Fiasco

We went to see a matinee of Star Wars yesterday, and I'd bought 8 tickets in advance through the Fandango online ticketing service. The way it is supposed to work is, you buy your tickets online, Fandango gets its $1 per ticket markup, and you print out a piece of paper and take it with you and go to the theatre. Instead of standing in the ticket purchasing line, you're supposed to be able to walk up to the Fandango kiosk, press a few buttons and presto, your tickets spew out.

The placement of the kiosk at the sprawling Edwards Mira Mesa megaplex in San Diego says a lot about what the theatre company thinks about Fandango. When you walk into the massive lobby, it's very easy to miss the Fandango kiosk because they have it turned around backwards. That's right: as you enter the lobby, the nondescript, unlabeled rear of the kiosk (imagine looking at the back of a video arcade game machine) stands there hiding in plain sight.

I went up to it, and it asked me to type in a code from the printout. There was no code on my printout. Then it asked to run the same credit card through that I'd ordered online with. I ran it through. "We could not find any Will Call tickets for your card -- Please See Box Office". So I had to get in the line anyways. I noticed others who were walking up to the kiosk were also having trouble.

I've never once been able to successfully get tickets from this kiosk. Don't think I'm gonna try anymore.