Proms 2024

[Petrushka]

All done eventually and all successful but for some reason it wouldn't accept Prom 62. I had to do that one separately and it did work so not sure what the issue was.

One annoyance is that of clicking on the boxes which then jump up an inch or so without activating thus necessitating another click.

[Norrette]

Nightmare this morning. OpenReach decided to replace a cable in the street, so my Internet connection wasn't stable. So I had use my phone ... 35000th at 9am finally got through at 11:30. Got the Beethoven 7 with the Jenkins commission and the Suk, which some on here were recommending.

Why don't they split the popular concerts bookings to the weekend before?

[Roger Webb]

Florence and the Machine has now Sold Out - according to the site.

Diehard fans thought they 'sold out' years ago!

[Petrushka]

Why don't they split the popular concerts bookings to the weekend before?

This was my thought too. I would welcome two or even three different booking dates. It was obvious that there were zillions of people on there to book for Florence and the Machine, especially as it sold out in an hour. Fencing off these kind of events would take the pressure off the box office and have the added side effect of easing my blood pressure.

Perhaps the BBC and RAH will take note.

[Dave2002]

Out of curiosity I just tried to access the RAH site again. I started at position 106 in the queue, and was able to look at available seats for some of the concerts which hadn't already sold out within 3-4 minutes.

So if anyone wants to pick up extra tickets now, it might be possible, though there are clearly few options available for some concerts - and none at all for the most popular.

[french frank]

Urm....but how many will return for 'classical' concerts? I don't believe that they think that they are 'attending the Proms' at all, merely going to a concert they're interested in.

Yes, the green emoji was a tick box. Reporting the number of first time attenders is a metric of a successful season - even if they're only going to a widely publicised pop concert. And classical music now comes under the BBC's Mental health and Wellness provision.

[Roger Webb]

Yes, the green emoji was a tick box. Reporting the number of first time attenders is a metric of a successful season - even if they're only going to a widely publicised pop concert. And classical music now comes under the BBC's Mental health and Wellness provision.

Yes, I 'get' the ironic tick box now - how did I think you were serious?! Tut tut!

The Nick Drake Prom is an interesting choice in view of the BBC's Mental health and wellness concerns as Drake was a heavy marijuana user (LSD too) as his first album 'Five leaves left' suggests - the number of 'Rizlas' one needs to roll a decent reefer (so I've been told😉). He suffered depression and took his own life aged only 26.

[Retune]

The extra donations and fees are arguably sneaky. It would be better if they could be agreed in advance - so that at least one knows what is being done.

I wish everything could be agreed in advance, as it was with the old paper booking forms in the back of the season programme. Why does there need to be a queue on the day at all? They know from the Planner which concerts we want to book, and whether we'll accept alternative seats in another area, and payment details can be pre-registered (they already had mine from last year). Queue positions are now allocated randomly. So why do we have to sit there for hours like lab rats waiting to push a lever to get a food pellet? Perhaps some people want to consider whether alternative seats are acceptable when their selected area is full, but they could have a bit of flexibility on returns if that happens (affected concerts will be selling well anyway, so the RAH will very probably have no trouble shifting any returns later).

And while they're at it, bookings should only go into the ballot for pairs of Last Night tickets if the customer is booking at least 2 seats for 5 concerts. If they are booking single seats, they should only be entitled to a shot at a single seat on the Last Night too. Wasn't that how they used to do it?

[Petrushka]

I wish everything could be agreed in advance, as it was with the old paper booking forms in the back of the season programme. Why does there need to be a queue on the day at all? They know from the Planner which concerts we want to book, and whether we'll accept alternative seats in another area, and payment details can be pre-registered (they already had mine from last year). Queue positions are now allocated randomly. So why do we have to sit there for hours like lab rats waiting to push a lever to get a food pellet? Perhaps some people want to consider whether alternative seats are acceptable when their selected area is full, but they could have a bit of flexibility on returns if that happens (affected concerts will be selling well anyway, so the RAH will very probably have no trouble shifting any returns later).

And while they're at it, bookings should only go into the ballot for pairs of Last Night tickets if the customer is booking at least 2 seats for 5 concerts. If they are booking single seats, they should only be entitled to a shot at a single seat on the Last Night too. Wasn't that how they used to do it?

The reminder email message I had from the RAH said the booking would open at 9am but also said that anyone trying to redeem a Plan or do a concert booking from 7.20am would be placed in a 'holding room' and at 9am would be moved to the Waiting Room where they would be allocated a random place in the queue. Anyone booking after 9am would be placed at the back of the queue.

I found this to be confusing and ambiguous. Did booking open at 9am or 7.20am? Were those who tried to book from 7.20 allowed an advantage in terms of their placing in the queue? The answer from my experience of booking on the dot of 9am at position 35000+ would seem to be yes as those in the holding room had already filled up the previous 34000+ places.

The RAH should stop playing silly games like this and come clean. I played fair by doing exactly as instructed. Those who 'tried' (which denotes unfairness) to redeem before 9am got first dibs.

I can see that a waiting room to the Waiting Room would help flow on a very busy day but the RAH should play fair and need to look at this whole issue again and make absolutely clear in plain English without ambiguity exactly what they mean.

The old paper forms were better in that I always used to put a little note in specifically requesting O Stalls if available and that always worked. You can only request Side Stalls now which is G or H on one side or O and M on the other. I have a preference for the latter. I can report that under the old postal method I never failed to get a seat.

[Retune]

I found this to be confusing and ambiguous. Did booking open at 9am or 7.20am? Were those who tried to book from 7.20 allowed an advantage in terms of their placing in the queue? The answer from my experience of booking on the dot of 9am at position 35000+ would seem to be yes as those in the holding room had already filled up the previous 34000+ places.

Perhaps it would have been better if they'd said the random queue placing would happen at 9.01, since the advertised opening time was 9.00? But I don't think you were necessarily at the back of the queue. A friend whom I'm quite sure would have gone to the site a bit before 9AM was allocated a 50,000+ place. I assume the point of the holding room was to avoid overloading the system with an avalanche of frantic repeated clicks in the seconds around 9AM. But I still don't see why we need to play this game at all. Just have the system randomly order and auto-submit all the Plans from 9AM onwards!

I had never tried requesting a specific side of the hall on the advance booking form, but it can make a difference, especially for (say) a piano concerto. Also missed from the old system is the boost you could get in the Last Night ballot by making at least one booking from a category of lower profile concerts where they presumably wanted to encourage attendance.

[Petrushka]

Perhaps it would have been better if they'd said the random queue placing would happen at 9.01, since the advertised opening time was 9.00? But I don't think you were necessarily at the back of the queue. A friend whom I'm quite sure would have gone to the site a bit before 9AM was allocated a 50,000+ place. I assume the point of the holding room was to avoid overloading the system with an avalanche of frantic repeated clicks in the seconds around 9AM. But I still don't see why we need to play this game at all. Just have the system randomly order and auto-submit all the Plans from 9AM onwards!

I had never tried requesting a specific side of the hall on the advance booking form, but it can make a difference, especially for (say) a piano concerto. Also missed from the old system is the boost you could get in the Last Night ballot by making at least one booking from a category of lower profile concerts where they presumably wanted to encourage attendance.

Yes, I agree entirely with what you say about the Plan being auto-submitted and meant to say so in my previous post. They clearly knew that I had made a Proms Plan because the reminder email said so. If it is made mandatory to click on a box to say that you accept tickets at a different price if your first choice is unavailable then I can't see why auto-submission can't be done assuming there are no technical caveats.

As it was I had to sit at my computer for over three hours on a beautiful Saturday morning, drinking endless cups of coffee and feeling nervous about losing the internet connection which does sometimes happen here.

Re the Last Night, I think the criteria changed at some point but it used to be the case that if you booked for a certain number of Proms (five or six was it?) then you could apply for a maximum of two tickets for the Last Night. I remember this because I always go on my own but used that facility to take a close relative to experience the annual jamboree from1989 to 1992 at which point the rules must have changed.

[Retune]

Re the Last Night, I think the criteria changed at some point but it used to be the case that if you booked for a certain number of Proms (five or six was it?) then you could apply for a maximum of two tickets for the Last Night. I remember this because I always go on my own but used that facility to take a close relative to experience the annual jamboree from1989 to 1992 at which point the rules must have changed.

I may be mistaken about the rule in the last days of the paper form - perhaps it has always been a pair of tickets on offer. That's the system today (five single bookings minimum for a place in the ballot).

In another annoyance of the current system, I was actually allocated Last Night tickets a few years ago, but missed the notification. I must have had a different (and now little-used) email address registered at some point, and for some reason they used that one to send the ballot result rather than the main email they use for everything else. The old email isn't even listed in my account details on the RAH site, so there's not an obvious way of updating it.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I dislike the way Radio 3 is bragging about the queues for Proms tickets . In my view that is a sign of failure to invest in a decent computer system . When I complained about the useless Royal Opera booking website and the queues when Friends Booking opens I said it’s almost as bad as the Proms only to be told the same company runs both ticket operations ! It’s a disagrace and a waste of time -particularly those who are actually working at 09.00 when the ROH website opens.

As I said at the time some of us don’t have butlers to book for us .

[Retune]

I also wonder to what extent organised touting is contributing to the massive queues and fast sell outs for some of the big name concerts. Proms etickets must be particularly easy to sell on for these chancers - they'd just have to email a pdf, and the RAH would be none the wiser unless the seat numbers had been publicly advertised. But of course any additional verification like ID checks would make the experience on the day more annoying, and I'm not sure the Proms audience is quite ready for apps like Dice that lock etickets to a specific phone.

[Petrushka]

I also wonder to what extent organised touting is contributing to the massive queues and fast sell outs for some of the big name concerts. Proms etickets must be particularly easy to sell on for these chancers - they'd just have to email a pdf, and the RAH would be none the wiser unless the seat numbers had been publicly advertised. But of course any additional verification like ID checks would make the experience on the day more annoying, and I'm not sure the Proms audience is quite ready for apps like Dice that lock etickets to a specific phone.

I had a similar thought regarding organised touting and I'm 100% sure this would have been going on with some of these people using banks of computers to get hold of multiple tickets. Difficult to know how this can be prevented.