Avengers Endgame Tickets Are on Sale… And Everything is Broken

Avengers Endgame tickets went on sale this morning, and tons of websites and apps crashed in response to the fandom onslaught.

Shortly after the new trailer dropped, Avengers Endgame tickets went on sale online.  Unfortunately us fandom folk were a bit too enthusiastic and numerous apps and websites crashed as a result. The AMC website and app went down, as did Fandango and Atom.  Reports of independent theater websites crashing has been reported across the country as well.

Due to my timezone (hurray Hawaii!) I was almost 2 hours late to the party, but when I opened up my local theater chain’s website at 5:45 am almost everything was sold out for opening night.  Who the heck was up at 4:00 am getting tickets? Clearly people more die hard than I am, apparently.  Which is surprising. My island is small and I’m pretty die hard.  I didn’t get the best seats as I’m up close to the screen, but at least I’m in the theater for the first showing in my timezone.

Still, being able to get tickets at all seemed to be a blessing, as most people struggled to get anything online at all.  Some had to go down to the theater in person due to website and app malfunctions.

“I just got the 5 pm fan event showing tickets, but had to take my lunch break to go in person to get them,” one of my friends told me.  She was following the advice of the official AMC Twitter account, who recognized that the demand for Avengers Endgame tickets had broken their website and app fairly quickly.  They probably expected it and had the tweet ready to go.  “The AMC employee I bought the tickets from in person said that Thanos has broken the Internet, but she’d have no problem getting me the tickets there.”

For many the online system felt very much like efforts to secure badges and housing for San Diego Comic-Con, which is notoriously brutal and competitive.

“And it seems like Fandango has entered the realm of LineCon,” one user said on the Friends of Comic-Con forum, referring to SDCC’s habit of having lines for pretty much everything, including online sales.

“In a ‘queue-it line more than an hour,'” a friend of a friend complained on Facebook.  “I feel like it’s the SDCC badges or hotelpocalypse.”

This website crashing problems happened worldwide.  A friend in El Salvador sent me a screen shot of her local theater’s website error screen, too.  She managed to get tickets when the website came back online, but it was a struggle.  Friends in the UK and mainland Europe experienced issues with their local ticket retailers.  Still, success stories have been trickling in across all my social media timelines from friends around the world, so it was possible, but difficult.

It’s a bit too early for official numbers for sales at this time, but I suspect there will be some sort of broken record here.  The last time I saw this sort of frenzy for tickets was when Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened back in 2015.  If this doesn’t beat that record for presale tickets, I’m sure it’ll set some sort of record in the MCU franchise itself at the very least.  I’ll be keeping my eye on Box Office Mojo for the next couple days to see what records might get busted.  UPDATE: It did break a record.  It’s sold three times more tickets on Atom than Avengers Infinity War, according to Deadline.  We’ll update this as records continue to get shattered.  Update 2: Another record broken, according to EW.  This time it’s Fandago.

Avengers Endgame opens April 26th in the USA.  But good luck getting tickets for that day, folks.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

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