[Sir_Cmpwn]

This link first loaded the page, then unloaded it and put me in a queue! I was told how many people were ahead of me and an estimate on when I would get to read the page, complete with elevator music. Why would anyone even make that?

[andrepd]

This is the most British thing I have seen in a while.

[tofflos]

It's hilarious. ;-)

After reading your comment I immediately tried to visit the page and was very disappointed to see that the content was now being displayed directly. But just as I was about to close the tab I was placed in the queue! Hooray! :)

[bradbatt]

> Why would anyone even make that?

Right? I thought the exact same thing. Seems like the time and effort and expense it takes to build a queueing system could be put into building a site that could handle infrequent heavy loads.

[sitharus]

If you're using something like an F5 for your load balancer you can implement the queue there. Cheaper than provisioning hardware for occasional peaks and F5s can serve a lot of traffic.

[finnh]

The British love a good queue.

[nthcolumn]

You're not wrong - and tutting, you have to tut. In Honkers people queue for buses but then when the bus doors actually open it's every umbrella-fella for himself. A sort of Sino-British now you queue, now you don't. Not much fun if you're 6'5" and at the front of the scrum though. Well they used to anyway.

[petepete]

I've never ever seen anything like this. It would appear that this functionality has been there for a while and was also triggered on the Queen's birthday[0]

[0] http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/13/how-very-english-visitors-to-t...

[Reason077]

Similar queuing mechanisms are used on things like Ticketmaster which experience extreme demand peaks when high-demand tickets go on sale.

Presumably the Royal Mint experience similar demand peaks occasionally when limited-release collectable coins go on sale?

[AdamJacobMuller]

Yeah, but, this displayed the article that I wanted to read, then redirected me to a queue system, now i'll eventually go back to the actual page. Its causing more work for the system. The ticketmaster queues block a heavyweight process (ticket search), not simple page displays.

This is the equivalent of ticketmaster not letting you see pages with lists of upcoming performances without waiting in a queue.

[mino]

Exactly! The redirection to the queue happens after the page loads. Why would you ever want to build this feature? :)

[pmiller2]

I can't say for certain about the Royal Mint, but the US mint certainly does experience such a load pattern. It responds by either crashing or failing to load, unfortunately. A lightweight order-taking site that pushes orders to a queue for fulfillment would be a massive improvement over the strategy they actually choose (per-household quantity limits).