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Topic: Online Ticket sales

Mike Williams
Master Film Handler

Posts: 255
From: Knoxville, TN
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 12-31-2002 07:51 AM

A few years ago (and maybe at some theaters that do not have a box office system that will tie in) Moviefone used to add a terminal to the theater's box office that they would dial into periodically. It would have a number that the box office staff could look at that said "Sell down to". It usually would stay at 50 until 10-15 minutes before the show time. When the patron arrived, their credit card was swiped at this terminal and a message would pop up with the amount of tickets, showtime, type and feature. The box office person would issue those tickets and the theater would recieve a credit from moviefone later on.
If the theater is on a network that they have access to and the theater is running software that supports it (i.e. Radiant or MARS), transactions are more real time and schedule/house changes/ lock outs get updated quickly. I know the schedules get pulled on a regular interval with both services (I guess so the website doesn't have to poll each theater each time somebody clicks on a webpage).
Even if a schedule change or a lockout occurs before Fandango/Moviefone poll the schedule again, it will only allow a ticket sale if there are tickets available for that show because at that point, it connects to the site and verifies the show still exists and has tickets left before you even see the page that lets you select any tickets.
There is also a confirmation page that comes up after the order has been sent to the site.
I guess what you are asking Dave is, "what if the show sells out in the few minutes I am selecting the quantity of tickets I want?" You most likely will get a "Sold Out" or "Tickets Unavailable" error page instead of a confirmation page.
I hope I answered your question.

Mike

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