Get in line, you.

We hate it when things go awry at our favorite film festivals, but it’s especially tough when the festival in question inadvertently creates a situation vastly more complicated while attempting to simplify something that was pretty simple to begin with.

So it went with Fantastic Fest‘s “beta” version of its new online ticketing system, which is now officially deceased. Despite the best of intentions all around (and we appreciate it, we really do), it’s never a good sign when a new ticketing system requires four pages of single-spaced text to explain how to use it, and it’s a downright crimson pirate flag when said explanatory text-wall includes a subsection devoted to “Benefits of the New Reservations System.” Few improvements require an explanation as to why they’re better than the old way. They just are.

System overload was the ticketing system’s chief problem, although it immediately became apparent to regular and media badge holders that owners of VIP laminates would be scarfing up all of the tickets for the coveted Ain’t It Cool News secret screenings, among other things.

By 2 pm yesterday, the system had allegedly crashed beneath the weight of all those early-morning logons, and by 5 pm Alamo CEO and Fantastic Fest co-founder Tim League had issued the following formal apology via Fons PR:

Hey guys,
 

I wanted to personally apologize for the lines and confusion at ticketing this morning.  We attempted to launch the new online ticketing system this year and unfortunately it was not able to handle the load.  We knew that this was a possibility, as we were behind schedule on the development. Nonetheless, I am sorry to have inconvenienced some of you this morning.  The technical team discussed our options this afternoon and we decided that instead of continuing the trial, we are going to pull the plug on online redemption for regular badge holders.  We’ll keep the service in play for VIP badgeholders as we did not have the same level of issues when there were fewer users spread throughout the day.

What this means for regular badgeholders is that we will be doing ticket pick-up like last year, in person at the beginning of the day starting each day two hours before the first Fantastic Fest movie..  We are going to attempt to streamline the process, however.  When you arrive on site, please either print out the ticket request form, or pick one up on site and have it filled out by the time you get to the ticket counter with your first, second and third choice in any given round of movies.  The line will be fairly long, just like last year, but we will do our best to move through it very quickly.  I can assure you that it will be faster and cleaner than this morning.
 

Thanks everyone for bearing with us today.  We’ll do everything we can to make the next 7 days smooth and easy.
 

Cheers,
 

Tim League

This article appears in September 24 • 2010.

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