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East Coast Advance ticket availabilty?

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Bungle73

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Why is the EC website saying that tickets up until the 20th of July are available, except for between the 7th and 17th of July? What's special about those dates?
 
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Bungle73

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Yeah, that's probably it. I was asking on behalf of someone on Trip Advisor.
 

yorkie

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I'm not sure what's going on. Tickets were previously on sale up to 6th July, as released last Thursday.

I was expecting no more tickets to be released until tomorrow, when you'd expect them to release up to 13th July. That may yet happen, but surprisingly yesterday they released tickets for 18-20 July, with much, much more expensive prices than usual, as I posted yesterday...
EC have released tickets for 18/19/20 July 9 days early, however I could see absolutely no cheap tickets during that period for York-London at all for those 3 days so I am not sure what's going on there.

Is there anything special about those 3 days? The Olympics don't start until the 25th and it's not yet the school holidays.
... my concern is that these are a week before the Olympics so perhaps East Coast think that people will be travelling to London a week early, and have decided to both release tickets early for the Olympics and also bump up the prices massively. Hopefully not, perhaps it's a mistake.
 

philjo

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Presumably they will also be taking into account the number of tickets already booked on each service for Olympic ticket holders for the Olympic period.
Are there any other major events going on that week?
There is the Open Golf but that is at Lytham this year so would affect Virgin & TPE rather than East Coast booking demand.
 

philjo

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I see that the special advance booking for holders of Olympic Games tickets is for travel from 18th July through to 14th September.

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/london2012/index.html

So that will probably explain why the prices on July 18th are more expensive, as Olympic ticket holders will have been able to book these services since last year. I suspect that the quota of the lowest price for the normal advance tickets will be reduced accordingly depending on how many Olympic bookings they have already.
 

Oscar

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When I looked this morning there were no Advances available for 18th-20th July, just walk-up tickets. However, some of the Advances now seem to have appeared (although there is no evidence of the lowest couple of tiers as far as I can see - these have presumably not been released). Having checked York - London, I can see Advances for all services on Wednesday 18th and for southbound services on Thursday 19th but not for northbound services on Thursday 19th and Friday 20th. Presumably these will be entered in due course.
 
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trainophile

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This has now changed to "with the exception of 14th to 17th July inclusive". Anyone know any more about the reason, and more importantly when or whether these dates will be released?
 

laphroaig

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I was just looking for a York to London ticket on Sunday the 15th July and was also suspecting there may be engineering work. There was one advance fare (£19) on a Grand Central service which suited my times so I booked it, sub two hours non stop so no diversion planned, so either they know something about the engineering schedule that EC don't, or my journey is going to get altered later!
 

yorkie

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Interestingly Advance fares for Friday 20 July, which have been available for over a week, came down in price today.

However there appears to be a premium for York - London compared with Doncaster - London, even for trains that start at York on that evening. Doncaster - London is less than half the price of York - London (nearly all trains are £21 York - London / £10 Doncaster - London!).
 
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