Fandango is a movie ticket web site similar to others like StubHub is for music and sporting events. The site allows users to buy movie tickets in advance for shows in their area and print them right from their computer. This saves time at the movie theater and even sometimes the printed tickets give you access to the front of the line. This week, Fandango has announced they were opening their mobile phone movie ticket system to the public and with the opening of the very popular Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, the site was sure to get used. The service was rolled out in a partnership with Regal and covers over 1,000 screens this weekend.
“Fandango has always been in the forefront of technology”, said the President of Regal Entertainment Group. Regal was more than happy to offer the convenience of mobile ticket buying to their customers for the busy holiday movie season. The Fandango Mobile Ticket program will work with any phone, on any carrier and does not require any additional fees to use. The program allows users to buy a movie ticket and then take their phones to the register to show the ticket taker the bar-code on the screen, which is then scanned to authorize the customers entry.
There is a full list of theaters that is working with Fandango to provide the service to customers. The major cities include Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Honolulu, Knoxville, Lexington, Los Angeles, Nashville, Portland, San Diego and New York. Certainly there will be more cities added to the list once the program is out and all the bugs are worked out for sure. As the program becomes more popular the service will become more widely available. The main driver is that there are very few restrictions the program will work with. A lot of new mobile apps and solutions require the user to have a smartphone, but with Fandango, a simple flip phone will work just fine.
There are not many other theater chains that are doing things similar to Fandango, but Arclight in Los Angeles is one of the that has been for almost one year now. Now the service is available to a lot more people and makes it easier to buy a ticket and present it at the door, but what if your phone battery dies?
