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!

This is my bugbear, passwords. I simply cannot remember any more, same as 4 digit codes. No more please. I now have all the 4 digit codes texted to me and I save those texts. Apparently it's a bad idea to do the same with passwords. So I haven't, but then I'm stuck either reusing passwords or totally forgetting.

I'm also a bit of happy to pre book some things, happy to leave it to the day. A few local attractions are turn up and queue, great if the weather is fab. I think I'd be miffed if I had to pre book and on the day it was shit weather.

My tip through covid had pre book, a 15 minute slot, you could only choose which hour. Now it's only pre book on weekends. That makes sense to me.

I dont have any children left at home, but I dont remember having any spare money in September to book Christmas things.

YANBU - DH has a chronic health condition and can't predict how he will be on a particular day, don't mind booking for big things but otherwise its a PITA if you can't go at the last minute and lose money.

The other thing that bugs me is the price.
It used to be that the price was the price. End of. Now, as well as spending half an hour trying to do the booking on the net, you also have to do half an hour of research beforehand to see if there is a discount code / special members' rate / 'preferred partner' tie-in / etc / etc.

I consider myself one of those people who like to plan and book things, and I’m happy to book one big activity which gets really busy. But even I agree it’s a pain having to book everything on holidays so you end up with timetables and no room for just wandering round and finding things by chance. Last time I didn’t book a one hour canoe hire, then when I tried on the week of the holiday it was booked out for the rest of the month.

In Europe this summer (over 6 countries for 6 weeks) I only booked two things in advance. One was the Sagrada Familia and they still had walk up tickets, just a longer queue. Everything else I just turned up, which was good as I had quite a few bus / tram delays and I would have missed a slot. It’s only just occurred to me that it was very different to recent UK holidays.

I hate it too, I am not a planner and, as many pps have already mentioned, it doesn’t even mean you don’t have to book or that the place will not be overcrowded.

Last month we went to a “naice” hotel with 3 restaurants. For the evening meal, you had to book at least one day in advance, which meant that we never had dinner at the hotel as I don’t want to worry about whether we will be too tired/too late coming back from days out to be there at a specific time.

The most annoying thing is that when you went past the restaurants, there was hardly anyone there, so they were just blocking all bookings the day before regardless of how many reservations they had. Not only did they lose our custom on the different days, I will also not go back to that hotel (or others in their chain if they operate like this) for this precise reason.

This has reminded me of another annoyance - places making you choose your breakfast the night before. How am I supposed to know what mood I'm going to wake up in?

Pre booking you'd have waited for hours at my local tip particularly on a bank holiday weekend. I love the appointments but I can usually get a same day slot and I don't have to provide evidence of address. The guys who work there are lovely and always help me if I have lots of stuff, one of the few advantages of being 70 is people are more likely to help.

I'm hoping they keep the booking system.

This is my bugbear, passwords. I simply cannot remember any more, same as 4 digit codes. No more please. I now have all the 4 digit codes texted to me and I save those texts. Apparently it's a bad idea to do the same with passwords. So I haven't, but then I'm stuck either reusing passwords or totally forgetting.

We went away for a weekend (admittedly it was 2021 and covid protocols were still in place) and after several places were closed due to lack of staff or otherwise booked up we decided to hire a tennis court for an hour. I had to join the local council leisure centre, create a login and password, a 4 digit pin number and then wait for them to email a code to unlock the padlock on the gate! It was such a faff. And now I get regular emails from the leisure centre advising me of what's going on despite never having been there, and not likely to either! (I know I should unsubscribe!!)

Completely agree. Blair Drummond safari park is one local to us that does this. In the summer it can get booked up a few days in advance so no spontaneity and you have to take a punt on what the weather will be like if booking a week or so ahead. Invariably that never works out well for us yet we have to trundle around the place in the p*ssing rain because we've paid in full for non transferable tickets. Its all pretty much outdoors (except the bit where you drive round in your car obviously) so not really a great rainy day destination at all. I can 100% see why attractions are continuing to do this post covid. Clearly onto a winner with rainy day ticket sales!!

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

Presumably because they were having to turn away guests due to outside bookings and guests are their priority? Would you be happy if staying somewhere and you got turned away from eating there because of outside bookings?

And as for getting turned away when there's empty tables, well one reason is those tables are booked in the next hour or so for someone else, another is a free table isn't the only consideration. Staffing is.
The seaside place I work in is teeming with people, but, nearly every place is advertising for staff, and especially chefs. We sometimes have to limit numbers because the kitchen or FOH doesn't have enough staff to serve a full restaurant - and the quickest way to push someone out of the job is to completely overwork them into exhaustion.
Where I work is a good employer, lots of staff benefits and above average pay, and, crucially, they're not willing to push their staff to breaking point just to fill tables and put money in the till, but we're just not getting applications through, do service is reduced instead.

I see quite a lot of practices that ostensibly look like they're bad for business, but when you think about it probably stem from lack of staff.

I agree. I want to go to the gym and swim at the leisure centre when it inconvenient for me. If it is full when I show up, I'm happy to wait or pop pack later (has yet to happen). But booking is such a turnoff

Took the grandchildren to London for a day during the summer holidays. We planned to go to the Natural History museum to see the dinosaurs. We took the older one 4 years ago (pre-covid).

Don't know what made me check the website the night before but for some reason I did and discovered that you now have to BOOK to go. It's still free but you have to book online before you go. Unfortunately I couldn't book for the next day - not sure if it was at capacity or whether I was just too late but it wouldn't let me - so we had to rearrange our plans last minute. SO annoying - we have never booked before and I'm guessing loads of people who had booked probably didn't turn up but we weren't going to risk going halfway across London with a 5 year old and an 8 year old only to be turned away 🙄

I think there is a balance to be found. So we are going on holiday next week. I want to see a few things, I have booked tickets and will be able to get in. Apparently in the past you might queue for hours and still not get in, that doesn't sound like fun.

The rest we will 'wing' and see/ do what we do. But I have a vague idea of places to go. I have been to fantastic places when I was younger and missed so much due to having done zero planning

It's intersting. We stayed in a static van on holiday this summer, and found that there was a basic level of wifi available within the vans. In previous years, there would only have been wifi in the restaurant / bar. I wondered whether this was linked to so much stuff needing to be booked online. If your rival holiday cottages have wifi included and your caravans don't, you lose out.

It does mean you can't do spontaneous trips, where you drive past a place and it looks interesting, if you haven't pre-booked.

QR codes piss me off. My phone is ancient and so doesn't register QR codes and apps annoy me as my phone has minimal memory and is so old it often cannot work with these apps.

We couldn't even eat in Pizza Hut without a QR code, same with TGI Fridays.

I don't mind booking big ticket events they are indoors, but more frustrating for outdoor stuff. I booked a Christmas light trail in July for 23rd December. For all I know it will be torrential rain on the day, but it cost a fortune so will have to go.

I have very disorganised parents so am very organised and also like to establish annual patterns/traditions of seasonal events/ behaviours etc.. and even I find all the booking ahead oppressive. I think there is something in the underprovision in the U.K. - compared to e.g. Europe where you could rock up to a beautiful lido or swimming lake in Sweden or France and stay for the day vs even pre covid London fields lido advance booking and limited time slot.
Our big, no schedule win was the Commonwealth Games. The app was so truly dreadful that no one could manage to book tickets. So once we finally had one set of tickets I would just book the next day’s at the venue. We saw all sorts of marvellous events and generally had knock out seats too. It made me feel like we were on holiday outside the U.K.!

And those that insist you have banking style security for something really simple with no financial element. And make you prove you aren't a robot. I think my record was about ten goes on spotting the buses/bikes/traffic lights as the images weren't coming up properly on my phone. I'm a middle aged woman who can't see the edge of a bike frame in a tiny box on my phone, not a robot! I only persisted as it was Delay Repay and I started to think it was done on purpose.

A lot of people seem to want things to be constantly available, for them to choose whether or not to avail themselves of.

There is a cost to that!! You're all expecting places to open, and magically take the hit for days when few people turn up.

Booking manages capacity and reduces waste, which cuts cost. You can have that spontaneity you want but are you willing to double ticket prices to get it? Businesses are doing it because cost of living pressures are reducing their ability to raise prices to cover costs.

With swimming pools... its simply that there are more people wanting to use them than there is physical capacity in them currently.

When we lived in Germany, a reasonable size town, there were four big outdoor pools in the summer. One was even free (aimed at children, it was knee deep!). Outdoor swimming was cheap and plentiful. Of course you didn't need to worry about booking. Thats before you even took into account the indoor swimming.

My current UK "city" has one big fun pool and three smaller leisure pools. If there was no booking, you would have to queue for hours.

Nonsense, Lots of things used to be cheaper in the old days and you could get in.
Nowadays they have got themselves in a vicious circle of: expensive ticket => they have to make the event good to justify the price => it costs more to put on => even more expensive ticket.

I agree @Hangingoctopus. We were always the family who were late/didn’t get in because stuff was booked up/didn’t have enough cash on us/couldn’t find a parking spot because it was late etc and I hated it! Utter chaos. (Not in a negligent way- middle class plenty of money/food/holidays etc but that feeling of being last to be collected/not having permission forms signed/forgotten dinner money etc is rubbish).

I really appreciate being able to book stuff now (even parking if I can!) so when I tell the kids we will do xyz they know it will happen and no one ends up stressed or disappointed.

@Maverickess they never turned away staying guest - there was always room for extra people. What they would do is they would take your name when booking and let you know nearer the time or they have a set amount of table extra for non residents . They were able to do it before Covid for years no issues, they haven't got any bigger, same amount of guests ect space so why not keep it the same
K i get the point they could be booked if there is empty tables however my example in my original post showed that staff said they were fully booked but when looked online they weren't and in the the near three hours we were there none of the other tables filled up

I completely agree
It takes the fun and spontaneity out of everything
I have joked that the only eatery which is guaranteed is McDonalds

Fully agree. My other pet peeve is having such a limited amount of recreation spots and such a huge population, everywhere is always rammed, especially if half decent.

You go to places on the continent (outside of major tourist areas at least) and it's always chilled pace, social and not too busy. Really lovely quality of lifestyle.

First world problems though. But advance planning, and rammed recreational spots is stressful.