Worst Purchase Experience Ever

I started 30 minutes before the queue opened and got in about 10 minutes after it began. When I tried to check out, I attempted four different hotels, and every time the payment failed.

As rooms started disappearing, I began selecting less desirable hotels, but those attempts were blocked by fraud checks. Over the next 1.5 hours, I kept clicking on hotels listed as “available,” only to either get halfway through checkout and be kicked out, or reach checkout and be stopped again by fraud errors—on the rare occasion I even made it that far.

Half the time, hotels marked as available either had only one option left or none at all, which wasted even more time. It also seemed like there were very few single rooms available. After about 45 minutes I couldn’t get one at all, except for a single hotel that kept triggering fraud alerts and remained available the entire time—likely because no one could successfully book it.

At this point, I’ve woken up at 4 a.m. twice and have spent over 10 hours trying to make this purchase with nothing to show for it. Quite frankly, any positive experience I might have had at the event is now permanently overshadowed by the experience of simply trying to buy admission.

Purchasing festival tickets in the U.S. is nothing like this. I can see why many Americans choose not to attend anymore. Why deal with this level of frustration just to buy a ticket for an international festival when I could stay home and easily purchase tickets to several different festivals without any of these issues?

Honestly, it feels like it’s statistically easier to get a non-resale ticket to the Super Bowl than to get through this process.