Prom Planner - booking today....

[VodkaDilc]

All done. 09.18. Dead chuffed. Hope all goes well for the rest of you.

I was all set for a three hour marathon, but found myself at No 130 at 9am. All complete now (despite repeated refusals to accept my credit card). I've even found that most "Best available" tickets I've got are Loggia or Grand Tier; I hadn't realised that ordinary mortals could get these and expected a good Stalls seat. Does anyone have experience of these positions in the hall?

[jbareham]

Similarly lucky for once, got in at 137 and 18 proms booked by 09:13. Usually have to wait until around 10:30 to get tickets

[Anastasius]

I was all set for a three hour marathon, but found myself at No 130 at 9am. All complete now (despite repeated refusals to accept my credit card). I've even found that most "Best available" tickets I've got are Loggia or Grand Tier; I hadn't realised that ordinary mortals could get these and expected a good Stalls seat. Does anyone have experience of these positions in the hall?

Personally I don't like them as you seem too far away from the orchestra and soloists. But I've always thought that the best seats would be in the middle..where all those people keep standing in the way

[Dave2002]

I got into the Waiting Room at over 6000 on my iPad, but I'm not holding my breath that it'll be robust enough to stay the course. I've now got two other machines on the go, and from time to time I try again.

I wonder if most of the successful people use something like eBay sniping software? I still think it's a shambles, and I did kind of anticipate this.

[VodkaDilc]

I got into the Waiting Room at over 6000 on my iPad, but I'm not holding my breath that it'll be robust enough to stay the course. I've now got two other machines on the go, and from time to time I try again.

I wonder if most of the successful people use something like eBay sniping software? I still think it's a shambles, and I did kind of anticipate this.

I got in at no 130 at 9am. I did nothing different from other years, when it took up to three hours. Just using an ordinary MacBook Pro.

[Dave2002]

I got in at no 130 at 9am. I did nothing different from other years, when it took up to three hours. Just using an ordinary MacBook Pro.

OK. Thanks for letting us know. I'm now 4837 on my iPad. The MacBooks are getting nowhere.

[teamsaint]

Waiting room full.

I do wonder why the process doesn't allow for the most popular concerts to be rationed some other way than by internet queue lottery, by , for instance, linking purchases together, requiring purchase for more than concert.
This already happens of course for the LNOTP, and is common elsewhere, EG in football.

[Dave2002]

Waiting room full.

I do wonder why the process doesn't allow for the most popular concerts to be rationed some other way than by internet queue lottery, by , for instance, linking purchases together, requiring purchase for more than concert.
This already happens of course for the LNOTP, and is common elsewhere, EG in football.

Bonkers. Now there is apparently some claim to "fairness" - which is absolute rubbish!

AFTER 9AM, SATURDAY 16 MAY?

The BBC Proms are on sale, but we are experiencing very high demand for ticket purchases.

Thank you for your patience. We recommend you visit us again in a short while.

We have an online waiting room in place, so that as many users as possible may buy tickets fairly in order of queuing, but even this is currently full.
Please note:

This page will not automatically refresh to allow you into the waiting room queue. Please return to www.royalalberthall.com later.

Once you are in the waiting room queue, your computer requires a continuous connection with our website to maintain your position. We therefore suggest that you use a desktop computer rather than a tablet or mobile device.

But

requiring purchase for more than concert.

That worked well at the Olympics, didn't it? Why should people who apply for more be prioritised over others who may only want one or two tickets. For the Olympics we didn't even get a sniff of a ticket, and we simply wanted to have even just one experience, while others apparently got multiple shots.

[teamsaint]

Bonkers. Now there is apparently some claim to "fairness" - which is absolute rubbish!



But


That worked well at the Olympics, didn't it? Why should people who apply for more be prioritised over others who may only want one or two tickets. For the Olympics we didn't even get a sniff of a ticket, and we simply wanted to have even just one experience, while others apparently got multiple shots.

Nothing is perfect, but linking is a way of making sure that certain prestige events dont get "cherry picked" by very occasional customers, or touts.
Nobody argues about it for the LNOTP..When things are in high demand there is more than one way of rationing, is all.internet queuing isnt a particularly good rationing system, IMO.

Linking with a ticket for a lower category game works pretty well at football.

[Richard J.]

It all worked quite normally for me this year, despite doing it all from Paris. I spent 11 minutes clicking a bookmark link to the RAH site every 2 seconds, got into the waiting room at no. 2947, waited for 37 minutes to get to the head of the queue, booked the 8 concerts in my plan in the requested seating areas. Job done.

[teamsaint]

And of course, if you did miss out on that much anticipated concert, you can always go to the agencies.
Plenty of tickets available in the stalls for most concerts.

http://www.viagogo.co.uk/Theatre-Tickets/Classical/The-BBC-Proms-Tickets/E-987144

The Nelsons/ Boston SO august 23 concert, for example.

Now that IS annoying.

[Cockney Sparrow]

I've just got into the queue! So, that was an hour and 5 mins of hitting refresh, clearing caches, switching between browsers. Only 6,633 people in front of me when I joined the queue!

Compare the huge marketing hype for the Proms, through every platform the BBC can find, with my experience as a customer, expected to pay handsomely (even, the final ironies, booking fees and commissions!) should I even find that acceptable tickets are available when I get there.

The arrogance of setting up the booking system that I should sit refreshing the screen, because they don't want to pay for resources to manage, in IT terms, a larger queue. It doesn't beggar belief, because I am sad to say it is all too common....from the BBC and its associates (RaHall) but also others.....

I'm expecting that I will be offered seats with very poor acoustics, i.e. those that are left hours on - in which case they can try offloading them to the unsuspecting (tourists, etc) as I won't be paying for them, and definitely not at the prices they want.

I suspect I'll be taking my chance (and it has been a chance in previous years) on the quality of the sound engineers for the radio broadcasts this year. Unless I am willing to revert to promming, should I really want to be there in person for one or two (Bychkov, Rattle) concerts in comparison to the 8 concerts I was proposing to attend.
CS
p.s. It took me 15 mins, off and on, to type this post)

[Cockney Sparrow]

Posted on the other thread

I've just got into the queue! So, that was an hour and 5 mins of hitting refresh, clearing caches, switching between browsers. Only 6,633 people in front of me when I joined the queue!

Compare the huge marketing hype for the Proms, through every platform the BBC can find, with my experience as a customer, expected to pay handsomely (even, the final ironies, booking fees and commissions!) should I even find that acceptable tickets are available when I get there.

The arrogance of setting up the booking system that I should sit refreshing the screen, because they don't want to pay for resources to manage, in IT terms, a larger queue. It doesn't beggar belief, because I am sad to say it is all too common....from the BBC and its associates (RaHall) but also others.....

I'm expecting that I will be offered seats with very poor acoustics, i.e. those that are left hours on - in which case they can try offloading them to the unsuspecting (tourists, etc) as I won't be paying for them, and definitely not at the prices they want.

I suspect I'll be taking my chance (and it has been a chance in previous years) on the quality of the sound engineers for the radio broadcasts this year. Unless I am willing to revert to promming, should I really want to be there in person for one or two (Bychkov, Rattle) concerts in comparison to the 8 concerts I was proposing to attend.
CS
p.s. It took me 15 mins, off and on, to type this post)

[Dave2002]

It all worked quite normally for me this year, despite doing it all from Paris. I spent 11 minutes clicking a bookmark link to the RAH site every 2 seconds, got into the waiting room at no. 2947, waited for 37 minutes to get to the head of the queue, booked the 8 concerts in my plan in the requested seating areas. Job done.

If I'd known I could hit the RAH site every 2 seconds (or even 1 second ...) I might have written a script to do that! Now would that have been fair? Just because I might have the skill to do that, or could find/pay someone else with such skills - that would surely not be reasonable.

Access to the site for tickets should not be by such arbitrary approaches as internet connectivity. Access to tickets themselves should also attempt to be fair. Why shouldn't one or two people "cherry pick" a relatively few tickets for just one or two concerts (per ts ...). What would be wrong would be trying to buy large quantities of such. Of course the Proms organisers can adopt another approach - I thought about going to the Vienna Phil Concert and experiencing Schmidt's 2nd Symphony, but after listening to some of that work I decided that it wasn't really worth it. All "they" have to do to discourage over booking is put a few things in each programme which would deter people from attending!

[Anastasius]

I got into the Waiting Room at over 6000 on my iPad, but I'm not holding my breath that it'll be robust enough to stay the course. I've now got two other machines on the go, and from time to time I try again.

I wonder if most of the successful people use something like eBay sniping software? I still think it's a shambles, and I did kind of anticipate this.

I did nothing special. Just started trying to log in from 9am onwards using my browser. Clearing cache -just in case - between attempts. It is the luck of the draw, I think. The access to the waiting room is not infinite. The CPU's in their servers and routers etc can only handle so much traffic and so if your attempt to login coincides with a spare 'slot' as it were then in you go.