Volksoper booking

Hi,

We are spending a week in Vienna in June and I have (I hope) booked tickets for Lehar%26#39;s %26quot;Das Land Des Laechens%26quot; on the 9th June.

I was rather surprised that the culturall.com website let me book this far in advance, but a receipt (in German) has arrived.

However, while my German is not very strong, it seems to say that the tickets are %26quot;stand-by%26quot; (%26quot;Standby- Buchung%26quot;).

In the UK, %26quot;stand-by%26quot; tickets are those for people who have not booked, and who queue at the box office on the day of the performance, in the hope of getting an unsold seat. That is not what I have paid nearly 200 euros for!

I have emailed the Volksoper in both English and in my broken German, but have had no reply after nearly a week.

Can any of the experts here tell me if %26quot;Standby- Buchung%26quot; simply means normal tickets that won%26#39;t be released until the booking period opens at the start of May, or does it mean that %26quot;stand-by%26quot; in the English sense?

Thanks for any help, and thank you for all the expert replies on this forum - I%26#39;ve studied them carefully, and they%26#39;ve helped me to plan what I think will be a wonderful week in Vienna.

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The website states that tickets, which are purchased before the offical ticket release, are treated as stand-by bookings. All tickets of an entire month are relased on the 1st of the preceding month. You will be placed on a waiting list until the release is commenced. I suppose that the tickets will then be issued creating a firm booking.

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Mikey gives you a good advice on how the process works. You have placed a %26quot;pre-order%26quot; for tickets (though they call them %26quot;Standby tickets%26quot; both before seats go on sale and also when people go on a waitlist for sold-out shows after tix are on sale)

When the tickets are released for sale, seats will be reserved for you in your chosen category. You should get an email at the end of April (just before June tix go on sale on 1 May) confirming that your pre-ordered tickets have been allocated and telling you which seats you have. Your credit card should be charged at that point - not before the actual tickets are issued.

The crucial number you need is the Abholcode - this is your booking reference which is what you need to collect the tickets at the evening box office. It%26#39;s usually a combination of 5 or 6 letters and numbers. You can check your pre-order online at this Culturall.com webpage (Culturall is the central booking site for Viennese state theaters including the Volksoper)

http://www.culturall.com/docs/193?catid=196

If you type in the Benutzername (username) and password you chose when you registered on the Volksoper site, and the Abholcode for your order, it will show you details of your pre-order, and show whether seats have been allocated yet. But as I said, this is likely to happen around the end of April.

You shouldn%26#39;t have any problems getting seats for Land des Laechelns - it%26#39;s generally easier to get seats for the Volksoper anyway, and LDL was a new production last season so it%26#39;s not a premiere or anything like that.

Hope that helps!

rol

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Just one small correction to that - I notice on the Culturall site, for pre-orders they refer to the Transaktioncode rather than the Abholcode, to call up the record of your order on the site. I think they are the same thing - just a difference of terminology since the Abholcode (collection code) is what you are given when you make a confirmed order, to collect your tix with.

That should have confused you even more -! The system is quite baffling at first but it actually works pretty efficiently.

r

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Many thanks. That all makes perfect sense now. I tried entering the transaction code as you suggested, and got confirmation of my booking, with the expected message that seats have not yet been allocated (Noch keine Plätze zugeteilt!).

The booking screen confirms that the transaction code and the %26quot;abholcode%26quot; are the same thing.

It was the use of %26quot;Standby-Buchung%26quot; that had me worried, so thanks for confirming that the term can also mean advance booking.

Tickets for the Vienna Boys Choir were so easy to book in comparison, but I shall greatly look forward to our trip to the Volksoper.

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