It’s been quite a journey through the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Launching with Iron Man in 2008, fans have loyally followed the franchise to this year’s culmination of the Thanos/Infinity Stones storyline. Finally, on April 26th, Avengers: Endgame will hit theaters.

So it wasn’t a shocker that fans around the world – myself included – were eager to pre-order tickets on the morning of April 2nd. Being an avid movie fan, I’m an AMC A-List Stubs member (paying a base fee of $20 a month covers up to 12 tickets), so you better believe tha tI had my app opened and ready to go! And when the theaters launched their “buy” buttons at 8am, well …. all hell broke loose.

“It’s like Thanos snapped away the tickets,” was a common joke around the internet as AMC’s and Fandango’s servers crashed repeatedly for the 5 hours. It was like a horrible version of Groundhog’s Day or a very belated April Fool’s Day prank.

Now, a lot of people who were seeing the headlines and trending hashtags online couldn’t understand why fans were losing their minds because they couldn’t buy tickets. Simply put, this isn’t just any movie. Remember when the last Harry Potter book released, and after 10 years of buildup, the world was finally going to find out if Harry died or lived? Readers had become invested in Harry’s world, and the last thing they wanted to happen was to have that final story line plot spoiled. And to this day, that was some of the most intense speed reading I’ve ever done in 48 hours.

So that’s why Marvel fans are rabid to see “Endgame” on opening weekend. No one wants to have a story line spoiled that’s been more than a decade in the making, amirite? So just like Captain America, while others may have given up during the ticket buying process, I was adamant in getting tickets for my group. “Some people move on, but not us,” was my mantra that day.

Of course during this fiasco, AMC had a social media crisis on their hands. It was mainly their server that threw in a wrench in the ticket-buying process. Thousands of AMC members demanded a refund and/or planned to cancel their memberships. Some even posted theories that AMC may have purposefully caused a server crash so that members couldn’t book their “free seat.”

As an AMC member myself, I can certainly say I wasn’t pleased with the social media joke about #ThanosSnap or getting an email at 9pm that said ”
We Apologize for Today’s Technical Issues: If you don’t have AVENGERS: ENDGAME tickets, you can purchase them now on AMCTheatres.com.”

Sorry AMC, my group of 13 all had to buy our tickets from Regal. Hopefully AMC does find a way to make amends with disgruntled customers (like adding a free popcorn or soda reward to the app!) but time will tell. Hopefully Thanos didn’t snap away thousands of memberships. Only the Time Stone will tell.