Are you ready for tomorrow morning? Since most of the hotels have blocked out rooms at a discount price in conjunction with Comic-Con, this is your opportunity to snag the least expensive hotel rooms in the city, specifically downtown. Here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know and do:
- INTERNET – Make sure your internet service bill is paid. And if you’re on DSL (or god forbid, dial-up), expect to be squashed by everyone else. If you work at an office with a T1 line or better, you should have the best chance at connecting fastest. Also, a wired connection will be better than a wireless one. No guarantees, of course, because it’s all going to seem like an uphill struggle no matter what you have once the site starts shuddering under the onslaught just before 9am.
- COMPUTER – Be at your computer(s) before 9am PACIFIC TIME, preferably 15 minutes beforehand. No distractions. And pee beforehand, because you don’t know how many hours you might be sitting there.
- BROWSER – Open your fastest, favorite browser(s) and point it/them at the official Comic-Con Hotels page (having more than one of the same browser open won’t likely do much good, so mix it up with IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or whatever indie browser you prefer). I’d give tips on using the phone, but I’ve never heard of anyone ever getting through that way.
- HOTELS – Have your top 20 hotels in a document on your desktop, clearly typed, and in order of preference open and ready to go. Also include price per night information with each (see #5).
- CREDIT CARD – Make sure you have your credit card information in hand with available funds to cover the most expensive hotel in your list, because there is a chance you’ll get THAT hotel, even if you really wanted the cheaper one. You will be charged one night’s stay as a deposit for the amount of the room they give you.
- TIME CHECK – Verify that the time on your watch, computer, whatever is correct. Hate to discover later that you got started 5 minutes after everyone else. Every second counts.
- READY TO RELOAD – Ready that reload button finger (F5 on your keyboard) and practice flipping between each of the browser windows you have open, allowing yourself a clear view of at least most of each window’s contents so that you can know which one logs you in first.
- KEEP A BACKUP – If you find that more than one of your browsers has brought up the purchase page, pick the first one and do NOT close the others until you’ve completed your purchase in the first one. Should the first browser crash or disconnect for any reason, you will hopefully still have access via the other browser windows.
- CONFIRMATION OF REQUEST – Travel Planners will date and time stamp your request and assign rooms based on that and your room preference, number of people, etc in the order it was received. Be aware that you should receive confirmation that your request was submitted within 48 hours.
- CONFIRMATION OF ROOM – You probably won’t get confirmation on what room you got (or charged a deposit) until around March 15th. Depending on how things go tomorrow, I imagine this date will shift one way or the other.
- Don’t panic and good luck!
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