To not want to have to pay RYANAIR yet another £40+ to avoid my family being separated?

[ElizaPickford]

Oh how I have hated dealing with this airline recently. They have conned me out of £30 which it took me 2 weeks and a lot of aggro to get back, they ripped me off with some stupid scratch card game at the time of booking and now if I don't pay a minimum of £40 my whole family could end up scattered across the plane. I hugely resent having to pay yet another trumped up fee, but my children have never flown before and are very young and obviously I don't want them to end up on their own or sat with strangers. (The kids will be fine but god help the rest of the plane. )

What would you do, anyone been in this situation?

My friend flew from the UK to Florida, with children 4, 6, & 8 and got 4 separate seats not near each other at all. Obviously not Ryanair! One person moved so she could sit next to the 4 yr old but the other two were not near her or each other. She wasn't late, had checked in online and thought their seats were together. She actually stood up crying, asking if anyone would please swap seats and only one person on the entire plane did.
A very long flight to not be close to your children.

Tiggy that is a great idea, but then people would complain that they didn't want to pay the extra.

I'm aware that we may look like we are being awkward as none of us would want to move, but DH and I both have spinal issues and DS has autism, although being an invisible disability you wouldn't know it.

I'm curious, those who don't want to pay but want to sit together - what do you do on a bus / train without reserved seating?

My family of 4 flew Ryanair yesterday.

Check in is available 7 days in advance. I checked in 5 days in advance, and we got good seats together. Automatically allocated, no extra charge.
I love the 7 days advance booking.

Just checkin as early as you can and you'll be fine. But I would not leave it until last minute if you want seats together.

Thomson charged similar rate to guarantee a seat next to my 3yo with SN, what annoyed me most was the lack of transparency: no info anywhere on the website on the charges, not mentioned on phone at time of booking, nor in the small print, only when I rang up to check.

I never pay to reserve seats - seethe in resentment at the thought of paying an extra £60(£30 each way to reserve seats)*

But you are not paying an extra £60.
You have started with a basic price and then pay for what you need. If I was to go with young children my need would be to sit with them so that gets factored into the total cost, because I really don't care if I sit with my kids or not ( I prefer not to) I don't have to add that bit on, same with insurance, meals hold luggage etc.

The initial fare is the base line. There's nothing to seethe in resentment !

Just to clarify to the other posters who commented on my previous post, I had paid the extra because my dc get travel sick and because they were so young and I was on my own with them. We also got to the airport very early and were quite near the front of the queue but were shoved aside by others passengers - no priority boarding for anyone regardless of age, disability etc. Customer service was shocking.