We all knew that when tickets to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey went on sale, it was going to be a problem. The Odyssey is the first feature film ever to be shot entirely for IMAX, and with only a handful of theaters across the world where the film can be seen in that format, supply was not going to match demand. Especially in cities that love movies. Cities like Los Angeles.
Thursday morning, armed with a laptop and a prayer, I set out to get 70mm IMAX tickets to see The Odyssey. Because of the nature of my job, odds are that I will probably (fingers crossed) get a chance to see it early, so I was not targeting tickets for opening weekend. I figured I’d go for the Monday after. Demand would be a little lighter, and since I’m an old pro at online drops, my thought was that it would take five minutes, and I could go on with my day.
Almost two hours later, I was sort of successful and discovered something I wasn’t aware of. Ticketing websites have a lot of error messages. Like, a lot. I’m not gonna say my journey to get these tickets makes me like Odysseus, but, you know, there are parallels.
Living in Los Angeles, we are blessed with many great movie theaters. Not as many as we’ve had in the past, but still a lot. However for personal convenience and because, in my opinion, it’s the best one, I decided to take aim at a 70mm IMAX screening at the Universal Cinema AMC at CitiWalk Hollywood. That was, of course, my biggest hurdle. Many LA film fans share my sentiment, and tickets at that specific theater were going to be difficult. But, again, I wasn’t going for opening weekend. That would help my odds. In theory.
Tickets were supposed to become available around 9 a.m. PST, but some sites opened it up earlier. So, I found myself with both Fandango and AMC Theaters open around 8:45 a.m. going for a screening on Monday, July 20.
Without getting into every single detail, for the next hour and a half, I attempted to get tickets on both Fandango and AMC’s websites. I tried different seats, different rows, and more, but kept hitting error messages. Here are screenshots of the EIGHT different errors I got in various ways on AMC.
Eight different error messages at various stages of the process is a lot. But Fandango was up for the challenge.
I also got EIGHT different error messages on Fandango, using a combination of my laptop and my phone. Of course, I was trying on my phone too. I’m no amateur.
Now, some of these are clearly because many people were going for the same seats. But others are just the site’s inability to handle the load for this specific theater and these specific screenings (many friends trying different theaters in both Los Angeles and elsewhere had fewer problems). Also, I should note I was careful not to compete with myself. I never went for the same seats at the same time on the different pages.
Even as the errors kept occurring, though, I noticed that seats were being sold. For some people, this was working. So, I decided to try a later date. July 28, the following Tuesday. Surely, not as many people were going for tickets almost two weeks into The Odyssey‘s run. I was wrong. While availability was much greater, some seats had been sold, and I continued to get several of the above error messages concurrently, even with different sites going for different seats.
Finally, about an hour and 45 minutes after I had begun this process, somehow, an order went through. I had tickets to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in glorious 70mm IMAX. I just didn’t expect the ticket buying to be an odyssey unto itself.
Tickets for IMAX as well as other premium formats are now on sale. Tickets for general formats will be on sale soon. Did you snag tickets?
This article has been updated with additional context about making sure not to buy the same seats at the same time, which could have been a reason for the errors.
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