I was surprised that I’ve already had to buy tickets for performances and events in London for our trip in November and December. I know that many popular sights in Europe (Borghese Gallery, Vatican Museums, Last Supper, Alhambra, etc.) now require booking your entry ticket months in advance, before tour companies and ticket scalpers snatch them up, but didn’t realize that that’s also true for lots of things in London around Christmastime. We’re not going to be there for Christmas itself, but in the Yuletide season, things are already getting sold out … 5 and 6 months before the event! Maybe it’s been that way for a long time, or maybe this is a relatively recent phenomenon.
I looked at a carols performance at the Albert Hall (really expensive!), and finding two seats together was almost impossible, as most every seat was already sold, and there were just individual seats scattered here and there, with more available way up in the highest seats. The first event for which I was able to get two tickets, back last month, is for Handel’s Messiah, at St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. High demand, it turns out, for a not-huge venue.
The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker tickets only just went on sale to the public a few days ago - at 2:00 AM, Mountain Daylight Time. My husband and I spent a good amount of time determining the exact seats we wanted, based on location but also price, and then picked our second and third choices, in case we couldn’t get our preferred seats. Then I set my alarm, and got logged in, and was immediately put in the Online Queue for a hour-and-a-half! Ninety minutes later, I got what were our fourth-best picks - affordable enough, and not too bad a sightline. Others peole have faster computers, or faster fingers at 2:00 in the morning. Actually, I suspect that there were people in England at 9:00 AM BST, at work, with fast computers and having had their morning coffee, and they scored the premier seats. But we’re going to be attending!!!
We’ve also got tickets for two London Symphony Orchestra performances - one at St. Luke’s, their more affordable venue, and one at the Barbican. Then there’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, where performances that aren’t standing room only are selling briskly. Benches with no backs … we’ll see how that goes. Our benches have a wall behind them, so maybe that’ll work well enough. But this is another place where getting adjoining seats is already getting harder, months from now! And a play in December about the time of the summer solstice? That, alone, should be interesting. And then, a matinee play at the National Theatre - get your tickets while you can!
There’s Christmas at Kew Gardens, which I haven’t decided whether to attend, but booking soon might be needed. And I’d like to attend a Panto, but I’m not sure any have been announced this early in the year, or when tickets will get snapped up. Did I mention that London events near Christmas require a sizable investment? I wonder how many attendees are tourists, and if Brits (who aren’t already members of the ballet, symphony, etc.) can get a seat or two for performances?
That reminds me - Wigmore Hall put out their catalog of fall performances more than a month ago, so it’s not too early to look at them, too.