How does “Timed Ticketing” work?
Our “Timed Ticketing” feature allows your attraction to keep things moving as quickly as possible, while also providing another potential source of revenue. You’ll have the option to allow different time slots for entry to your attraction, and to set an optional maximum number of tickets for each time slot. For instance, you could allow 50 “General” tickets to be purchased at one hour slots of 9PM, 10PM, 11PM, and Midnight. At your attraction, the best practice would be to have a separate line for timed tickets versus non-timed tickets, and only allow people into the timed line during their time-slot. This will allow you to keep that line flowing much more quickly, to limit/forecast the number of attendees before the event, and to potentially charge a higher price for tickets which get through the line more quickly.
Creating time slots
There are two options for creating dates & times for your event: basic and advanced time slots. Basic time slot creation works best for daily events with longer running times, or setting up a single full season period. Advanced time slots, on the other hand, let you quickly and easily set up multiple time slots per day, and let you repeat these as regularly scheduled times into the future.
Basic Time Slots
The basic time slot creator is displayed when you first create your event or enter the editor. This simply offers two fields to fill in: the Start Time and End Time for your event time slot, and is best used to set up events with one time slot spanning multiple days or events with one daily time slot. Enter the time your event opens in the Start Time, and the time your event closes for the End Time, then hit the Save button to generate your time slot. Once you have created your time slot you will be able to edit its options, including on-sale dates and available ticket types, as well as repeat this same time slot on future days.
Advanced Time Slots
The advanced time slots creator can be accessed by clicking the "Advanced time slots" button in the Dates & Times section of the event editor. This opens up an expanded list of options to set up timed ticketing throughout the day. Use the advanced time slot creator to more quickly set up an event with multiple time slots offered each day. In addition to the start and end time for the day you can also set up individual time slot duration and a buffer between event times, as well as repeat regularly scheduled time slots into the future right at the time you first create the time slots.
In the Advanced time slots editor, the "Start Time" and End Time" options should be set to the time your attraction opens and closes for the day, respectively - i.e. 10 AM and 9 PM. "Duration of the Event" should be set to the length of an individual time slot - i.e. 45 minutes. A "Buffer Between Events" must also be set; use this in conjunction with the duration to to arrange your individual start times - i.e. a 45 minute duration and 15 minute buffer will create a new time slot every hour.
By default all ticket sales stop at the end time of the event. If you want to turn off sales at a different time, enter the number of hours before the event in the "Stop Sales" setting here. This will set that up at the same interval for all future time slots created at this time. Make sure to select ticket type(s) to assign to the time slots being created before continuing. time slots created without ticket types assigned will not be able to be sold. (Note: Both on-sale time and ticket types can be changed later with the bulk editor.)
Finally, select the days of the week and a date range into the future over which to repeat these time slots. To ensure the best system performance if you have 10+ time slots per day, we recommend creating time slots only a few months in advance. Limiting the time slots will provide the best experience and ensure that everything loads quickly for your customers and in your admin section.
