Steamship Authority Website Crashes as Thousands Try to Book 2023 Trips

It sounds like residents are trying to beat the winter blues by making plans for the summer. When the Steamship Authority opened its reservations for the summer ferry service to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard on Tuesday morning, the website essentially crashed as thousands of users were queued online to book trips to the islands.

The Steamship Authority told Mass Live “more than 900 customers made reservations in the first 20 minutes after summer bookings opened at 5 a.m.”

By 9 a.m., the ferry service claimed to have processed approximately 4,000 reservations.

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When the Steamship Authority announced that reservations were open, one user responded, “I’m 2,089 in line, I was on the site at 5 am, how can this be?”

Another user claimed that the site kicked them out and they were bumped to “the back of the line” after waiting for 90 minutes.

All morning, Steamship Authority played catch-up with disgruntled users hoping to book their trips. The latest update came in at 12:30 p.m., claiming the reservation process for Nantucket summer travel was “operating as intended.”

“We will continue to review today’s activities to determine the cause of the system issues and resolve them immediately,” the ferry service said.

Is this a sign of what’s to come for the 2023 season? By now, we are used to the headache of attempting to drive over the bridges to the Cape, but can we expect full-capacity ferries as well?

If you are considering a summer trip this year, it may be best to book sooner rather than later.