I'm coming to London from Scotland in December for a big theatre blowout trip and am looking for advice on the best websites etc. on which to book tickets.

I know the cheapest way to book tickets is to go direct to the theatre box office in person but I want to get everything booked up in advance.

Since I'm aiming for the big shows - Hairspray, Billy Elliot, Wicked and Spamalot and Avenue Q (which I know have more discounts available) - any advice on sites with the best deals etc. would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Check www.broadwaybox.com for discounts (make sure you go to the London page!).

For 'Avenue Q', I know you used to be able to get front row seats for excellently cheap prices by choosing price band D in the stalls on the Delfont Mackintosh site. (Okay, I just checked; I think it works better for midweek shows than weekend, but it looks like it's still there! Price-band C appears to put you right at the front for half the price of sitting immediately behind.)

Obviously avoid touts, box office is always a safe bet but not always the cheapest. If you're looking for a hotel bundled in there's a fair few websites that can save you a few quid. Google should pull most of them up for you. Hope that helps

Oh, and it's always worth checking out LastMinute.com. I've had some very nice deals from them, and nary a one has gone awry.

This is always worth a try. Just put your dates in and it will search a number of agents for best deals. http://www.comparetheatretickets.com/Default.aspx

That site looks as if it perhaps only compares prices of full-price tickets, not Special Offers?
(Not that I've checked it all.)

It also lists what seem to be incorrect Start times for at least 2 performances: both 15minutes LATER than the official start time!

(I booked tickets [elsewhere] for one of those performances myself last night,
& was told the official start time.)

No, it does come up with discounted prices too, I've used it for those. Oh dear re the start times though... although the correct time will no doubt be shown on the actual booking page, which is with the agent supplying the tix.

Hi

I always book my tickets in advance, that way l know exactly where l am sitting! l love to have an aisle seat just incase the show isn't very good and l can nip out without causing a scene!!

I book through www.seetickets.com and http://freetime.greenbee.com/cat_offers.asp

The second one is through John Lewis but the tickets actually come from see tickets, but they have different offers, at present you can get Hairspray top tickets for £39.50. Spamalot are also doing lots of deals..... top seats at just £30.

Hope this helps.
Best wishes
Caz

I sometimes use the 'Theatre Monkey' site. For some friends visiting London, I managed to book good stalls seats for Spamalot -row J for £21.75 a tkt--this was done 48 hrs prior to the show.

TKTS booth is always excellent value--but cant book in advance

Good luck

Alnoor

Seemingly not, re Avenue Q Friday tickets from elondon tickets (unless the starting time IS changing, & they know & others don't).

They quote both Friday performances as starting a quarter of an hour later than other listed Agencies.

I'd check out Seatchoice .. www.seatchoice.com ... it compares theatre tickets from a whole range of suppliers incluing full-price and offers/deals .. it will even do a real availability search (are there tickets NOW) across quite a few and give you best prices .. I've saved a lot of time and money this way ;-) Not just London either ... uses (I think) See, Encore, Ticketmaster, Whatsonstage, WestEndTheatreBookings, LondonTheatreDirect, Keith Prowse, TheatreTicketsDirect and others

or seatchoice which compares more and does live availability checks too ;-)

...which just happens to be your site, you might have been honest enough to mention that.

Seatchoice looks brilliant to me!

Where has it been all my life!

I've always spent (wasted!) HOURS (DAYS!)
scouring all the separate Agencies I approve of for their various Offers!

Thank you SO much for bringing it to our attention!

(I've just checked it for the various show Offers I was researching in depth last week for my forthcoming London trip -
it really does find brilliant Offer prices!)

(I see lastminute.com isn't listed - but I realise they aren't usually comparable:
as well as not saying in advance what seat numbers they provide,
they only rarely even say whether seats are in the Stalls [usually fine for my iffy knees],
or Circle [usually Not enough legroom].)

Loooking at what both comparetheatretickets.com & seatchoice.com are bringing up it looks like there are some good prices on offer but how does one know if the ticket agencies are genuine? I usually buy tickets from the box office or official ticket seller so I've only used Ticketmaster & See before for West End shows. Does anyone have any experience with agencies such as London Theatre Direct, London Tickets, West End Theatre Bookings or UK Theatre Web?

I've used London Theatre Direct many times and never had a problem; ditto Viewlondon.co.uk.

London Theatre Direct also has excellent seating charts for every show, which come in handy when booking tickets on other websites that have substandard (*cough cough*) charts.

STAR is the The Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers SeatChoice
has links to the STAR website and the STAR Code of Conduct.

However, even STAR Members are allowed to add on sometimes quite huge fees.
(I gather there is an upper limit, expressed as a percentage of the ticket's face value - though I can't remember what percentage.)

That's why I'm so impressed by SeatChoice:
it lists each supplier's exact fees.

Also for each search it shows exactly which Agencies are included in the results -
ie we know what all those included would charge,
so we only need to look independently at any other sites we might know.

(And No, I'm not in any way connected with the site: I'd never heard of it till today.)

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'London Theatre Direct' seem to be reputable - they're certainly STAR members.
I think I've booked with them myself (by phone) -
& if it was them I'm thinking of, I was particularly impressed with the very friendly and helpful response.

'UK Theatre Web' are also STAR members -
and I think (I'm not sure) might provide some or all of the WhatsOnStage Tickets &/or Ticket Offers?

They're connected with Encore, who service (if that's the right word) many of the ticket offer sites -
I'm (almost) sure I've booked with sites connected with Encore - probably many times!
(I certainly look at their various offers almost every time I'm booking!)

'West End Theatre Bookings' I've perhaps not used. (I was mixing them up with another company with a similar name.) On full-price tickets their fees look hefty - though on the plus side they're Founder Members of STAR.
They look to have good Offer prices, well presented - although like lastminute.com the (random) offers I've clicked say Best Available, ie don't specify Stalls or Circle. There's a 'Call Me Back' telephone option though - and (though not at this time of night) live help chat.

I don't think I've come across "London Tickets": maybe they're new? I see they have the STAR logo.
They too seem to add hefty fees on their full-price tickets.
They do have some offers pictured, though they don't seem to specify what dates the offers are for -
& the few random dates I tried didn't produce any offer prices.

NB The above are my thoughts & experiences, as requested: I accept no legal liability for any misconceptions etc!

Fair comment ... well, mostly fair. As my display name is my own real name I am hardly hiding myself away behind an alias so that is fairly up-front. I have no desire at all to undermine the Whatsonstage experience - WOS deals and offers are amongst the best - especially when you look at the perks and privileges of going on their outings - that's why we're the only comparison people to include them in our listings.

It is, though, curious, that the rest of the theatre-related press and theatre sections of national press, do not talk about the ticket price comparison sites (there's more than one as this discussion has already said) ... could it be that they do not want to undermine their own ticket-related income from the deals they have with agents? SeatChoice has been around for 20 months (name changed around 8 months ago from the rather dull "UK Ticket Finder").

As Biddy says, we do identify the "type" of each supplier (STAR member, primary, secondary) as sometimes you want the most secure ticket (STAR and Primary) and sometimes any ticket at any price! So long as you have the information to help you chose then you will know if you got a good deal or not - not everyone goes for the cheapest by any means.

I shall happily state my credentials in future postings, and thank you for not deleting me

Depends on what you are booking for, take for example my little flurry today, 1 ticket for Piaf at the Donmar tonight:

If I had booked for it on the theatre website it would have cost me £7.50 plus £2.50 booking fee, so £10; however I then rang up the Donmar direct and got the same ticket for £7.50 without any additional fees, not a huge saving but at least meant I can get the program (granted it cost me a telephone call).

Shop around, check out what the website says about fees for either telephone or web bookings.

Ok, these forums are so helpful. Why have I not found them sooner?

The only reason I did find them is because I was searching for info on Comparetheatretickets.com and Seatchoice.com.

Here's what I discovered from talking to Ctt.com and Seatchoice.com ( I didn't have to speak to Seatchoice.com personally as all their info is on the site).

Seatchoice - Claim to be the first around doing this sort of thing? Well, CTT.com have been doing it since November last year and you can check www.archive.org for that. So....not sure on this! They had no comment on this. If I were them, I certainly would put my foot in on that! Being first is surely something you should brag about!

When I spoke to one of the chaps at CTT.com, they claim to have around 90,000 tickets in their availability whereas Seatchoice claim to have the "most at 12,200 tickets" (that was this time two days ago)? I wanted to query this as I'm picky like that. Plus if one site claims they have more then it's worth investigating?

Seatchoice offer more information on their site than CTT.com.

CTT.com only compares STAR companies, all of which I have heard of and trust.

Seatchoice compares all agencies, even the ones which over price waaaaay too much.

Seatchoice search tool is hard to use and sometimes churns for ages. CTT.com is pretty straight forward, not as pretty, but it works better!


Conclusion, I bought my tickets through comparetheatretickets.com. In the end, I've heard of them before and I always see them here and there when searching for tickets. So my trust was won there.

If you want information only, then Seatchoice is probably better.

If you want cheap tickets from official STAR agencies, Comparetheatretickets.com is where you go.

I shall continue to use them, unless I buy straight from Box office

Hope that info helps.

I consider Seatchoice much better -
especially as it compares OFFERS (as well as full-price tickets).

And (as regards a comment in the above post):
Seatchoice has a facility for ONLY searching for specific categories of agency:
there's a tick-box to choose to see results from any of, or all of, or any combination of, the following:

STAR Members Primary Suppliers Secondary Suppliers

Even if all 3 of the above boxes are ticked, results from STAR Members display a clearly visible STAR.

It seems wise to choose to see results from at least STAR & Primary Suppliers -
there are reputable Primary Suppliers which are not STAR Members.

Ok well, that's pretty much a sales pitch or a defensive owner/associate/employee comeback, who knows I gave my opinions and facts on both sites, all was in personal opinion and from what I had learned. I will use seatchoice now and then for information but ticket buying is definately a win with comparetheatretickets.com. (personal opinion!!!!!)

Since Biddy is known around here, and you have two posts, both plugging the same website, I'd say it was pretty rich to accuse her of self-publicising.

So, does zike own comparetheatretickets.com?

Hi .. Robert here replying for SeatChoice (where I work) ... firstly, thank you for your comments, all feedback is good feedback and we have nothing against CTT ... we just think we do better

- SeatChoice was FIRST .. although its name wasn't SeatChoice at the time, it was launched in Feb 2007 (yes, nearly two years ago) so is well tested and tried out ... until earlier this year it was operated mostly as a service on UK Theatre Web, Web-BoxOffice and uktf.list-team.com ... Mar 12 2007 on web.archive.org

- CTT have 90,000 TICKETS, SeatChoice has tickets from up to 20 suppliers for 12,000 EVENTS! Big difference if you remember that we count "Les Miserables" as 1 EVENT and CTT count all the tickets they have for Les Miserables ...

- We do compare STAR, primary and secondary agents, we do flag each one according to type and try to help educate users .. but sometimes secondary is the ONLY market with any tickets left so why exclude them .. also, Ticketmaster own GetMeIn and Really Useful Group have done a deal with viagogo and ... well, let's just say it isn't necessarily clear cut

- SeatChoice list simple links to suppliers but you're right, our search tool (which is additional) does sometimes "churn" .. why? Well, unlike CTT we are doing LIVE availability and ACTUAL price comparison which means contacting each supplier live for exact availability .... we wont tell you who had tickets last night, but who has them NOW ... unlike some ticket sites we also automagically remove a show when its over as we are based on our theatre listings service

- You may not have heard of SeatChoice (though we have been in the press and on Radio 4's Front Row) but we're based on and developed by the UKTW crowd who have been providing extensive theatre info on-line since 1995 and have been actually building on-line box offices and ticket interfaces for most of that time .... it is this that allows our service to be UK-wide and cover so many genres ...

Hope that helps .. and we're happy to be sponsoring the "Best Director" category at the Whatsonstage Awards ....

- No. Silly.

I've hit a nerve here and shall just leave it at that. Had forgotten about this thread! I'll continue to use my preference in the matter.

Thanks for informing me Robert Although it looks to me like both sites do live checking. Hence the "checking for tickets". Your information all the same was nice to know and thanks.

I'll email the thread onto the chap I spoke to at Comparetheatretickets and see if I can persuade him to do come give us some info.

Have a good day all.