Gladiator

The massive Colosseum was built in Rome in the first century AD and for hundreds of years was packed out for Senators and Civilians alike to witness glorious, zero-sum combat between man and man, man and beast, man and chariot, man and boat.

Two thousand years later it is still standing, and unfortunately there are now up to eight billion humans all clamouring to get a ticket to a modern wonder of the world, mostly so they can be on-sold for a massive profit to those who only have one day of their life in Rome to visit it.

The Colosseum website tries to manage this by selling tickets in small batches released 30 days to the minute before the tickets can be used. So tickets for 9am Saturday the 3rd of June go on sale at 9am Thursday the 4th of May. Tickets for 9:15am go on sale at 9:15am.

This does not really curb the demand, it just drags out the pain of trying to buy tickets only for them to disappear before you complete the Captcha every time in five minute intervals. Today was my day to face the gauntlet. I was ready when the portcullis lifted and the tickets started to fly. Available bookings flashed in front of me, and disappeared just as fast. Refreshing was like running blind in circles, hoping to see another available timeslot, swinging as soon as it appeared, being pushed back to calendar page again.

Finally, after three hours (and a little bit of tweaking using developer tools) I managed to skewer two tickets on the tip of my spear. I got through the checkout and now I have my prenotazione. And today I joined the gladiators of ancient Rome who have emerged weary, yet with glory, after a battle beneath the gaze of the Colosseum's stands.