TIFF’s online ticket system is much, much better this year (thank goodness)

Remember TIFF’s online ticket system from years past? It was a long, white web page with a circa-2002 vibe and little drop-down menus to choose the desired number of tickets—and it was probably the worst thing about the festival. This year, they’ve implemented a new, much more convenient ticketing system that allows filmgoers to quickly see all available screenings by date or film title, and it has movie synopses built right in (a must for when all the big, buzzy movies are sold out). And apparently it’s working: the Toronto Star reports that about 12,000 transactions were processed on Sunday, an uptick of 18 per cent over last year. Gold star!
UPDATE: Judging by the comments and responses on Twitter, we may have been a tad hasty in our estimation of the new system’s efficacy. So we thought we’d put the question to our readers:
[poll id=”79″]
Is this article a joke or a reprinted press release from TIFF? The ticketing site failed consistently during purchases on Sunday for many hours, prompting tons of “sorry we’re fixing it” comments from TIFF. Search #tiff #tiff12 and “error” on Twitter for evidence of many unhappy customers.
HORRIBLE NEW WEBSITE!Crashed as soon as i was ready to submit my purchase. Lost all my movies. Liked the old site way better.
Terrible system — tried for hours (literally) on Sunday, unable to buy a single ticket. Just guaranteed that there’s no chance I’ll ever bother to attempt buying TIFF tickets in the future.
(oh well, guess I’ll just go back to getting my movies for free online … )
Matt, your absence won’t be missed. It still astounds me how poorly people react from one bad experience. Sure it’s frustrating, but how old are you.. 12?
And ooh.. pirating movies.. what a badass..
Kayu, you must work for the software company powering TIFF’s ticketing site to consider hours of frustration for hundreds of people “one bad experience”. Shouldn’t you get back to writing sloppy code?