To feel frustrated so much has to be booked in advance these days?

[Teentrauma]

I'm talking mainly attractions and days out. I've found that increasingly over the last few years and certainly since Covid many places require booking online in advance taking away spontanaety as they're often full up on the day. For example, tickets for a kids Father Christmas experience locally sold out within hours of tickets going on sale the other week - in August! We also booked to go up the Snowden railway - had to do in advance as wouldn't have got on otherwise. On the day, the weather was appalling and we wouldn't have gone if we didn't have tickets. We saw nothing and it was a total waste of money!

I get it's more efficient for the businesses and also takes away the need to queue. I'm probably a dinosaur but I hanker for the days when you could just decide to do things spur of the moment!

Agree 100%.

Spontaneity forces business to have surplus/excess capacity. They have to open on a day when it pours with rain and have no one turn up. This makes everything much more expensive & wasteful to run, vs being fully booked when you're opening.

You also can't manage and spread capacity - everyone just turns up all at once - the last thing you want is to be turning people away on the gate because you are full.

There are still plenty of options for spontaneity - trips to beaches, parks, woodlands and cafes rarely need booking.

It's not so much the schedule as the sheer amount if time it all takes. I know a lot of people on Mumsnet like to pretend life admin takes a few minutes, but actually each activity booking can take 15-20, then requires tickets to be on apps or emails etc..
It took me half an hour to get Science Museum tickets earlier this summer, then despite the booking system it was so crowded we couldn't enjoy any of it.

And for many places you lose your money if you can't make it on the day, which isn't affordable if you're not well off, so must put a lot of people off going to things.

if you only get to go somewhere like a zoo or theme park once or twice a year, you really don't want it to be pissing down with rain!

But how should these businesses manage variable weather?

1. have all their staff etc on zero hours contract and cancel their shifts every time it rains?
2. be fully open with no one there, at a huge cost that must be passed on via higher ticket prices

Totally agree, I hate it.
It has put me off going to the swimming pool as you need to book in advance and you also need to have a 'membership card' (which is free apart from my personal data which I have to give them). What happened to just turning up, paying cash and going in?
It put me off going to Westonbirt because we would have had to book (15 min time slot for entrance) and since you have to drive there you can't guarantee what time you'll arrive especially when you have kids and you needed to pay in advance (no refund if you decide to not go because the weather is bad).
It definitely puts me off going places.

Oh god I agree, so much.

I agree. I had rage last week having to book and pay for bloody Father Christmas at centre parcs but there were already tons of slots gone. It’s ridiculous. The pressure on families is ridiculous

I agree! I even have to book in advance to go swimming which I hate!

Totally agree with you OP, both about the tedious need to pre-plan and also the way everything has to be done online or on your phone.

Plus, we all know who in the household is the one who ends up having to do it all.

I agree to a certain extent - we have moved to a new area so still getting used to what is near us, we have found some fab spots by driving around and then realise we had to book in advance so couldn't go in . Husband is self employed so work can be busy and we don't know in advance if we can go. i hate that some restaurants wont take walk ins now, even if they do have space, give you a dirty look when say you haven't booked. Last February we were down in a seaside place walking the beach, not busy at all as weather wasnt great, a pub up by it , walked past and himself says go in and see would they have a table for later on around 5 - it was 2pm at tyime - and we come back fro a nice dinner, went in asked they said to me no we are fully booked sorry. Went out to my husband and said no they fully booked, he said really ? i am just looking at their FB page here and clicked on the link they have to book, they have loads of tables available around 5, we , for the crack, booked online (no money taken ) for 5, went back at 5 got our table no problem ( the girl i was talking to wasnt there) place was only half full. I wanted to say something but himself wouldn't let me ( did say it on trip advisor after). it was all very strange. Another bug bear of mine since Covid is places not doing what they used to do, for example there is a spa place beside my old house, no kids allowed, has a fab restaurant and bar for dinner and lunch, before Covid they allowed non residents to book dinner or lunch at the weekends, limited of course but was very nice for special occasions, food was devine. Now since Covid they stopped doing it for non residents. There is no where nice to go near us now for a specials occasion, Dunno why they stopped doing it

I was going to say the same! I think the booking system that was imposed by councils during Covid, and has been retained thereafter, is a way of lessening the amount of visitors to the tip and, so, the amount of waste they have th deal with. Consequently, the amount of fly-tipping has rocketed as a result because there are quite a lot of people who apparently cannot be arsed to book a tip run, then find all the slots gone at the point they want to visit, so decide instead that chucking their unwanted shit in a ditch alongside a field is a perfectly acceptable solution.... or that's what seems to be the norm around near where I live.

I don't mind pre-booking some things, but the days of just turning up at the cinema are long gone and that pisses me off. Even bloody parking has got in on the pre-booking act - I booked a space in a central London car park, arrived, and found there were no spaces left - and the terms of the booking didn't actually guarantee me a space anyway! I mean, what the fuck?!

Yes! The pool is the one that annoys me most. The family swim sessions used to be several hours long so we could arrive in the middle of one and have as long as we wanted in the water. Now it's a strict hour slot and the changing rooms are a nightmare because everyone's trying to arrive and leave at the same time. Of course it costs significantly more than it did pre-Covid, too.

I couldn't agree more with the majority here. The cynic in me feels it is so the companies can make more money from those who book and then don't show up.

I agree with hating constant QR codes/booking online/registering at specific time too. I want to put technology down and have fun with my kids yet pretty much everything we do requires me to keep using it for one thing or another.

There is a water park with slides around an hour from home and they switched to prebooking and 2 hour sessions during covid. It is still the same even though would cost a family of 4 best part of £80 to visit. For just 2 hours use when most of it is spend queuing!

Why does everything nowadays have to be about the needs of "business"? What about quality of life?

It's like the political obsession with "prosperity" when actually all most people want is to be able to do their job, earn their money, and have time and energy left over to spend some leisure time with the people they care about.

The Christmas ones annoy me. It’s the fact they’re available in August and are often sold out by the time I have the funds going spare to pay for it having spent up over the summer holidays! There’s no way companies need to sell tickets four months in advance, they know they’ll sell out even if they open up the slots in October so why bother?

Even our local picture framer requires booking in advance, since Covid. When I didn't realise and just strolled in, she nearly had apoplexy and was quite nasty. If she wasn't such a good framer I would go elsewhere.

I agree with whoever made the point about passwords. I don’t mind prebooking but I really resent the fact that every interaction I have with any company or organisation requires a new app, a new login and password that I have to remember and a load of pointless form filling. I know it’s useful for the company but it eats up so much time and mental energy.

I’ve found with our tip that even if you book in a slot, if you turn up at any time that day they will still let you in.

Yeah that part gets on my tits.

i hate that some restaurants wont take walk ins now, even if they do have space, give you a dirty look when say you haven't booked.

Yes - though it's usually when there's no owner or manager around and big groups pre-covid it would occasionally happen - it's often a lot of money walking out the door and frequently not coming back and often talking about it with others - may who then opt to avoid as much as pre-book.

I do get it I've worked massively understaffed waitressing shifts and despite being warned general public of full of arseholes who then complain - but it made it very hard to go out for us as a family post covid for a long time and noticeably several of the venues doing it did end up closing.

Think it was Kew Gardens that topped it for me am sure I got an email in January asking me to book for the following Christmas. I had hardly got over Christmas and am having to make a decision about the following one - absolutely refuse to do that. I don't mind booking holidays but having just got back from Europe where anything we did we just booked the night before was great!

I hate the slots even more. If I had to book for a date that would be fine, but having an arrival slot drives me mad. Especially as in practice if you're late and ring, they don't care and tell you just to show up whenever. So why have slots?!

It used to be nice to sometimes decide to nip to the local pool one afternoon. Now it's well we can do 1.45 or 2.30 etc

We have annual passes to our local wildlife park. Since covid even pass owners have to book in advance. They now sell a gold pass for a lot more that allows just turn up. It’s a huge site and it’s never an issue to book the morning you are going but their website is so annoying.

Im generally a planner but I’m feeling stressed because our favourite Christmas attraction is going on sale on Friday at 10am when I’m at work so will be having to see what Santa slots are left by Friday evening 🙄

There are still plenty of options for spontaneity - trips to beaches, parks, woodlands and cafes rarely need booking.
Agreed, that's probably why we tend to do things like that.
It's a bit of an own goal for the book-in-advance amenities but I suppose if they get enough customers who will jump through hoops then the companies will carry on doing it.

There must be more than enough of us type a personalities to make it a success or businesses would have abandoned advanced booking after Covid.

I love it and prefer it, nothing gives me more anxiety than worrying about whether a place we want to go will be packed or not. If there’s advanced entry, advanced seats, I’ll book it. Then I can just enjoy myself!