmaster have only 2 seats on row H (on the end of the centre block), and none in the rest of rows D to L at all.
It would be much much better if these theatres just ran their own box office like most Northern theatres. It's rubbish that I can't specify the seats I want and get given a list of days when they're available. And some agencies have preposterous booking fees too... smells like dodgy backhanders and corruption may be rife.. maybe the best seats are effectively being touted by dubious companies...
2 comments:
It depends where you're after, but many London theatres do have their own box offices, but you have to turn up in person as they can't meet the demand to manage their own website/telephone bookings. Hence they outsource it. But the best seats are often reserved by the theatre itself.
Theatre Royal - but they have outsourced the lot. In the end I bought thru' ticketmaster because I couldn't find a number to call to find out from the theatre who they've alloc'd the best tickets to. Turning up in person to book? You have to be kidding - the phone is a plenty old enough invention that any self respecting theatre should have one!
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