I've been humoring the idea of them having people verify their access codes.
"Hey, we see that you purchased your tickets while the access code entry was disabled. Would you mind providing that for us?"
Procure the code that you were sent, go on your way.
The downside, though, would be people who bought tickets for their S/O's... so then it becomes a question of "Do we only get 1 ticket per code?"
As someone who works in ticket sales FT, I agree with other users who've voiced that ticket sale should have been halted until the problem was resolved. Instead of disabling the required element for any length of time. Especially when that code was sent to users as "Here's a reservation of your ticket, so that you won't miss out"--terrible wording on SE's marketing team's part, if they can't follow through.
