Website woes

I'm wanting to book a Christmas break to Orlando from Manchester and have been watching the prices for flights as they have been released the past few days.
Our ideal dates would be Saturday 17th December returning Saturday 31st but obviously as these are premium dates due to school holidays are dearest.
We noticed that going out on Thursday 15th not only gives a cheaper outgoing price but also drops the price of the return leg (we've been comparing it through the week in anticipation for Saturday 31st prices to be released)
Went on the website at 8am this morning and was happy to quote for outbound Thursday 15th at £322 per adult and the return on Saturday 31st at £152, but when we tried to proceed with the booking it came up with an error that it could not continue with the booking.
Have tried different web browsers, cleared history and cache, tried on different devices etc but no joy.
Rang the reservations line to be told flights aren't on our system yet and won't be there until Monday, don't know why the website isn't working.
Rang again later and spoke to another to ask if they knew what was going on to be told maybe the prices have been loaded but the actually seats haven't and those guys don't work weekends.
Also tried an online chat and the slightly more helpful agent said there must be a fault with the website, their system was showing the price for those dates at over £800 each. Did say we weren't happy as that's false advertising listing something that you can't actually purchase. They're going to report it to someone that the website is broken but that's all they can do.

Anyone else having problems with the website?
Frustrated now, was looking forward to booking our flights and when we do book them we will always be thinking of the price that never was

There's definitely something odd going on. Flight availability on 31 Dec is currently listed as:

VS 16 0 MCO
12/31/16 8:00 PM LGW
01/01/17 9:00 AM 744
Daily
65% / 43m J9 C0 D0 I0 Z0 W9 S0 H0 K0 Y9 B0 R0 L0 U0 M0 E0 Q0 X0 V0 N0 O0

So it looks like the reason you were given about the seats not being loaded may well be correct. The last date that looks sensible on Expert Flyer is 26 Dec and coincidentally that's the last date that the website works for too. If you've not already done so I might be tempted to sign-up for a free Expert Flyer account and set an alert for availability in S.

I realise you want economy not premium but VS will certainly release S bucket seats when the flight is properly configured but it's anyone's guess what combination of economy buckets they will release.

I'd give it a day or two. Although flights go on sale at T-336 they don't necessarily load the cheapest buckets immediately.

That, I suspect, is quite deliberate. Airlines know full well there are people who insist on booking the day flights go on sale and will pay over the odds to do so.

Do you think Virgin are aligning their system with Delta?, as the Delta website only goes up to the 26th as of today.
In which case my return flights won't be available to book until Thursday 4th February

The website is odd. The fares get loaded, but you have to wait 24 hours until they are bookable.

So today, you can actually only book the 30th Dec. You'll be able to book the 31st Dec from later this evening/early hours of tomorrow.

We wondered if it was something along those lines but we tried to book for a return on the 29th of December instead as well and hit the same problem.
As of today the Virgin website would only let you book for a return flight on the 26th of December but is showing flights up to the 31st.
Had a discussion with an agent via the Virgin Atlantic Facebook page who didn't really know what was going on (but wouldn't admit it) who said seats would be loaded on Monday but didn't explain why seat prices were being listed on their booking site when you couldn't actually book them.
Can't say I'm impressed as from looking on their Facebook page you can see this has been raised a couple of times this week with them but still it continues, if the seats aren't available to book at those prices or even at all they shouldn't be showing on the website.
We will just have to keep watching and see what happens when they finally show up properly, but it has definitely soured us towards Virgin.