Wednesday, July 13, 2016

New Ticketing System

If you are an existing TIFF Member, you should've received an e-mail instructing you on how to create a new online Membership account for the new ticketing system. The interesting thing is what is running the new ticketing site:

If you can't make it out in the image, the new site is powered by Ticketmaster. It will be interesting to see what the performance of the new system is under load when individual tickets go on sale. In past years, the old system was pretty much guaranteed to go down. In more recent years they introduced a waiting room to which you were shunted if the site was overloaded. The problem with the waiting room was that it wasn't very good at letting people back in following the order they first arrived at the site. assuming it let you back in at all, which generated a lot of frustration. I'm cautiously optimistic about the new system, so we'll see how it goes this year.

13 comments:

As an existing TIFF account holder, I got my email yesterday to set it up so that on Friday, I'll have an account already to use.

Looking forward to not visiting the box office anymore :)

Ticket system put me in a queue briefly (nice), but now even though main tiff site says on sale, it is it not selectiable.

Oh, it died... and now they have created two different sites (member presale / visa presale). That was fast.

I forgot to update - it worked in the end, but was a little slow. Some issues I think they will work out.

I'm not a fan of the new site. I'm a bit surprised they needed a queue; I would've though Ticketmaster would've been big enough they wouldn't need to do that. Not the easiest or most intuitive site to navigate through either; some of the problem seemed to be trying to fit the concept of packages and programme books into how the Ticketmaster system works - maybe it is better for individual screenings on a specific day.

I also had real problems trying to get it to accept my credit card. I tried several times, and it turns out Ticketmaster is *very* specific in the format it wanted my street address. I had to go "Apt# - Street# Street Name" (e.g. 123 - 16 Any Street). Any other format, even if it works on other e-commerce sites, ended up being rejected. I've bought from Ticketmaster in the past, and I don't remember the site being that finicky.

Nice that some people have gotten the website to work. Trying since 10 a.m. and it will not accept my VISA card. Been on the phone for over an 2 hours combined. Still listening to the bad music loop.
My friend convinced me to go again and i am so aggrivated.

I had issues getting the site to accept my credit card. I got it working after doing the following:

- for the address, I did Apt# - Street# StreetName; e.g. 123 - 16 Any St.. Other formats
do not work (E.g. 16 Any St, Suite 123 gets rejected, even if that's what the credit card
company and any other website normally accepts).
- I think you leave out the city and province/state from the address line as well

Help...I am on the new ticket site choosing films for flex pack voucher. Once you have made all your selections there is nothing in your cart and you are back to square 1. Can anyone help? Wait time on the box office liNE is 2 hours!

Help...I am on the new ticket site choosing films for flex pack voucher. Once you have made all your selections there is nothing in your cart and you are back to square 1. Can anyone help? Wait time on the box office liNE is 2 hours!

Check the comments under the "Schedule Available Today" post for tips on how to use the ticketing system. You have to "Save" each individual film selection, then click "Find Tickets" to actually put tickets into your cart, and then you can check out, provided you don't run into any of the issues that many people have been reporting. Otherwise, your best best is to stay on the phone or go to the festival box office at Metro Centre in person.

Do "SAVE" after every movie selection.
Do "FIND" after done ALL movie selection(s).
Do not look at "CART" -- you will LOSE all your movie selections (as I did), and will need to repeat your movie selection process.

The initial load of selections -- is also NOT intuitive.

@Richard - I wasn't sure the best place to post, but FYI I've completed the ticket transfer process and it was pretty painless. A friend purchased tickets, I received an email saying she wanted to transfer tickets to me, then I logged into my TIFF account (you will need to create an account if you don't already have one), I accepted the transfer in my account and was able to print the pdfs. I did notice when printing the pdfs there was a note that a new barcode could be generated if the tickets had been previously printed. I received an email from TIFF once I accepted the transfer and another email once I printed the tickets.

So, basically it's the same process as a regular Ticketmaster ticket transfer and is definitely the safest bet if trading/purchasing a ticket from someone else.

Does anyone know how to access the tickets on a mobile device? I selected that option when I bought my tickets but the only option seems to print at home.
I've seen it posted that there would be mobile ticket options but no news on how to access and nothing in the TIFF app
Thanks

My experiences at the Toronto International Film Festival. Note this blog is not affiliated with the Toronto International Film Festival Group or the festival itself.
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