Selling timed entry for a haunt: slots, capacity and the queue that never forms

Why does a haunt sell slots rather than a night?

A haunt has a throughput, not a capacity. The barn holds however many people the fire officer says, but the show only works if groups enter at the rate your actors can reset — and the difference between those two numbers is the queue. Selling a night sells the first number. Selling slots sells the second.

On bindro a slot is a session with its own inventory pool per ticket type. An entry bought for 9:00pm can only take 9:00pm stock, so the arithmetic that keeps your line moving is enforced by the thing that takes the money rather than by somebody with a clicker at the gate. It also gives you a number nobody had before: how many people are due in the next twenty minutes.

How do I build a whole season of nights in the console?

You describe the grid rather than the dates: the days you open and the times you admit, and bindro generates a session for each combination. A haunt running Thursday to Sunday through October with entries every twenty minutes from seven until eleven is a few minutes of setup, not an evening of it.

Decide one structural thing first, because it is awkward to change later: what counts as an event. Every session belongs to an event, and two consequential rules follow from that grouping — a season pass admits only at sessions of its own event, and payouts are made once per event, after its last session. The pricing guide works through the trade; make the decision there, then build the grid.

How many entries should a slot actually hold?

Start from your reset time, not from your revenue target. If a group of six takes twelve minutes to clear the maze and you admit every twenty, your slot holds roughly what one clear cycle can absorb plus a little slack for stragglers — and the honest test is whether the last group of a slot is still inside when the next slot’s first group reaches the door.

Then subtract your season pass holders, by hand. A pass does not consume a seat at each night it covers: its own pool caps how many passes exist, and after that they are simply people who may turn up. If you sold forty passes and expect a third of them on a Saturday, the Saturday slots are that much smaller than the number you publish.

Comp entries do consume inventory, which is what you want — a sponsor’s six places are six fewer sold — and they write no revenue lines at all, so they never flatter your takings.

• Size the slot to throughput, not to the room.
• Subtract expected pass holders from peak slots yourself; nothing does it for you.
• Comps eat inventory and earn nothing — that is deliberate, and it keeps the numbers honest.
• Leave a late slot deliberately unsold on peak nights: it is where you send the people a sold-out Saturday turned away.

What actually happens when a slot sells out?

It stops. The slot shows "No souls left" and there is no way forward, because this vertical has no waiting list: nobody joins a queue, and nobody is emailed if an entry is refunded an hour later.

A refunded entry is worth understanding precisely, because it surprises people. The money goes back, but the entry stays counted against that slot — so the slot does not quietly reopen. If you want to resell it, raise that slot’s capacity by one in the console, deliberately. The alternative, and the one most haunts end up using, is to keep a later slot in reserve and point disappointed buyers at it.

How do walk-ups work when the queue is already down the road?

Your staff sell them on the day-of page, by card, on your own device — and the sale is a real one: it takes a hold in the real slot and continues through the same checkout as any other purchase, so the price is derived the same way, the inventory moves the same way, and the credential scans like everyone else’s.

There is deliberately no cash button. Recording cash that bindro never held would credit your balance for it and then pay you the same money a second time at payout, which is the kind of quiet double-payment that only surfaces at reconciliation. Cash at the gate stays entirely outside the platform, or you send the walk-up to the booking page on their own phone while they are still in line.

What can I see while the night is running?

The day-of page: live sold and checked-in numbers per session, tonight’s rota, and the walk-up sale form in the same place. The public entry page polls availability while a buyer is reading it, so a slot that fills while somebody hesitates updates in front of them rather than failing at payment.

If two gates are scanning, expect the conflicts queue to be part of your routine rather than an alarm. It is where a band scanned at two points shows up — after the fact, because without signal no two devices can prevent it in the moment.