Spoilers ahead!
Did I expect tickets for Spider-Man: No Way Home to run out so quickly for opening night? No, I did not. But why is everyone rushing to see this movie? I’ll tell you why.
Over the years we have seen superhero Spider-Man be played by three different actors: Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and now Tom Holland. Fans are excited to see all three actors come together for this new movie. Come on, it’s been a while since we’ve last seen Maguire and Garfield as Spider-Man. The return of all the Spider-Mans along with the villains of the previous movies (live-action) facing this multiverse to fix Dr. Strange’s spell has fans on their toes! The multiverse has been seen in the Spider-Man comic books, as well as in the Disney Plus series Loki and Wanda Vision, and to see a movie focused on the multiverse is a big deal for many fans. As we all know the movie will be about Peter Parker (Tom Holland) asking Dr. Strange to reverse everyone knowing about his identity. Due to a mistake, Dr. Strange’s spell ends up backfiring causing the multiverse (it is unknown whether he created it). We also know that Venom will make an appearance as seen on the end credits of Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Overall, many exciting things will be happening in this movie! Now let me tell you that purchasing tickets online or on the app was a bad move.
According to the AMC Theatres Twitter account, tickets were supposed to go on sale at 12:01 AM EST, or 9:01 PM PST. These tickets could be bought in person, online, or in the app of any theatre. However, I personally was planning to buy my ticket on the AMC app. I thought, “I have an account on the app and can do A-List. It should be a quick thing.” Unfortunately, I underestimated how packed with fans the app would be. I kept checking the app to see if there was a queue line, but there wasn’t any. I checked again at 8:50, and I was surprised to see that tickets were already on sale! Let me tell you, I was shocked. I could not believe that they had been released earlier than we were told. Many people on Twitter were angry: why did AMC tweet that they’d be released at 9:01 PM and then release them earlier? Here’s where my frustration started.
The website, along with the app, crashed. I managed to get in line and only waited about 10 minutes. Once inside, I picked my seats, I was excited and doing my happy dance, and then I tried to pay, and boom. The app crashed on me, letting me know that there was an error every time I tried to pay. I quickly exited out of the app and refreshed it and repeated the same progress, only for the same outcome of “error.” I was disappointed, but I didn’t let that stop me. I tried again to get tickets on my laptop, only to be unable to log in to my account and use my A-List. By this point, the queue ended up being more than an hour, and that’s where I gave up. I didn’t feel like waiting for an hour just to be told that there was an error again. Next, I tried to buy tickets with Cinemark, but as I tried to access their website, it crashed too. So what did I do? I closed my laptop and turned off my phone and went to go play my Nintendo switch. There was just no point in trying anymore.
Not only were people excited to see this movie, but AMC was going to give a Spider-Man NFT to the first 86,000 Stubs A-List, Premiere or Investor Connect who purchased tickets for opening day, which probably didn’t help the issue. This experience reminded me of Avengers: Endgame and how excited Marvel fans were to see the movie on opening day. I remember hearing my friends talk about how they were going to watch it at 12 AM because they wanted to make sure they were not spoiled, to which I definitely agreed! But at last, I made peace with the fact that I would have to wait for the next week or weeks to watch the movie.
I asked my friends if they had managed to get tickets and most said no. But, I had a few friends who were successful in securing these tickets. Apparently, purchasing the tickets at the theatre you planned to watch it at was the easiest way to secure your seats. I regret not doing that, but not all hope was lost!
I woke up the next day around 10 AM and, out of curiosity, decided to check if there were any seats available for December 16th (opening night). There were none available for IMAX or Dolby Cinema in my local theatres but I did end up finding tickets for that day at 10:00 PM! I was super happy to have scored these tickets, especially after the madness of the night before. The lesson of the day? If it doesn’t work out in the moment, it’ll work out later!