There's a moment I know by heart. The doors open, the first people arrive, and someone on the team looks at me and says "this worked in the test." The answer is almost always the same: the test was done with three people we knew, in an office, with good signal and no rush. That's not a rehearsal. It's a demo.
After many years working the door, my rule is simple: if it wasn't tested on site, with the full team and with people who don't know the system, it wasn't tested.
What an access dress rehearsal is
It's a simulation of the door, the day before or the morning of the event, at the real venue, with the same technology, the same staff and the same flows you'll use with a live audience. It's not checking that the devices turn on. It's running real people through the whole flow, from the entry lane to the turnstile, and watching where it stalls.
What helps me most is what never shows up on any floor plan: the sun hitting the scanner screen at a certain hour, the sign nobody reads, the slope where the line piles up.
What you have to test
Every ticket type, not just one
Most teams test with a standard ticket and call it done. But at the door you'll see the sponsor invitation, the press accreditation, the ticket with a printed code, the one shown on a phone with the brightness turned down, and the one that arrives as a screenshot. Test one of each. And test an invalid one, a duplicate and one for a different day, to see how the system reacts and what it tells the staff.
Connectivity at the exact spot
Signal in the office is one thing. Signal in the entry lane, with the venue full, is another. Walk every entrance with a device in your hand and check that it validates. If there's a dead zone, today is the day to find out, not when there's a line. Test offline mode too: cut the network on purpose and check that scanning keeps working and that everything syncs properly afterward.
Real roles
Have each staff member do the job they'll do on event day. The person who scans, the person who guides, the person who handles problem cases, the person running the accreditation line. Many times the failure isn't in the system. It's that nobody knows who to send a guest to when a ticket doesn't scan.
The case that jams the line
Prepare a short list of awkward situations and run through them one by one: someone with another person's ticket, an accredited guest who isn't on the list, a wristband that won't read, a person with reduced mobility, a group that arrives together and wants to enter as one. Write down how long the staff takes to resolve each one and where they redirect the guest so the line keeps moving.
Who to bring into the rehearsal
This is the part that gets neglected most. For it to be useful, these people need to be there:
- The head of access from the client or from the agency that hired you
- The venue's security team
- The technology provider, with someone who can make decisions on the spot
- Part of the real staff, not just supervisors
- People from outside the team to play the audience, even if they're colleagues from other departments
If security isn't there, you'll find out on event day that they closed a passage you were using. It's happened to me more than once.
What to ask if you're in marketing or procurement
If you hire the access setup but don't run it, three questions put everything in order:
- Is a rehearsal at the venue planned before the event, and who runs it?
- What gets tested, and what criteria decide that it's passed?
- What happens with whatever goes wrong in the rehearsal? Is there time and staff to fix it?
It's very common for the rehearsal to appear as one line in the budget with no date and no owner. Ask for it in writing, with a time, and make sure it's in the setup schedule. If the venue is only handed over at the last minute, say so early: the rehearsal can be adjusted, but it can't be skipped.
After the rehearsal
Once the test is over, we sit down for ten minutes and make a list of what broke or got stuck. Every item gets a name next to it and a deadline for being fixed. Anything that can't be fixed in time needs a plan B defined that same night, not the next morning with the doors about to open.
One more thing: not everything has to go perfectly. A rehearsal where nothing turned up should worry you more than one that produced a long list. The long list is what saves you from the problem with a full house inside.
What I take away from the door
The events that go best aren't the ones with the newest technology. They're the ones that tested everything beforehand and arrived at the day with their doubts already settled. Nobody sees the rehearsal and nobody thanks you for it, but it's the part of the job where you gain the most.
If you're putting together an event and want to review how you'll test your access, write to me and we'll talk it through.
Franco Ridao Founder of SOMOS DER