You may have noticed that on several reviews on this site I have mentioned the lovely people at SeatPlan. I thought that I would take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about them.
Seat Plan hope to put together the most comprehensive London Theatre seating guide there is written by theatre-goers for theatre-goers. Perfect for when you are booking theatre seats and you want to get an honest opinion.
Once you have signed up theatre-goers are encouraged (by way of rewards) to upload your seat reviews which includes a star rating for view, legroom and comfort and there is room for comments as well. Rewards are plentiful, not only do you get theatre tokens for entering reviews but also there are opportunities for free tickets too. I have been the lucky recipient a couple of times. Yay!
Extra points can be gained for uploading a picture of your ticket (to prove you are not just making up your reviews to gain tokens) and photos of the stage from your seat. Many a galant attempt has been made by yours truly to take photos before being told off by an usher, probably because I am taking to long deciding whether to zoom in or out to give a good representation of the seat, it is never the same through a camera lens is it?
Unfortunately you do need an account for viewing the reviews as well (not sure why) but apart from signing in each time which you can do quickly through Facebook, it’s no big deal.
Sign up and take a look at the site – you’ll find it quite informative and free West End theatre tickets? It is a no-brainer surely.
Of course the downside is reading seat reviews written by different individuals is a like reading show reviews from different critics or bloggers, they are all subjective. What is comfortable for a burly guy over 6 foot is very different when I try to describe my comfort levels being a 5ft 3, and no matter how good the view is when the theatre is empty, if that 6 footer sits in front of me my whole viewing experience is ruined. Nothing to do with the seat, just bad luck.
And don’t get me started on theatre-etiquette and about the sort of person I hate to sit next too, that is another whole post….
However…. I do like Seat Plan, it is a fabulous way to keep in touch with your own theatre-going, I love seeing which theatres I have visited and I like having photographic record of my tickets and where I sat, it is quite unique, since I joined Seat Plan it has been great seeing seeing my account build.
So that’s Seat-Plan, have you used it? I would love to know what YOU think.