SDCC Hotel Registration Re-Opens… But the Rooms Aren’t Nearby

San Diego Comic-Con Survival GuideOfficial Comic-Con Hotel Registration has re-opened! As I write this, there are currently 19 different hotels showing available rooms. All are 5 to 10 miles away, ranging in price from $156 to $249 per night.

It’s been a few weeks since the San Diego Comic-Con official Hotel Registration Day took place and from most of the feedback I’ve heard, it went surprisingly smoothly for most people. Yes, there was an issue with some fields not showing up when Google Chrome was used, but that was easily remedied by using another browser. And, no, not everyone got their first selections or even their top 20 picks. But the process of entering and submitting your hotel choices went quickly and easily. No crashing servers. No lost reservations mid-entry. That’s mainly because, this time, there was no need to establish a multitude of secure https connections to take requests and process credit cards for each reservation. 100,000 people logging on at once in that environment can cripple even the heartiest, most dedicated servers, as we’ve seen in previous years, much to our frustration. This year, we just logged in, provided some basic information, picked a few hotels from the list, and clicked submit. Nothing too private or scary about sending that information off to Travel Planners.

Of course, there was that nerve-wracking waiting period as many of us hoped to win the “hotel lottery”. I got my 5th choice out of the 20 I selected, but I did get a room downtown a few blocks away in a good area that I’ve been to before. Others I’ve talked to were surprised to get their first choice, including some rooms directly across the street. But it was clear that unless you got your reservation submitted in the first 5-10 minutes of that day, you likely weren’t going to get exactly what you wanted or anything at all. That’s just how high the demand was.

And while the hotel reservation system closed about 5 hours after it opened, with pretty much all available hotel rooms claimed at that time, Comic-Con International has since re-opened Hotel Registration on their official site with more hotels available than ever. Unfortunately, if you were hoping for something less than 5 to 10 miles from the convention center, you will be sorely disappointed. But that doesn’t mean more rooms won’t open randomly as they become available in the coming weeks and months. Once that first refund deadline hits, expect some good spots to appear on that list. You never know…

What was your experience like? Did you get what you wanted? Will you be trying for a better room if they become available? Have you given up hope and plan to sleep in the Hall H line each night?

 

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