Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween Party Problems
Oogie Boogie Bash – A Disney Halloween Party presales started and concluded earlier this week, while general public ticket sales for the 2023 event were paused after hours of delays. This post takes a look at what happened, compares this to past precedent with ‘recalculating’ and ‘we’re almost in orbit’ messages, and offers some wild theories about the problem.
Let’s start with the presale, which now seems like a relatively smooth process as compared to the trainwreck of the general public ticket release. That started on Tuesday morning, with a limited number of tickets being released for Magic Key Annual Passholders available for purchase.
At no point did the virtual queue drop below the “more than an hour” wait time, and many Magic Keyholders (including us!) waited several hours to purchase tickets (it took me just over 3 hours, and it would have taken Sarah a little over 4 had I not gotten in first). By the time some APs who joined the virtual queue right at 9 am were able to access the ticket page, many dates were already sold out.
Others had even worse luck than that, and were shut out completely. At around 5 pm, while many Magic Keyholders were still in the virtual queue, the message updated to indicate that it had closed because pre-sale tickets had sold out, and to check back when general admission tickets went on sale June 29.
In fairness, some others did report better luck. While some waited in the virtual queue for hours, others were processed almost immediately or had wait times under an hour. Others still reported encountering no virtual queue at all on mobile, and were able to purchase their Oogie Boogie Bash tickets with zero wait. Now that’s real Disney magic right there!
The process for the general public ticket sales started similarly. The waiting room to join the virtual queue opened about 15 minutes early, and the virtual queue itself was activated right at 9 am Pacific. By most accounts, it immediately jumped to a ‘more than an hour’ wait for most people.
Then at about 9:30 am Pacific, the Oogie Boogie Bash virtual queue paused, with the following message displayed at the bottom of the screen: “Ticket sales have temporarily paused and will resume soon. To stay in the queue, please remain connected to the network and keep your browser window open.”
We don’t know anyone who successfully purchased tickets via the virtual queue during that ~30 minute window while ticket sales were open. There were scattered reports of success on social media, and we did hear from several readers who achieved success with that same “loophole” on mobile. (Those are air quotes because it’s not really a loophole–it’s not like they were doing anything nefarious. Glitch might be the better word, but even that isn’t completely accurate.)
By the afternoon, it became clear that there were major issues, and Disneyland closed the virtual queue completely. “The Queue Has Closed,” a message read. Disneyland apologized for the “technical issues” that impacted ticket sales, and indicated that sales were paused while the company works on addressing the problems.
“Guests can visit disneyland.com/oogieboogiebash on Thursday, July 6 at 9 a.m. PT for an update, which may include the date and time when new sales resume. We commit to providing advance notice prior to activating new sales and strive to make the process as smooth as possible. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Completed ticket purchases will be honored.”
Ironically enough, we spent the entire day at Disney California Adventure attending a preview of Rogers: The Musical (hence the delay in reporting on this), but kept apprised of the pause while in the park. There was a lot of buzz at that event about the problems with Oogie Boogie Bash ticket sales, with various theories being thrown out.
Usually, the explanation for these problems is pretty uninteresting–a backend system crashes and needs to be reset. That typically happens due to unanticipated high demand–tons of people all inundating the Disneyland.com website at the same time. It’s possible that the same thing happened here, which is what caused the pause.
Similar issues have impacted just about every major product release that has necessitated a virtual queue at Disneyland or Walt Disney World in the last two years. It occurred most recently when 2024 vacation packages were released for Walt Disney World in Florida. For that, the virtual queue was paused for a few hours.
It previously happened with new Annual Pass sales (on both coasts), last year’s Oogie Boogie Bash, and many other things. Specifics aren’t top of mind as I try to block out all of the many hours of my life I’ve wasted in needless Disney virtual queues. (It’s a defense mechanism.) Most of the time, these issues are resolved in about 30-60 minutes. But not for the 2023 Oogie Boogie Bash sales!
As far as theories go, simple “technical issues” that involve processing the virtual queue or payment processing don’t really pass muster. If it were a straightforward problem, it almost certainly would’ve been resolved in line with past precedent. Even if it was a ‘worse’ wrinkle in a type of technical difficulty that’s occurred before, it wouldn’t necessitate this type of delay.
Keep in mind that Disneyland hasn’t even committed to a date for sales to resume. Instead, they announced a date–a week from now–when they might announce a date for sales to recommence. But they didn’t even commit to that! The message specifically says that the update on July 6 “may” include the date and time when new sales resume.
Assuming a new sales date for 2023 Oogie Boogie Bash tickets is given on July 6, it could be as early as July 8, or as late as August 1, 2023–or somewhere in between. (Our guess is that it’ll be another full week later, so July 13.) This alone suggests they’re dealing with something unprecedented, and of a different scale and scope than any past problems.
Personally, I think the most plausible explanation is one that requires an audit of ticket sales or significant changes to the virtual queue system. It’s possible that completed transactions weren’t properly being tracked and counted against capacity or that payment processing wasn’t working properly (we heard from a few people who got through the process, but received a “pending” message rather than a completed transaction). Those types of issues would require more time to address, but I’m skeptical that they’d demand week-plus delays.
With absolutely zero technical expertise or inside info to offer an informed opinion, the theory I like is: reseller bots. That Disneyland’s system got hit hard by an automated attack, and Disney IT quickly flagged the problem, but does not yet have a solution to prevent pirates from purchasing. Yes, this is vaguely conspiratorial…and also an explanation that is rather charitable towards Disney IT. (Rather than just letting the bots buy tickets and prices explode on the secondary market, Disney IT is heroically attempting to battle the buccaneers!)
It also makes some degree of sense. Despite being prohibited, there has been a cottage industry of ticket reselling for these events for as long as I’ve attended them, dating back to Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disneyland. It used to just be for October 31, but gradually expanded to the couple of nights before that in late October.
Disneyland Halloween party reselling was a small-time side hustle with a handful of sellers and limited number of tickets on eBay and Craigslist. It wouldn’t surprise me if it were mostly being done by fans looking to recoup the cost of their own ticket. Based on what I’ve seen, it was hardly a sophisticated enterprise.
However, eBay pirates have proliferated in recent years. Couple that with the fact that all dates for Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween Party sold out in record time last year, and the event has sold out every single date for every year of its existence. Disneyland diehards might hate to hear this–especially in light of how much prices have increased on special event tickets over the years–but Oogie Boogie Bash is clearly underpriced as compared to what the market will bear.
That presents a potential opportunity for actual, large-scale resellers who normally deal with sneakers and concert or sporting event tickets to step in and enter this space. They have a pretty good idea that all dates are going to sell out, and that demand will be far higher come August and beyond.
Ultimately, that’s just the (conspiracy) theory that I like the best to explain the pause of 2023 Oogie Boogie Bash ticket sales. Again, I have zero inside info or the technical expertise to make a claim like this. It’s just a shot in the dark and probably wrong. Whatever the actual explanation is, I don’t think it can be a straightforward one.
Disney has experienced this type of issue all the time on both coasts, and it’s usually resolved in 30-60 minutes and, until now, always had been remedied in a few hours. So whatever happened here has gotta be bad–worse than normal and/or unprecedented.
To that point, nothing here is meant to excuse or defend Disney for dropping the ball yet again on another product release. The reason we’re not applying Occam’s razor here is because Disney IT has so many technical difficulties that a clear pattern has emerged–and this defies that.
The fact that this happens so consistently and predictably should alone speak volumes. We aren’t trying to minimize or invalidate anyone’s anger or frustrations. Go ahead, get mad. You should be annoyed that Disney does not seem to value your time.
Even if the explanation here is more nuanced and differs from the “normal” technical difficulties, the fact remains that this happens far too often and it’s beyond frustrating that Disney hasn’t felt the need to fix whatever underlying issues exist that cause this to occur with such frequency.
For practical planning purposes, I will offer one piece of actionable advice: whenever ticket sales do resume for the 2023 Oogie Boogie Bash, be prepared to purchase bright and early on drop day. Intentionally or unintentionally (my guess is the latter), Disney has created a ‘hypebeast’ kind of situation with Oogie Boogie Bash, where scarcity and FOMO are huge drivers of demand.
With other drop day releases, we’ve taken a laid back approach and recommended waiting out the crowd rather than hassling with the headaches of buying on day one, as there was no real reason to do so. This is true of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, among other events and offerings at Walt Disney World. Those things will not actually sell out for weeks, if not months. That’s doubly the case with pent-up demand exhausting itself and interest returning closer to normal levels.
That is not true of Oogie Boogie Bash, which the hype machine is only making more popular. There is zero reason to believe that tickets to this Halloween Party will be available a week after they go on sale, and every reason to believe that they will somehow sell out faster than last year (that was the case with the pre-sale!).
Even if all dates don’t end up selling out on day one–and that’s certainly a possibility–it’s also unknowable at this point. That alone makes waiting a huge gamble–and one that we would not recommend taking. (And in fact, we did not take that risk ourselves–we already bought Oogie Boogie Bash tickets, but have yet to purchase MNSSHP tickets.)
Accordingly, we’d recommend packing your patience and preparing to do this whole thing over again sometime in mid-July 2023 or whenever Disneyland resumes ticket sales for the 2023 Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween Party. If you want to be notified ASAP when that date is announced, subscribe to our FREE email newsletter for updates.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you had issues with Disney IT and ‘recalculating’ pauses with Oogie Boogie Bash or anything else? Did you manage to purchase tickets to this Halloween party? Were you stuck in the virtual queue for hours, or did you manage to buy via the ‘loophole’ while it was open? Any theories, conspiracy or otherwise, for the long pause before a new Oogie Boogie Bash sales date is announced by Disneyland? Once tickets are re-released, will you be buying ASAP, or are you burnt out on this whole process? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments here? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I am in Australia and got out of bed at 1.50am to still be sitting up at 5am with nothing to show for it. I guess I’ll have to do it all again in the coming weeks. As you can imagine we have very specific dates so fingers crossed
My situation was very strange. I waited until 1 second after 12 Noon (EDT) to log on and went directly to the ticket site. No queue! It did take me 3 times to click to complete my purchase for the 10/15 OBB, but it went through. I did get a pending email and confirmation a few hours later. Why mine went through so easily and what I did differently is beyond me.
I was hoping to get tickets. I am taking my mother to DL in October. She has never been to OBB and this is likely her last trip. Because we are coming from Canada, everything is already booked and our dates aren’t flexible. I was hoping hotel guests would have a pre-sale opportunity. I will try again when they resume sales, but if we don’t get tickets, I’ll be almost $400 richer. I’m sure we can have a nice dinner somewhere instead.
I have an Oogie Boogie Bash question. I’m not totally understanding the Halloween fireworks situation.
From what I’m understanding, OBB fireworks are only on weekends. That means you need a Sunday ticket to see Halloween fireworks?
I’m guessing normal DL fireworks happen during regular park hours during Halloween season too. I’ve seen videos of Halloween fireworks at DL, but OBB happens at DCA. I’m guessing that means the fireworks are at DCA, and not based around the castle.
I’d like to see both. How does this work? Are the Halloween DL fireworks I watch don Youtube not a thing anymore or something and I’m mixing up events?
OBB does not have associated fireworks. The Halloween Screams fireworks you are referring to okay at Disneyland throughout the Halloween season, and are included with regular park admission.
Thanks Jim!
So when they say Halloween Screams is only on weekends, what they mean is, during the week during halloween season, there is a fireworks show, but it’s Wondrous Journeys, then Halloween Screams is on weekends? So potentially you could see both in one trip. Am I understanding that right?
Nope looks like its Halloween Screams all season, but during the week it’s all projections and there’s fireworks added on weekends so you can’t see both in one trip unless you went on like
.. changeover week.
My son and I were thinking of going this year (we are both adults, both teachers, and Magic Key holders but we live in Northern CA so we don’t go down on a whim because the airfare and hotel fees are added price. ANYway – We were prepared to get up in the wee houses and into a queue until two things happened:
1) We began to ask our selves if Oogie Boogie was going to be worth the added hundreds of dollars *for us*, even if we did get in… $144 dollars apiece to do…. what? Wear a costume and collect candy? We’ve been costumed performers in other venues over the years, so that wasn’t a big draw. Collect/eat candy? We already eat too much junk food, and we agreed that we could probably go to Target and buy candy if we felt a compelling reason. See the parade? (We watched last year’s parade on YouTube. It was fun but did not seem to me to be worth $144.) Ride the roller coaster? I hate thrill and drop rides. 😉
We went to “Sweethearts Night” this year and it *was* worth it in our opinion, but we agreed that we like DL way better than DCA in general, and usually get bored with DCA after one trip to Toon Town to ride Luigi’s. We went round and round, should we do it at least once to say we did? We decided that *for us* it probably didn’t make sense to pay for an extra hotel night and all the extra money. Then we debated some more.
2) My son was offered additional courses to teach on Thursdays, so that ended the matter. We wouldn’t be able to go anyway. We admitted that we were both a bit relieved.
3) Now that I am reading about this “nightmare before Oogie” I am even more glad we didn’t even try, but:
I am VERY sorry for those folks who really did want to go and weren’t able to. It sure seems like there should be some other way of doing this, including maybe just having Oogie Boogie Bash happen alternating Wednesdays and Thursdays or Wednesdays and Fridays from Labor Day until Halloween. I love “Walt’s Vision” and admire every Imagineer who ever existed, but it sure seems sometimes like there’s almost a cult-like hysteria around Disney special events, and only wealthy people can afford them, plus there’s a lot of “entitlement” issues. I have no solutions for any of that, and it may not even be worth a discussion. In any case, we’re going down for a few days on one of the weekends in September to see the Fall overlay and we know we are lucky to be able to do that.
Perhaps all this advice to open multiple browsers on multiple devices to enter the queue is not such great advice after all. Some people have posted photos having ten devices all open at one time. We already know the system is fragile and inefficient. This practice just clogs it more.
The solution isn’t some grassroots effort to encourage other fans to not use multiple browsers if they think that’ll be the key to NOT getting stuck in an endless virtual queue (good luck with that). The solution is Disney fixing its fragile and inefficient systems. These aren’t Taylor Swift tickets. There’s no reason the site “needs” to have a meltdown every time a new product is released.
Amen to that
Tom,
You mentioned possible solutions to the ticket issue. Why doesn’t Disneyland just have the persons names on the tickets like they do for regular tickets? I would think that would make it close to impossible for the eBay pirates/resellers to hog these tickets.
Names are on the tickets, they just aren’t “enforced” or verified.
Why, I do not know, but that’s how it’s always been with these hard ticket events.
If the tickets are on your app, how does one sell on Ebay, for example. It’s not a physical ticket.
(Don’t intend for anyone to post instructions on this prohibited act, just curious in generalities how the scalper could transfer the ticket to a buyer for legitimate entry,
If they don’t want to enforce names, Disney is just allowing the resellers to wreak havoc. Maybe they could force them to prove they purchased the ticket by showing their credit card before allowing admittance. Airlines were doing that for a while.
Hi Tom and others,
I wondered about that too when I read it. I didn’t think anyone could sell tix on the secondary market anymore. Just for the record: I sure wouldn’t buy them or sell them like that myself. The whole process is so frustrating, I was in the “waiting room” at 10 of and was in the queue for about 90 min before the “pausing sales” message showed up. I left the window open and checked a few times a little later and then got the July 6 message.
Spent all day near my computer and phone. Did not get a ticket. We’re from the Midwest and was hoping a trip to Disneyland. But if we can’t get Oogie Boogie tickets, I guess we’ll try it next year.
This is giving me Eras Tour PTSD. WHY would Disney try to emulate Ticketmaster?
We too were a lucky family that was able to get tickets. I had multiple devices on the website 15 min or more early and we got messages about over an hour queue. But I open my Firefox browser (like hour after tickets went on sale) and it let me in (I was using Chrome and Safari on my many devices). So I was able to complete my transaction there and recieve an email soon after. So my suggestion is to purchase future items on Disney’s website is to try it through a less popular browser and see if you have better success.
The amount of privilege required here is just obscene. Want a ticket? Better be able to park yourself on a computer or phone for 8 hours! Too bad if you work a job that makes that prohibitive.
When it was obvious that the queue was malfunctioning I moved on. While I could have parked myself on my iPad for the day, I couldn’t see the point of doing that and then maybe still not getting a ticket. My mental health matters more to me than getting to the event. But the majority of the world CANNOT just decide that that’s a way they can spend their time and it’s that – the cutting out of anyone who isn’t privileged enough to just hang out on a virtual queue for a day to get tickets to an event they probably hope to take their kids do – that makes this system so wrong. I don’t begrudge anyone who does have that kind of time (I mean, I’m one of them – that would be dumb) but a system that by default punishes those who can’t devote an entire day to a ticket quest needs to be changed. They need to go to increase the number of dates, go to a lottery system, and open up the ticket sales earlier in the year so people can plan for a “maybe” event. They also need to develop some sort of system to prevent resales. They SAY it’s prohibited but if there’s no policing then what they say matters not one bit. Tickets for the event were already showing up on resale sites by the end of the day yesterday.
Here’s hoping that yesterday’s debacle inspires some change.
The best suggestion made in this article is to increase the price of the Oogie Boogie Bash tickets. I think if Disney would add about $100 to the price of each ticket (taking them to $234-289), this would solve much of the problem. Incidentally, I think the same strategy would be good for Genie+: increase it from $25 to $125. They could reduce the number of tickets sold (for both OBB and Genie+), improve the experience for all by having fewer attendees, and still increase revenue.
Just to be clear, this article says: “clearly underpriced as compared to what the market will bear.” That’s not the same as advocating for a price increase.
Personally, I think adding event dates in August is the answer. The case against price increases is the (potentially irreparable) brand and reputation damage they can cause. I already think Disney is playing a dangerous game with pricing and nickel & diming that could come back to bite them in an economic downturn.
Extreme price increases are the easy short-term answer that have the potential to inflict long-term pain. Nothing happens in a vacuum.
I agree with Tom here, I don’t think inflating the price exorbitantly helps anyone. Heck, that’s just like Chapek’s short-sighted plan of only catering to people who are really affluent, and we know how well that worked out. Besides, it’s really antithetical to Walt’s original plan of creating an enjoyable, clean, unique place that would welcome everyone.
This was beautifully written. We have come to expect tons of issues on Disney drop days for events because well, its Disney IT. That says something in and of itself… I actually barely slept the night before because I was so nervous for the Oogie Boogie drop. We have never been to DL (WDW over 37 times) and like so many, was on the website at 8:00AM and was constantly refreshing starting around 8:55AM until I was in the queue and waited until sales were stopped for the day. I personally think Disneyland needs to follow WDW and do a few different releases for these dates to help prevent these types of errors. Fingers crossed for the second drop!
I don’t really understand why Disneyland doesn’t add more dates and do Oogie Boogie Bash more like HHN, but opposite. Leave Thursday/Friday/Saturday none party nights and do Sunday through Wednesday each week as party nights. The demand is there for this party.
I’m shocked they haven’t really expanded OBB to more nights within the existing Halloween Time season…or just expanded the season into mid-August.
There are a lot of little refreshing ways that Disneyland is less profits-oriented than Walt Disney World, but this is not one of them, IMO. Adding more dates during those few slow weeks in August would be good for guests and the company’s bottom line.
Whatever the issue was, I’m sure it was exacerbated by the already existing problems that have plagued these drop days. They already know what the demand is going to be like – they really need a better system to handle it. In that regard, it reminds me of the Southwest cancellations last Christmas. They knew their product was out-of-date, but until a catastrophic event happened that completely exposed them publicly, they had no impetus to fix it. That example…is probably the only way that Disney might consider changing the routine. In that way, I actually am kind of hoping that something major broke. Then, they have to start from scratch to fix it, and everyone down the line has a chance of benefiting.
Granted, I have to acknowledge that it still sucks in the meantime. Having been shut out of every major passholder event…um, ever, due to Disney glitches, it’s not much consolation to know something might get fixed. But…I do hope something gets fixed, nevertheless.
I agree with your first few sentences, right down to the Southwest comparison.
The critical distinction, sadly, is Disney’s unique position in the market without any direct competitors. Yes, there are other theme parks and Halloween events in Southern California…but this is the main family-friendly one and none of those other parks are truly direct competitors.
Southwest does have its own fan following, but it just isn’t the same. Even if I were a SWA loyalist, there’s absolutely no way I’d book with them again during a peak travel period after the cancellations last holiday season. There are simply plenty of other comparable (much better IMO) alternatives.
I really hope I’m wrong and Disney actually does start feeling consumer pressure to fix this–as it SHOULD be an embarrassment that negatively impacts sales–but it really is starting to feel like a hypebeast situation akin to sneaker drops to me.
I am one of the unicorns who had a reasonably successful experience with ticketing yesterday. I connected to the Disneyland site with my computer at 8:58am, clicked the Ooogie Boogie Bash Special Event ticket link, and immediately was taken to the purchase page. Frankly, I was a little shocked. I’d been planning on camping out in the virtual queue for hours.
But then, when I clicked the purchase button, I got an error saying that the purchase had failed and recommending that I try again. I tried two more times, then fiddled with some of the fields, and I finally got the site to charge my credit card. Then I received a notice that my order was being processed, with a follow-up e-mail saying the same thing. By this point it was becoming clear that something was going seriously wrong with the ticketing process. I was concerned that my ticket wasn’t going to arrive, with concomitant visions of spending hours on the phone with customer service trying to work things out and debating whether I should re-enter the virtual queue just in case.
Fortunately, around 10:30 am I got another e-mail indicating that the order was completed, and the actual tickets showed up in the app. I also saw that Disney had released substantial discounts for the on-site hotels and managed to get a room for considerably less than I was originally budgeting. So, all told, I am a relatively satisfied customer, but my sympathies go out to the tens of thousands of people who were considerably less lucky than I.
The queue was closed by 9:11 not 9:30 am. This whole thing has left such a bad taste and commenters mentioning that they bought several dates, multiple tickets doesn’t help. This virtual queue process needs to be replaced.
9:08 for me, and contra to Tom’s assertion that the queue opened dead on 9:am, it was 9:02 before either I or my daughter got in from the pre-queue. For use the system was literally up for a grand total of just over 6 minutes.
There’s definitely regional variability here, which also is not cool.
The queue was closed to me at 9:11 also. Then all day nothing. I had firefox open incognito plus my phone. My phone went to the queue first. Then a minute later my desktop. I tried 2 different devices because the last time I tried to get a Magic Key the site froze on me and couldn’t check out. So, I thought if I have another device open I could at least checkout. I have tried to go to OOgie Boogie for a couple of years. I have never been able to get tickets. I was able to go to the party in Disneyland in 2017. Then, they also had advanced sale for Disney Visa cardholders. This is very frustrating for everyone. And for Tom thinking it’s possible it’s eBay pirates just makes me sick.
At this rate I could see Disney being forced into some kind of verified fan/lotto system like Ticketmaster had adopted for major concerts. I’m sure THAT will go over real well with the community (*preemptively huddled down, like the Banks household preparing for the daily cannon firing*)
Actually, I think a lottery is probably a good idea. As it currently stands, this system rewards the already initiated. It’s still a little random, but those who have been successful in the past seem to have a greater chance of success in the future. That, and I’d kind of love to see what Disney Blogs do when they can’t get in to something on the first night…or at all, like many of the rest of us. (Pretty sure Tom would take it in stride, though. Definitely seen him suffer with us already…)
“Pretty sure Tom would take it in stride, though. Definitely seen him suffer with us already…”
Yep.
We’ve actually been shut out of a number of things over the years–and it sucks. (On this topic, I once bought a Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disneyland ticket on Craigslist and had the seller walk me to the gate!) As a consumer-oriented site, we “pride” ourselves in having the same experiences as every regular guest…even when those are ridiculously frustrating.
Personally, I think that’s very important to maintaining credible coverage. That starts with the initial booking process. The experience at media events is carefully choreographed, and often very different from the regular guest experience. It’s easy to have a very positive opinion of all things Disney if you’re never jumping through these hoops, paying your own way, or even encountering the same problems as a normal guest on a day-to-day basis.
I was one of the lucky ones that got in yesterday . And actually I was able to help out two other families as well. The times that I purchased were 9:15, 9:17 and 10:15 am. I did get pending emails for all three which had me anxious all day. I got my first confirmation at 1:00, the second at 2:00 and the third at 7 pm. I spoke to a CM on the phone and she said Disney is honoring anyone who was able to purchase tickets and got one of those pending emails. I think Disney won’t resume sales until they know how many actually went through yesterday, because I don’t think the system was able to track it. That is my opinion on it. This will be my first time attending the party and I am very thankful that we were able to get the tickets. Lots of luck to those who still haven’t. Hang in there!
We are trying to go for the first time this year and I’m annoyed and frustrated! We were thinking second week of September with lower crowds due to school being in session. Our friends are passholder and she got on Tuesday and both days that week were sold out when she got in more than 5 hours later. Then she and I both tried yesterday. We were both in on phone and computer before 9. So, wait room and then queue. At 9:07 I had 51 minutes to go on my phone. All others were more than an hour. At 9:09 we received the message that sales were paused. Ours seems to be earlier than others are saying? And I have seen lots of posts on social media about people getting tickets before 9 am when they logged in?! And some at later times after tickets were paused. It makes no sense and doesn’t leave me with a good feeling. Too many issues the last couple of years with things at both parks. I just wonder when people will quit dealing with this? I’m done with this trip, and thinking about canceling all together.
I had different numbers again to yours. I suspect regional server distribution caused differences in what people were seeing. For example, despite being in the virtual queue, mine and my daughter’s entry to the main queue didn’t happen until 9:02.
I canceled our flights and hotel last night. I can’t afford to spend another day like that, and frankly the odds of getting the day we need are seemingly pretty low now. Disney don’t care though because they’ll sell every ticket they want to sell regardless.
I don’t blame you for wanting to cancel. I live locally so it’s relatively easy to go since I don’t need flights or hotels. However, this whole thing left a bad taste for me and I wasn’t all that excited about going this year anyway. Yesterday, settled the matter for me and not going this year. Not that it will matter as someone else will take my place.