Set Reserved Seats In Seating Chart
you have a seating chart with reserved seats that should not be available for general sale — VIP seats, accessibility seats, sponsor seats, staff/crew seats, “house” seats held for last-minute compensations. You want them visible on the chart (so the visual layout is accurate) but locked from purchase.
The trick: a hidden ticket type
There’s no dedicated “block this seat” button in the Seating Charts UI — but the same outcome is achievable cleanly using a ticket type with an expired sale window. Buyers see the seats on the chart but can’t click them, because the ticket type assigned to those seats is no longer on sale.
Step by step
- Open Tickera → Ticket Types and create a new ticket type. Call it whatever helps you remember: “Reserved”, “VIP Hold”, “Staff”, “House Seats”.
- In the ticket type’s Ticket Sale Date fields, set both the start and end date to some time in the past — e.g., yesterday or last week.
- Save.
- Open Tickera → Seating Charts and edit the chart.
- Select the seats you want to block.
- Assign the new “Reserved” ticket type to them.
- Save the chart.
The seats now appear on the chart with the visual style of that ticket type, but the front-end JavaScript checks the sale-window dates and disables click events on any seat whose assigned ticket type isn’t currently on sale. Buyers see them — perhaps grey, or marked unavailable — but can’t add them to cart.
Requirements
This pattern relies on the sale-window check working correctly across all three components:
- Tickera core — must be on the latest version.
- Seating Charts add-on — must be on the latest version. See Seating Charts add-on.
- Bridge for WooCommerce (if you’re running in Bridge mode) — must also be on the latest version.
If any of these are out of date, the sale-window check might not propagate and reserved seats could become clickable.
Releasing reserved seats later
If you want to release reserved seats for general sale (e.g., 24h before the event, you decide to put VIP seats on sale at a discount), just edit the “Reserved” ticket type and update the sale-window end date to the future. The seats become clickable instantly — no chart edits needed.
Related
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