Registration and Payments Fail With 2,000 People in Line

Your check-in platform and card terminals both go down at 08:10. The badge printers have no data, the queue is out of the building, and the opening session starts at 09:00.

Setting: Trade exhibition, 2,000 first-day arrivals, single registration hall, opening morning. Category: Event Operations. Pressure level: High.

This page is the individual, citable address for this one situation: https://gatheringarchitecture.com/crisis-sim/scenario/checkin-system-down

The situation

The check-in tablets show a spinning wheel. Your platform's status page says 'investigating'. The line is 700 people deep, it is raining, and exhibitors are calling to ask where their visitors are.

First moves and what each one costs

• Switch to manual: admit on ID against the printed list, write badges by hand, station staff with a microphone in the queue, and reconcile records this afternoon — The line moves within six minutes. Badges are ugly and everyone is inside before the opening session.
• Hold the line while your vendor works on it — The outage lasts 70 minutes. Two thousand people stand in the rain and the opening session plays to a third of a room.
• Open the doors and let everyone in unregistered — The queue clears instantly and you now have an exhibition floor with no idea who is in it — no leads for exhibitors, no evacuation list.

Preparation notes for this situation

• Keep an offline copy of the attendee list — printed or local — and a manual badge option
• A moving line beats a correct line: admit people first, reconcile records later
• Put a human with a microphone in the queue every few minutes; unexplained waiting is what causes complaints
• Never take card details on paper as a workaround

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