Tickets became available online Thursday morning for the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn.
And by 9 a.m. complaints started rolling in about problems with the service, which is being tried online for the first time.
Many people can't get into the site. And if they do they can't complete the entire process to get tickets.
The following is an e-mail from Rob, who wonders why the old-fashioned way of handing out tickets on the day of the event had to go away...
This morning's web release of the 2009 White House Egg Roll tickets was a disaster. I, along with thousands of other anxious parents waited patiently for the information for the tickets to be posted at the White House web site. We were then re-directed to another commercial site for ticket distribution. All was going well and I was almost complete with the four pages of information needed when the web traffic caught up with me and, I am sure, every one else. The servers essentially crashed and left me wondering if I had completed the process for tickets, or if I was cut short by server errors. I can't get back into the site now as every time I attempt I sit in a waiting room for 10 minutes only to be timed out by the server. A visitor to DC, and the first time I have attempted to attend an event such as this with my family, I wonder why they just didn't hand out tickets like before?
We asked members of our Twitter nation if they experienced anything like Rob did. A few responses came in right away:
- Tells me I'm in the "waiting room." They have high volume traffic...page never finishes loading. Been on 10 min.
- I keep getting an error msg, or it tells me tix aren't available at that time.
- Yes I was in the order form selected my time and ticket # twice and site crashed as it was processing.
- I'm having all kinds of trouble and once again, I am being blocked from participating in anything White House.
- Major issues. Had tix and server timed out at checkout three times Still trying.
On the White House site, there is some obscure reference about having to check back throughout the day for more tickets to become available:
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
Tickets will be available at various times throughout the day. If you are unable to order tickets at this time, please check back later.
Are you having similar issues? Or did you actually get tickets. Let us know in the comments below.
And when will we start seeing the tickets for sale on Craigslist? So far, people are only asking for tickets.
Update: Scratch that, plenty of "tickets" have now popped up in a matter of hours. Don't fall for scams, people!
