Mamma Mia! UK film fans forced to Q as Vue's website craps itself

Customers will just have to grin and Paddington Bear it (sorry)

Updated Cinema chain Vue's wobbly website frustrated customers for a second day today as would-be film-goers found themselves dumped into a queuing system in order to buy tickets.

Problems began over the weekend when users reported long waits even to retrieve showtimes.

Website is terrible, it was the same story yesterday, I had to wait 5minutes in a q just to get showtimes. I’ve just tried again today and it’s now a 14minute q. Ive never seen this kinda crap before

— Sheldon Thompson (@sheldonBKT) July 29, 2018

The situation worsened on Sunday, as wait times lengthened and customers found the cinema chain's website reporting an error once the head of the queue was reached. Unsurprisingly, phone lines were also swamped as folk sought desperately to sate their blockbuster appetites.

@vuecinemas please sort out your website and phone lines. Just spent 50 mins on hold twice to be cut off both times and wasted a similar length of time on website only for it to crash. So frustrating!!!

— Aisling Vaughan (@VaughanAisling) July 30, 2018

A number of readers contacted The Register to register their displeasure this morning. We had a crack at booking tickets at that notable peak time of movie-going – 3pm on a Monday – only to find ourselves also placed in a lengthy queue. The Incredibles 2 will have to wait for another day.

For its part, Queue Vue has pointed to the arrival of school holidays as a cause for what it described as "huge demand" for its 150,000 seats over the UK. Its competitors are not affected so presumably are not experiencing the same demand. Or perhaps have slightly more, er, scalable websites.

Hi Sandeep, Dani here. We're experiencing huge demand for tickets due to the number of popular films showing. When we anticipate high demand due to popular films showing and school holidays we put in place a queuing system. Thanks for your patience. Want to check availability?

— Vue (@vuecinemas) July 30, 2018

In the meantime, you can make your own joke about impossible missions to buy tickets or consider the lengthy wait good training for having to sit through interminable adverts before the film actually starts.

Or maybe check out your local independent cinema instead? ®

Updated to add

Vue has sent in the following statement:

"The website is not crashing. We are experiencing huge demand for tickets due to the number of popular movies showing. When we anticipate high demand due to popular films showing and school holidays we put in place a queuing system during peak hours to help customers have a more seamless experience and to manage website performance."

"This is similar to other ticketing sites such as Ticketmaster, but new to Vue’s customers. The queuing system is managed dynamically according to demand on the website and while wait time might vary, the wait is typically a few minutes only."

"We would like to thank all of our customers for their patience and to advise customers to book well in advance. The exceptional titles available are meaning many of our cinemas are fully booked across the UK."