Niagara Fallsview Casino - TITO Problems

[The Shamus]

Hi Folks:

TITO stands for "ticket in, ticket out". At the Fallsview Casino, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada ... there have been widespread TITO outages. When the outages occur, approximately half of the machines on the floor are impacted. It means you can not cash out or enter a TITO ticket. Everything has to be handled manually.

I was at the casino recently and once again, the TITO system failed. Many of the machines (once paid out), are usually shut down for the evening. This is the 3rd time (out of 3 visits) over a 3 month period. This is happening frequently, although the workers at the casino just tow the company line saying, "Oh, it's happened a few times". Manual payouts mean some individuals wait more than an hour while their payout is handled manually.

Last time I was in Niagara, I found out Fallsview has installed a second TITO system on site (likely to help lessen the load on the existing). It's more than a month later, and the problem is still occurring. This is terrible news for players, and a bad experience for players. I have to wonder why Niagara has not introduced more diagnostics to learn more from their outages.

If you are planning a trip to Niagara ... I would think about calling ahead to see if these woes have been cured.

/\/\/\/\ the Shamus /\/\/\/\

[dianmarie]

Shamus, when this happens, does it affect the play, or your chances for any wins??....DianMarie

[The Shamus]

Originally Posted by dianmarie

Shamus, when this happens, does it affect the play, or your chances for any wins??....DianMarie

The "Players Card" system and the TITO system are completely separate from the mechanism that determines the wins on the slot machine. However, when this happens, when you try to cash out, you join the other 100 people in the casino who want to cash out at the same time. It usually takes between 2 to 3 hours to get a payout, even if it is just $2 -- so many people abandon their machines. The casino has been turning the machines off, and usually turns them back on sometime over night.

In the background, the machines that go down are all hooked up to the same servers. In Niagara, they have 2 parallel systems. Half of the machines run off one system, half run off the other. That's why approximately half of the machines are "hit" when there is a problem. Also, both sides experience the problem, so whatever causes this issue, it is not likely a volume issue (since the volume of traffic is already split) - however, it seems to happen when it is busy ... so this is a contributing factor.

Just imagine how much this is costing Fallsview. I have not been back in a few months ... anyone hear of this happening recently?

/\/\/\/\ the Shamus /\/\/\/\