Disappointed fans miss out on Giro d'Italia Belfast team presentation tickets as website crashes

I was one of the unfortunates who actually got to the booking screen several times just after 9am but was not given a drop down to select the number of seats until after my basket timed out and reallocated my selection (not once but 10 times). I then had to head up to work and before I went in visited Visit Belfast to be told they had no tickets left there to give out and to try online, so I told them I had been trying to do just that.

I then logged on at work, but when I got to the front of the queue was not redirected to the Giro booking page. When I finally did get the booking page I must have been just after the last tickets were allocated after 4hrs 16 minutes from logging on to a second computer at 11am.

Just a heads up-people who were successful online (thankfully I was after 4 hours) still have to show up at Welcome Belfast before this Wed at 4pm to collect the actual wristbands-any not collected by then will be reallocated so may be worth keeping an eye out to see if you can get a second chance-I called in this afternoon to get mine and there weren't too many other people about while I was there getting theirs.
On a separate note though I'm a bit annoyed that there was no priority given to clubs or Cycling Ireland members-ie those of us who support the sport all year round every year. Also annoyed that DUP councillors will be getting their tickets with no problems or hassle despite their MEP voting against measures to make lorries safer for cyclists- bit hypocritical to oppose safer infrastructure and yet show up for the Giro.

Performance testing; that oft-neglected, always necessary evil. Surely a quick purchase to Amazon or Rackspace would've solved their capacity issues, but then again, I'm not Discover NI's IT provider.

I didn't get tickets either, but as stated previously,the racing itself is free, and in the caseof the first stage, on my doorstep. Cannot wait.

On an aside, cannot believe how NI has embraced the Giro. It's fantastic

I was lucky too after 3 hours but my sister stayed in for 6 hours and no joy! Think I should take her with me

Well I sat there like a dumb dumb for hours on end, If I had gotten tickets, I was going to go over as my birthday present to myself....I turn 30 on the 11th. But kept getting shunted to the back of the queue, gave up. Went out and bought myself a doughnut instead.

I picked up the link via the tourist board and CRC back in March. Was done and dusted after 40 mins or so. A couple of friends were on for a few hours. Was expecting it to be sluggish anyways. Looking forward to it. I'm sure the servers were beefed up for the event and regardless of this everything is going to grind to a halt with the volume of traffic. Tried for the commonwealth games and had to give up so this is a nice wee bonus.

Thats the problem with free ticketed events, the sites crash and you have chavs in queues getting as many tickets as pos to resell.

Least with Leeds I picked my seat and didnt waste my day hitting F5

I got mine after a 3 hour wait. Just after, news of a separate link came out on social media which let people get tickets within 15 minutes. All very odd.

I sat on my computer for 2 hours and then gave up - ironically i left my computer on and when i came home i had actually got through to the purchase page but by then it was too late.
Thing is - im not going to wet the bed over it or write to the Daily Mail (or moan in the comments section of a cycling website) - it was a lottery and i didnt get a ticket.
No one died.
Of course im sure the nice people at Visit Belfast could have gone to Tandy and bought a massive new server just for the morning but its hardly breaking news that lots of people wanting a finite thing will cause a strain on resources.
Watching the racing is still free and i, for one, am very excited. More so than seeing the Tour de France to be honest.