It was calm seas for the Steamship Authority Wednesday when the opening of summer vehicle reservations went off without a hitch.
The ferry line booked 23,000 vehicle reservations by 3:45 p.m. and did not run into any of the technical issues that have plagued opening day for the general public in the past. The bookings equate to about $6 million in revenue, but is slightly down from years past.
The uneventful opening was a welcome change for some customers who have dealt with the glitchy reservation system and website crashing of years past. Steamship spokesperson Sean Driscoll said the day went with “no hiccups.”
Reservations opened at 8 a.m., a departure from past 5 a.m. start times. Customers were also held in a virtual waiting room in order to manage the number of people on the website at once.
The peak wait time came around 8:40 a.m., when about 21,300 people were in line for tickets. For those at the end of the queue, it was about two hours and 15 minutes before they could get onto the website.
The Steamship Authority was supposed to open the Vineyard’s summer vehicle reservations two weeks ago, but the reservation system struggled when early reservations for Islanders opened up in January. The ferry line conducted an investigation into the issue and found problems with underperforming servers.
Changes were made to the servers and, after tests, the summer vehicle reservations opened for the Nantucket route last week. After the first day, about 7,800 transactions were booked, sans glitches and crashes.
The Steamship Authority processed about 24,000 reservations in both 2023 and 2022. Nantucket’s reservations were also just off the previous years.
