I'm in.
Yes I looked @ the code running the site - its simply a rate limiter. If 1000 people try to get in for 10 slots, then the server gives out the 10 slots and waits either an allotted amount of time or for those 10 slots to be freed up. You are simply in a random drawing for the correct slot. So what that means is you should all have 5-6 browser windows open (or just keep clicking refresh yourself vs waiting the 10 seconds).
The site is clearly at its limits as I am occasionally seeing errors that would result from high load. Its running out of sockets (the underlying things that let network connections work), I've gotten a couple error messages suggesting it was running out of memory or that transactions were timing out.
Dear Disney Engineering,
There are LOTS of good ways to resolve these types of scale issues - obviously if there are 1000 slots for 10000 people nothing we can do there, but the site can still be responsive under high load. Hire me, I can fix most of it for you.
Thanks