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Advance Tickets - I don't see how selling out ahead of time is an issue? Would you rather have 200 happy people coming into buy concessions with their advanced tickets or 50 happy customers that show up 15 minutes early and 150 frozen customers throwing a fit because they can't get in at the last minute.

When the late comer shows up for the show and you're sold out, offer them an advanced ticket to the next show or the show tommorrow night.

We could also set the software to warn you once a certain # of advanced tickets have been sold, offer half the auditorium for advanced?

If advanced tickets are completely out of the question and you continue to have this problem I suggest adding an additional ticket and an additional concession station, over time they would surely pay for themselves.

Call me and I can verify your printer is as fast as possible.

Greg Borr
RTS
(269)463-5096 X102

This is starting to get a bit off topic but andrew asked for a reply.

Our ATM is through a company called Cash N' Go and our debit machines are through a company called Cash Swipe.

The ATM has a $1.50 service charge added (plus the bank dings you too) but it makes us usually $1000+ per month for doing absolutely nothing. The Debit machine has a 25 cent charge, and if the customer wants cash back its an additional $1.25 ($1.50 total). The bank doesn't add their service charge to the customer though for a debit transaction. (only makes a couple hundred a month, plus it holds up the line and is unreliable, requires staffing, we have to pay for the paper etc...)

All the service charges are built in so there is no monkeying around with them. The word is that most debit machines will be switching over to the service charge system in the coming years.

[This message has been edited by Mill (edited November 18, 2002).]

Once upon a time I worked in an 8 plex. We had 2 Boca (I think) printers installed. We had one selling station normally but the place was built with 2 window setups. When we were very busy we took the manager's screen and keyboard (long cord necessary) up the stairs to the empty window and started selling tickets. When that 15 minutes of madness was done, we returned the screen and keyboard to the manager. This was not an RTS system and I don't know how Greg feels about it but it is just a thought.

P.S. Those printers were a pain in the butt and you needed two just in case the first one jammed and you had long lines of people standing there waiting for you to get the printer unstuck. You could immediately switch to printing on printer 2 and unjam later.

Sorry if this is off-topic or just a dumb idea, but, could RTS be programmed to spit out the older-style tear tickets?

Tony,
I am curious, do you funnel people directly from the ticket window to the concession stand via barriers or velvet ropes? If so, is your concession stand waiting on the people efficiently so there is no bottled up mess there? Seems that there should be hardly any line at concession making the stop at the stand more desirable for customers. While I agree that they are used to a dump, so why get there early, this could be just a frustrating growing pain that you will work through by retraining the consumer. There are several operators here that have great ideas on how to teach the employee to work quicker and more efficiently, my best advice is to lead by example and don't let the employees start to freak. Too bad it has to happen with a movie that did incredible concession sales as Harry Potter did, but I bet it will all smooth out. Once the people start to get there on time, you can actually use a slower box office to get them to stop and buy concession, if your concession lines are short.
Just my thoughts
lance

Older style tear tickets? By this if you mean thermal card stock like a Boca VM24A 3.25" printing on a WW&L TF-3 ticket stock, yes.

RTS can print on multiple printers and has built in drivers for 21 different types of ticket printers, including Boca, Practical Automation, Datamax, Samsung, Epson, Citizen and others. The ticket sizes vary depending on the printer, in Mike's case they use an 80mm thermal roll printer, the Samsung SRP350. It has a printing speed of 150mm sec.(47.2 LPS)

No ticketing system, automated or manual, in the world can admit 200 people in 5 minutes to two different shows with one person selling tickets. We have a guy that has been with us forever that absolutely rocks and at best he can do around 100 - 120 in 5 minutes.

In my opinion here is what needs to be done.

1. Go to setup > ticket > options > touch screen interface > change to 10 - this will increase the size of the title button speeding up the transition between showtimes.

2. Show schedule, need to have a uniform period of time between shows, this is most likely adding to the customers frustration. for example on Saturday you have 20 minutes between your matinee, 30 minutes between your afternoon, and 15 mintues between your evening shows.

3. Sell advanced tickets, unless you do not have a doorman I see no reason why you don't sell advanced, Make it the first announcement on your recording, Advanced days tickets are avaialble for all showtimes, eliminate the wait in line and purchase tickets early. At our 6 plex every showing of Harry Potter in our 340 seat auditorium for this past weekend were sold out days in advance, we placed a large sign in the front window and put sold out on the marquee. Those that showed up knew before hand it was sold out and could go on their way go to a different show or buy advanced tickets to another day, Santa Clause 2 was way up from overflow customers (at much better terms).

4. If it continues to be an issue go with two ticketing stations, it's simple to do and as always I'll cut you a deal.

Thanks guys for all the good adviuce and particularly Greg and RTS. The slowness has not been any fault of our TIK program, it's more of all the other things that add up. I like the consistent show time thing. .50 cent pieces helped. etc. etc. We're working it!

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No problem at all, I want RTS to work for everyone as well as I want all of our customers to be successful. If there is anything we can do to help software wise or other we are willing to share.

Mike,

Sounds like you are doing well. But seriously, bite the bullet and buy a boca printer from Greg. Thermal roll printed tickets are cheesy. From Ian's report you did a fab job spiffing up the place, so get a classy ticket to match. $1780 for a boca is a good price. We've had boca's since we opened and love them. The only time they are a pain is the ass is when they aren't cleaned periodically or an optos fails (which happened to us...and is easily fixable).