On April 2, 2019, tickets for Avengers: Endgame went on sale online, and in perhaps the least surprising news of the year, Marvel fans overwhelmed ticketing sites across the internet, including Fandango, AMC, and Atom Tickets. All those sites crashed, but now, it seems, they’re back. Which means, if you want to go see this movie with your kids on the opening weekend, you better buy those tickets now.
Fandango reported that Endgame set a first-day presale record, besting numbers from Star Wars: The Force Awakens after just six hours. Customers who used the service were placed in virtual lines for tickets at specific theaters, which seemed to at least keep the site up and running.
Other sites weren’t as resilient. AMC tweeted that their servers were “in Thanos’ snap” after many complaints from frustrated fans, who likely weren’t all that amused by the reference.
Atom Tickets told CNN that three times as many tickets for Endgame sold in the first hour compared to Infinity War, which was released in 2018. For its part, Regal Cinemas reported that Endgame sold twice as many tickets in its first eight hours on sale as Infinity War did.
Theaters can sell this many tickets because, despite the film’s three-plus hour runtime, they’ve absolutely packed their schedules with screenings.
At the Arclight in Hollywood, there are a whopping 15 showings on the film on April 25, 2019, the day before its official release date. The first is at 6:00 p.m. and the final is at 3:00 a.m., which means it should end about an hour and a half before the first screening Friday morning, which begins at 7:30 in the morning.
A quick scan of ticketing sites shows that the vast majority of prime seats — evening shows on Thursday or Friday — have already been reserved at theatres in cities around the country, with seats reserved for disabled patrons and those closest to the screen forming most of the remaining inventory.
So if you want to see Endgame with your family on the opening weekend, plan on finding a limited selection of seats, likely closer to the screen, for less desirable screening times in the morning or afternoon. And for the love of Stan Lee, book your tickets now while there are still some available and the ticketing sites aren’t broken. You don’t want to go to work (or send your kids to school) on Monday just to have someone spoil it, do you?
This article originally appeared on Fatherly. Follow @FatherlyHQ on Twitter.
