Scrounging For Mangers: San Diego Comic-Con Hotel Booking Aftermath

The mad dash for discounted downtown hotel rooms for the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con is all over, bar the cancellations. Registration opened – and closed – last Thursday, and yesterday – April Fools’ Day, purely by coincidence – confirmation emails went to people lucky enough to snag them, leaving many disappointed. Not us, however… at least not completely.

Let’s start with the positives about the experience; unlike other years, the Web server for submitting reservations appeared to be more robust than a Vic-20. Thursday at the stroke of noon eastern time, I was able to get the Web page with the Magic Green Button to bring me to the registration page to load almost immediately, with only a couple of presses of the F5 (or: “Goddammit!”) key.

The registration form page opened immediately, and I was able to get my form submitted in its entirety by about 12:03. It was painless, at least compared to the last time I tried to obtain a room through the convention (2008), when it took me about two hours to get the page to load and by the time it did, the Hyatt, Sheraton and Hilton – Holy Grails of many convention goers – were a distant memory, like the dodo bird, or times when it was easy and hassle-free to attend SDCC.