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SAINT JOHN - A screen displaying the words "service unavailable". An automated phone message stating all ticket agents are busy and directing callers to the website where the service was unavailable.

Enlarge Photo

Cindy Wilson/Telegraph-Journal

Janice McCarthy, left, and Michelle Thompson show the stress of waiting two days at Harbour Station in Saint John for Elton John concert tickets.

It was a frustrating experience for people trying to get tickets Saturday for Elton John's concert at Harbour Station.

So what grounded online and phone ticket sales to the Rocket Man's Sept. 30 show in Saint John?

Harbour Station general manager Mike Caddell said a number of factors contributed to a slow day.

First off, Harbour Station's online ticketing system is outdated and came to a near standstill during the opening hours of sales. Two shows in Halifax at the Metro Centre and one at the Moncton Coliseum sold out in approximately one hour. Tickets at Harbour Station sold out after 10 hours.

The quick sellouts at John's two other Maritime venues worsened the delays when the box office opened in Saint John. Tickets to John's two shows in Halifax and one in Moncton went on sale and sold out before Harbour Station's box office opened Saturday at 10 a.m.

"We were the only venue left in Atlantic Canada with seats available, so all traffic was directed here," Caddell said.

The two Halifax shows at the Metro Centre sold out in just over an hour on Friday. The Moncton Coliseum opened its box office at 9 a.m. Saturday and were finished selling in less than an hour.

"It's our fastest-selling concert ever," said Shane Porter, co-ordinator of concert events at the Moncton Coliseum in a press release.

Since Saint John was the only city left with tickets, Harbour Station's website had 2.5-million hits within the first hour tickets were available. That volume crashed the site.

"It just became a bottleneck," Caddell said. "Everything was still working, but it just became a slow day.

"We had a number of individuals from Aliant and XWave working with us last week and on site (Saturday) and they've never seen anything like it."

Despite the technicians on hand, the arena's online system was too outdated to handle the big volumes that come with major events such as John's show.

While Moncton and Halifax have fairly new systems, Harbour Station is still using one from five years ago. Caddell said the arena runs a cable the size of a garden hose into the building to handle Internet traffic.

"We upgraded to the equivalent of a fire hose and still, with this traffic, it became bottle-necked or plugged," he said.

The Moncton Coliseum's system uses servers based in Toronto and was able to upgrade easily to handle larger volumes of traffic. The Metro Centre in Halifax has new technology for its Internet ticketing system that is about a year-and-a-half old.

"Unfortunately technology has passed us by," Harbour Station's Caddell said. "We're certainly thinking of upgrades "¦ we will be doing something with our system in the near future."

Niki Smith was one of those people trying to get tickets online. She was at her computer at 8 a.m. on Saturday waiting for sales to start. She called the experience frustrating.

"I tried from 10 a.m. right on through," Smith said.

In between attempts on the website, she called the box office, but couldn't get tickets. Eventually a friend called and said she got tickets at the arena at 2:30 p.m.

"She said the line was dying down and there were still tons of tickets left," Smith said. "I went and waited in line for a couple hours and got tickets.

"I was surprised, but obviously if the website had been running it wouldn't have happened."

Several people had the same idea. Floor tickets to the concert were still available at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday at the box office window.