A timed entry ticketing system that keeps one count for every entry time

A timed entry ticket has an entry time every so many minutes between your opening and closing, and a number of places at each time. An aquarium or an observation deck starts with a time every 30 minutes; that is a starting value, and you change it. Where timed entry is the wrong model, the same venue can sell a day ticket with a daily limit, or sessions with named start times and a length.

Your guest types carry their own prices and ages, and the closed days you set apply to the calendar, the shop and the box office. Guests see a month calendar with what is left each day, then entry times that say how many places remain.

Taking a place is one guarded update to the count: it succeeds only if the places sold, held and blocked, plus the new ones, still fit the capacity. Nothing is read first and written later, so two buyers on the last place cannot both get it. Before the shop was built, a proof run fired 2,016 hold attempts at one entry time of 300 places. Exactly 300 were taken, and none was oversold.

A place is held for 15 minutes while the guest pays, and a basket of several tickets is one hold and one payment. A sweep every minute gives expired holds back. If a payment lands after its hold ran out, the places are taken again if they are still free. If they have gone, the order is kept as paid without a place and shows on Today for you to refund. A slot is never oversold to rescue a late payment.

At the main entrance the gate checks the ticket and the day: valid, already used, not today, cancelled or moved. It does not turn away a guest who arrives early or late for their entry time. The time decides how many people you sell for each slot; how strictly you hold people to it at the door stays your staff’s call.

Where the minute matters, the gate checks it. A timed entry inside a ticket, scanned at its own point, lets the guest in from 15 minutes before their time until an hour after it, and otherwise answers Too early or Its time has passed. It does this offline too.

A special exhibition or a planetarium show often has its own times inside a general ticket. Here the included point takes its times and places from a timed ticket of the same venue. It is one count, so the exhibition sold on its own and the exhibition included in day tickets can never be oversold together.

The guest picks the inner time when booking. Its place is held with the main ticket, all or nothing, and the ticket page and the email say when to be there. It is not offered on open-dated tickets or inside combos, whose parts carry their own times.

Guests move to another day or time from their ticket page, inside the window you set; with no window set, the option does not appear. The places move under the same capacity check, the old tickets stop working at the gate, and the new ones are emailed. An inner timed entry moves too, or the move is refused in words when that time is full. The price stays as paid.

Staff can move a booking from the orders desk outside the guests’ window. When you close an entry for weather, every guest on it may move to another time or cancel for a full refund, whatever the usual policy says.

For the day tickets go on sale, switch on the waiting room and say how many guests may start buying each minute. Each arrival gets one place in line and sees the wait. The page refreshes itself and lets them in when their minute comes, and they then stay in for 20 minutes. First come, first served, and one buyer can hold at most three unpaid orders at a venue at once.

On the day itself, the staff calendar colours each date by how full it is, and Today lists the next entry times with their fill, so the busy hour is visible before it arrives.