We reported last week on a special promotion for James Cameron’s upcoming 3D sci-fi epic Avatar, where 20th Century Fox would hold one day of special 20-minute screenings for fans.
The movie has been hyped to no end, and the buzz has only been growing as its mid-December release approaches. So if you offer a bunch of free tickets to limited screenings across the country, you d expect a lot of traffic, right?
Unfortunately, when the clock hit noon Pacific Time on Monday and the Avatar preview ticket site opened, thousands of fans were unable to actually see the site. Either the pages were loading but there was no theater information, or a general server error would appear.
In any case, the reaction was swift and brutal from the movie fan community.
From Ain t It Cool News talkback: {link no longer active}
I tried FireFox & Safari. Nothing. There’s no list of theaters. If it was a plug-in that I don’t have, I would see a broken link somewhere. But nothing. Now, I’m getting connection time-outs. Disappointing, Mr Cameron, disappointing.
All this hype for a sh***y website. Good job Avatar.
Fox dropped the ball on this one
avatar day = fail
Reaction on Twitter {link no longer active} was just as negative, but today the problem seems to have been fixed {link no longer active}. As we all know, though, 24 hours on the Internet is a lifetime.
The moral of the story? If you’re expecting visitors, make sure you can handle all of them!
