If you planned on making a quickie online purchase for your advance tickets to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story you might have been a bit disappointed when pre-sales launched.
Advance sales for Rogue One began at 12:01AM ET Monday/9:01PM PST last night. The movie hits theaters on Dec. 16 (technically previews start on Dec. 15) and tracking suggests it will be the second biggest December opener between $100M-$140M behind Force Awakens’ all-time opening record last year of $247.96M. It would appear everyone wanted their tickets first because many people encountered a 20-30 minute wait time before your purchase was complete or it just timed out completely.
Last year with Force Awakens, Fandango did not ‘crash’ per se, rather what occurred is that there were intermittent performance challenges; essentially what happens when there’s a long queue, buying tickets online, similar to what always goes on with Ticketmaster.
The wait had movie ticket competitor, Atom Tickets, getting all those who just couldn’t wait to come to their app to purchase tickets. Their Twitter and those using the app, made sure to let people know there were other alternatives to getting tickets if they just couldn’t wait on Fandango.
Both Atom and Fandango are offering different bonus items in conjunction with Rogue One ticket purchases. Those buying from Fandango will be entered into a sweepstakes for a chance to win a U-Wing model signed by the film’s director Gareth Edwards. There’s also some swanky Rogue One movie ticket gift cards up for grabs as well. At Atom, consumers have the opportunity to purchase exclusive Rogue One merchandise
