Saving Comic-Con Before It Starts Part 1 – Separating the Geeks

Imagine a giant Olympic-sized swimming pool. Considering its size, it could probably fit maybe three or four hundred people all at once, tightly packed. But imagine 3,000 people wanted to take a dip and they were all told they can jump in exactly at 9am on a Saturday to get wet. However, after that moment, there’s a good chance it will close and the water will be gone, so 9am would be their only chance. Not surprisingly, at 9am three thousand people run screaming toward the giant pool, leaping, diving, and cannonballing into the cool waters. The first few hundred get nice and wet, but as the next thousand people pile on, hoping to make a splash, they just end up slamming into each other, until all they land in is the stack of bodies also squirming their way toward the water they believe is still in that pool (until someone tells them otherwise). The last thousand to take the plunge are now stacked 40 feet high and even though the ones toward the bottom swear that there’s still some water down there, the 2,754th person in the crowd isn’t going to get anywhere near it. He just tumbles off the pile of bodies and walks away angry and frustrated.
And dry.

A few weeks ago, geeks around the world found themselves struggling to get onto the San Diego Comic-Con site to purchase tickets to this year’s event, leaving both potential attendees and Comic-Con International angry and frustrated at the results when many went away empty-handed. What could they have done differently to prevent the servers from locking up and giving inaccurate information about the available quantity to the people were able to get onto the site? Even though they have a year to figure it out, you can bet they’re already working on answers to questions like these so it doesn’t happen again.

In the meantime, it doesn’t hurt to brainstorm amongst us geeks. We’re not running the show, but maybe they’ll get a few usable ideas from us. All that matters is that regardless of how much San Diego Comic-Con membership demand increases each year, the troubles we saw on February 5th do not increase with them.

Separating the Geeks

First, what the average person who is trying to get a pass to Comic-Con wants to avoid is the server crashes at worst and the frustratingly slow bottlenecking at best. There is no reason why a person who wants a ticket to Comic-Con can’t just go onto the site, click purchase, and then make that purchase (unless, of course, there are no tickets available). Despite the enormous number of fans who are given the opportunity to purchase a pass at the same time on the same day, there should be a means to handle it or at least, a way to change the system to relieve that burden. A slow (not crippled) server and maybe a few minutes page load time is acceptable as long as it yields concrete, dependable results (good or bad). Having to spend six hours trying to refresh a browser window is something no one should have to experience again. Or worse, getting to the site to find that it says all passes are sold out when they really aren’t (available only to the persistent reloaders). But what could be done to relieve the burden the servers experience when 100,000+ geeks storm the website?

Sell at Separate Times or Separate Days – Not every buyer wants the same thing. Yes, a majority of fans want 4 Day passes, but there are some that only want to experience a day or two of Comic-Con. They shouldn’t have to fight it out in the same arena as the obsessive full week fans. And the full week fans shouldn’t be dragged down by the people trying to just snag a Saturday pass. The registration could be split up between 4 Day membership purchasing and Single Day membership purchasing. Whether that means separating the registration times by hours (4 Day passes go on sale Saturday at 9am while Single Day passes go on sale at 12 noon) or by days (4 Day on Saturday at 9am and Single Day at 9am on Sunday), the experience would likely be a lot less harrowing if everyone wasn’t trying to jump into the same pool all at the same time.

Yes, the large number of people who didn’t get 4 Day memberships at the first day/time would likely jump into the Single Day purchasing later on, but I believe the burden would still be much lighter without the thousands of the other successful 4 Day pass purchasers out of the way. And, yes, I’m thinking that a version of this idea would also work for the usually insane upcoming Hotel Registration Day, but that’s a completely different post (coming soon).

What do you think? Would it help? Would it make no difference at all? Feel free to make comments here in the comments below or on the official Unauthorized San Diego Comic-Con Survival Guide Facebook page and let’s hash this out. I don’t have all the answers and ideas. I may have written a book about San Diego Comic-Con, but unlike some people, I don’t claim to know it all. Maybe you have something to contribute that’s even better. Let’s hear it!

Next: Saving Comic-Con Part 2 – Breaking Up the Site

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