Electronic Cinema Ticketing – Fantastic When it Works

Earlier today, the wife and I went and saw “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (which had the original title of “Men Who Hate Women) and as usual we booked our tickets online so we could “jump the queue” at the box office.

More often than not, I really dislike the notion of having to line up for stuff (there are exceptions though).

Normally, this is a painless experience when we book online from home but had to use the mobile site from an iPhone as we were out having lunch at the time. Theoretically, it should have been smooth sailing but we encountered an error right at the end of the booking confirmation process. Luckily, I could remote desktop into my home computer to book the tickets using the full blown site (which bogs down a little on a 3G connection when my screen resolution is 2560 x 1600).

Anyway, we booked the tickets and I received a bar code in my e-mail which displayed nicely on the iPhone screen and scans fine at the box office (so long as the staff don’t put the scanner right on top of the screen). I personally like this approach as it saves on paper, printing and waste. I’m sure this approach could be adopted for similar things like airline tickets (although I’d still probably print out documents for international travel just in case).

Do you book stuff online where possible, do you make exceptions or do you prefer to do it old school?

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