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The San Diego hotel room lottery, known variously as #hoteloween (by a few old timers) and #hotelpocalypse (by the current generation), took place this morning and it was a terrifying new version that found the randomization previously used for badges not applied to hotel rooms. Travelplanners, now renamed On Peak is still handling the process, […]

Life as we know it is going back to normal next year as the dates for SDCC ’16 have been revealed and it’s back to the normal third week dates of July 21-14. Thank god. None of this post Fourth of July hell.

In even better news that will shock everyone, it looks like Con will be staying in San Diego, at least through 2018. It seems SD mayor Kevin Faulconer has been meeting with CCI peeps and hotel owners to personally make sure they can stay. The biggest issue was getting hotels to agree to setting aside large room blocks at discounted rates.

Comic-Con International and the San Diego Tourism Authority, which oversees convention center bookings, declined to comment this week on when a new two-year contract would be inked. Hoteliers, however, confirmed that they have been responding to a recent request from Comic-Con organizers that they write up addendums to their 2016 room block contracts committing to not raise their rates for 2017 and 2018 and to maintain the same number of discounted hotel rooms for the convention.

“We support the mayor’s efforts to keep Comic-Con in San Diego and have worked cooperatively with our hotel members to come to a reasonable agreement between the city and Comic-Con,” said Namara Mercer, executive director of the San Diego County Hotel-Motel Association. “By and large, the majority of the hotels are on board, and the only delays were with a few hotels that were evaluating the proposal.

According to Hilton sales and marketing dude Donovan Henson, “We feel like we’re in a very good place with Comic-Con on the hotel side for ‘17 and ‘18. And we know that in their hearts they want to stay so we have to work together to extend out as long as we can.”

Ya hear that Las Vegas? In their hearts, they want to stay!

I should note here that these “discounted rates” are sort of discounts. For instance, at the Hilton Bayfront, the con rate is is $299 a night. I did a random check of Hilton rates and found this on their own website for dates later in the summer:

However, to be fair, when I checked other rates  at other hotels, they were all around $300 a night for  summer weekends, which is a high demand time for what is, after all, a popular travel destination even without Trigun cosplayers and Travis Fimmel. When you add in supply and demand, $300 a night isn’t cheap but it is well within the market price. Keeping these rates for the next few years is definitely a good deal for the CCI folks and hotels, and by 2019 I’ll be too old to go so I won’t care.

As for other convention data, the Unofficial SDCC blog has news that last year’s wristband system will most likely be in place this year. This new policy was instituted to cut down on “line jumpers” who send a pal to camp out and fight off zombies during the long, hard night, and waltzed in as a gang of 12 or so to get in line for The Walking Dead panel as dawn breaks. Once again, I an by nature unable to understand this line waiting impulse, but the comments on the USDCCB post are full of complaints that the system made lines longer…why, yes. That was their intent. Some people also complain that the new system is dangerous because now children have to sleep outside in line instead of having dad wait for them, and the children are hungry and oh, papa why? My question is, WHY ARE YOU MAKING YOUR CHILDREN CAMP OUT TO SEE SOME DUMB PANEL ANYWAY?

Once again, I’m sure the kids are excited to see the cast of Kiss Meets Scooby Doo, so I’m not accusing anyone of bad parenting. The comments indicate that there was actually quite a bit of confusion over last year’s wristband system, so I’m not sure if these are just comment complainers or a general sentiment. Peanut gallery what say you?

A few wrap-ups on this year’s hotel lottery. The next hotel sale is April 8th, with details to come from CCI, but no downtown hotel rooms are expected to be available. However here’s a succinct list of options for those who are without hotel rooms at this point.

This year’s sale did not go smoothly, and the folks at Comic-Con responded with a statement:

We’re obviously disappointed the hotel sale didn’t run as smoothly as we would have liked. Our attendees are very important to us and we have worked very hard to secure more room blocks and reduced rates at area hotels. We continue to strive to provide the best means to accommodate the growing number of people looking for lodging during the show. In fact, one of the major sticking points in our current negotiations to remain in San Diego are hotel rates. This incident has cast a shadow on our efforts but we are working with Travel Planners to ensure this type of situation does not occur again.

I think “cast a shadow” is a little strong, but Kerry Dixon at the SDCC Unofficial blog has a strongly word editorial called The San Diego Comic-Con General Hotel Sale Failed On Every Level – And Why That’s Not Acceptable:

Because no matter which way you slice it, the entire general housing sale this year was not only a disaster, but a critical failure, on every single level.
[snip]
Although we can almost picture how the conversation went behind the scenes — something along the lines of, “Yes, there were problems, but we think we can work very hard and keep our deadlines and the promised March 26 hotel reservations deadline” – it fails to address the main problems here. First is obviously that things went horrifically wrong in this sale. Unlike when the Member ID site crashed an hour before the Open Registration badge sale, when you could theoretically blame attendees for “waiting until the last minute”, this was not the fault of outdated browsers, ill preparation, or anything other than technical issues – plural.

While I agree that the user slam on the Travel Planners site was even bigger than usual (think epic cyclone) and TP maybe should have known that, I’m not sure how the results would have been any different if it had all worked! Some people would have gotten their hotel rooms and others wouldn’t. And those who were deserving because they were fast would have…I mean is this really a contest of strength and agility? Maybe they can give out hotel rooms based on how well you run the Walking Dead Obstacle course next year? Or there can be tournaments? Let’s really make this a show!

Some people seem to pretend taht the hotel lottery isn’t a lottery and is based on some kind of merit system. And it isn’t.

I preferred Tony Kim’s reaction which suggested that hotel rage may have been even worse than the technical meltdown.

Yet even in the calamity of Hotelpocalypse, I saw the very best of our community as extra reservations were swapped and given out to those in need.

However, it was not without it’s blood shed. It wasn’t before long that the blog-o-sphere started firing away with articles recounting the events of the week in excruciating detail. Frankly, I’m a little over it. I get it- clearly Travel Planners was not prepared for the deluge of registration that hit on March 24 at 9am. I was victim of it and walked away empty handed on Friday. They need to learn some hard lessons and make it right for next time. But the negativity that emerged, was to me, nothing but needlessly stating the obvious. Perhaps it’s cathartic in nature for some but in a lot of ways, I think it just adds fuel to the forest fire. In fact, stating that an organization ‘doesn’t care’ about their fans is just plain ignorant. Sure mistakes or underestimations were made- and there needs to be accountability, but to accuse a team of hard working people of apathy is irresponsible. Inflammatory articles like these just give bloggers like us a bad name.

I agree, and not just because I got my first choice. I’ve been shut out in years past —as Tony was this year—but I always figure something out. This year, I’ve already hooked up several people with rooms with people who needed rooms, and there is this message board for room swapping. Not having a long commute to the con helps me do my job but one year I almost stayed on Coronado just because taking the water taxi every morning and waking up on a beautiful island would be SO COOL.

San Diego Comic-Con is about having a great time; in fact, having one of the best times. And the random nature of it is part of the appeal. You only go through life once; deciding on new paths versus a beloved older one is part of what makes life interesting.

Once you embrace the random chaos it becomes more beautiful than you could possibly imagine.

For over a decade we’ve been chronicling the agony of getting a hotel room for San Diego, and this year’s fret spree seemed to find new ways to be stressful. As we’re writing, the admission letters are going out, and it’s like the lottery scene from The Hunger Games for tension and FOMO. For some reason, I got a room—I got one last year but got shut out the year before, so it all seems random in the end. Time stamps, forms that didn’t load, fate, destiny…for some reason this year has has more anxiety about how it was going to work out, and as the selection of tweets below show, a sense of humor is a good thing to be armed with.

The thing about the hotel room sprint is that it isn’t random—like the badge lottery—or selective—like getting a pro badge or a press badge or an industry professional badge. You can marshal evidence or get a testimonial to get those things. But not so a hotel room.

No, getting a hotel room is a physical and mental race against the clock. You need to have Nolan Ryan’s fastball, Ronda Rousey’s reflexes and Edward Snowden’s keyboard skills. It’s the ultimate test of nerves for nerds.

But some may wonder, just how short IS the window to get a room downtown? I think the notification that downtown hotel rooms are gone usually starts within about 10 minutes, but the timestamp needs to be a lot shorter than that. While there is no definitive way of knowing the answer to what is the magic time stamp—short of hacking into Travel Planners— the Unofficial Comic Con blog ran a survey of attendees vis a vis their hotel longings, and we’ve taken the results of the questions “How long, including initial load time, did it take you to submit your form?” and made a chart. Oh yeah we did.

560 people answered this question so while it’s a sample, it’s a decent sized one. As you can see, most people are in and out in under three minutes, with most within two minutes. That’s about the length of the Ramones classic “Blitzkrieg Bop” so you may want to use that as a training guide for next year.

Anyway, if you’ve been thinking you don’t have long to get that form filled out and submitted…you’re right.

Oh yeah and here’s the twitter reaction.

#SDCC #Hotelpocalypse I GOT INTO HUFFLEPUFF!

— Wes Smith (@Weszor) March 27, 2015

Turned on notification to All New Mail has turned these Olive Garden offers into jokes from the devil. #SDCC #Hotelpocalypse

— NERDOPHILES (@nerdophiles) March 27, 2015

@SD_Comic_Con Got a T&C reservation confirmation 8 mins ago for a botched form submitted at 9:03!

— Isabel Talsma (@isabeldoodles) March 27, 2015

Well that didn't last at all. I need to know if I got a hotel!!!! #SDCC #Hotelpocalypse pic.twitter.com/3XknUueX5T

— Megan M (@Mugsy211) March 27, 2015

Got my confirmation for #SDCC. A private suite with easy freeway access! #Hotelpocalypse #SDCC pic.twitter.com/LUvGSoV855

— Gary Miereanu (@SuperPRGuy) March 27, 2015

Wondering how the #SDCC hotel waitlist worked last year, and what was available? Here's our recap from 2014: http://t.co/Jr3tiyYFIN

— SDCC Unofficial Blog (@SD_Comic_Con) March 27, 2015

Writing a new book inspired by Dr. Seuss while waiting for #Hotelpocalypse to end: Are You My Hotel Confirmation? It'll be a classic. #SDCC

— Nerds Doing Stuff (@NerdsDoingStuff) March 27, 2015

https://twitter.com/Crazy4ComicCon/status/581284173018591233

But of course I didn't get any of my hotel selections…all good. #SDCC2015

— Umberto Gonzalez (@elmayimbe) March 26, 2015

So 5th year of my #sdcc party will be BIGGEST yet. Got a HOT new venue & a hot new sponsor. Full open bar. Top shelf liquor. A legendary DJ.

— Umberto Gonzalez (@elmayimbe) March 26, 2015

I'm looking for a gaslamp hotel. Preferably the Omni You want to come to the ultimate con club banger this year? Let's trade. #SDCC

— Umberto Gonzalez (@elmayimbe) March 26, 2015

If you got the Hyperion Hotel, maybe cancel. Its Yelp reviews are not so great. #SDCC

— Whedonesque (@whedonesque) March 27, 2015

I gave up on waiting for my #SDCC #Hotelpocalypse email. I'm taking up this guy's offer & staying with him. pic.twitter.com/mVnVOOn4GE

— Artimus Naugin (@TheArtimus) March 27, 2015

As I write this, the hotel situation for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con remains in flux. Open hotel registration—which is in effect a lottery based on hand and browser speed—took place yesterday morning, and it was a tense, tense 10 minutes with confirmation emails yet to go out.

Hours of training, both physical and mental, memorizing maps and testing internet speed were all for nought for a bunch of folks—the Beat included—because the website suffered some kind of hitch. Tony Kim has a sad account, backed up by many on Twitter. As the world collectively hit the refresh button at high noon EDT, 9 am PDT, the hotel selection form froze up and then sent you to the “Congrats, wait for your email” screen. That’s what happened here. I got the first screen, clicked on some hotels hit return, got kicked out and then sat there in confusion and dread and then went back in. The second time it worked but by then four minutes had passed, four precious, precious minutes, and downtown hotels are usually gone long before that to people with better autofill speeds.

Several people have heard from Travel Planners, the company that has been running Hotel Hell for many years, that a follow-up email would be sent to those who had submitted faulty forms and they would have a chance to pick their six hotels and resubmit. But would the first time stamp be honored? A few tweets of relevance:

We've spoken to Travel Planners, and they've asked that anyone with the bad form call them at 877-552-6642. They will gladly take your info.

— SDCC Unofficial Blog (@SD_Comic_Con) March 24, 2015

We know this is frustrating, but Travel Planners is working hard to make it right for everyone.

— SDCC Unofficial Blog (@SD_Comic_Con) March 24, 2015

@SD_Comic_Con Called them, it was very fast. They took my original hotel choices and are matching them to my original timestamp.

— Rebecca Ahern (@SaveTheFangirl) March 24, 2015

@SD_Comic_Con Just got a call from Travel Planners from the message I left earlier. Emails to go out between tonight and tomorrow morning.

— Sweetie Pie Pen (@sweetiepiepen) March 24, 2015

Emails to those with the bad form are going out. You have until 5PM tomorrow to submit ranked hotels via form. #SDCC

— SDCC Unofficial Blog (@SD_Comic_Con) March 24, 2015

WooHoo, so I got an email from the travel planners who run the #SDCC hotel reservation system, saying the form was bad & to resubmit choices

— Denz (@f4denz) March 24, 2015

Talked to TP, if your form was "good" you won't get an e-mail (yet). WTB a simple confirmation of submission… #SDCC #hotelpocalypse

— Marisa Price (@price_marisa) March 24, 2015

@Comixace My editor got an email hours later, saying there was an error when he submitted, telling him to resubmit. Not holding hope there.

— Brian Schirmer (@BrianSchirmer) March 25, 2015

I didn’t get any Travel Planners email so I guess my second form went through alright…but too late. No one seems to have gotten any “confirmation” emails from Travel Planners yet, either. But the fine folks there are doubtless working hard to make sure that people are taken care of.

And now the waiting begins. But I’m not going to just sit here and wait. I’m making a bold offer. If anyone has a spare room at the Omni, either Hilton, the Marriott Marina or the Hyatt, I’m willing to trade this mechanical pencil for it.

That’s right, for an extra hotel room you have no need of, you will receive this beautiful mechanical pencil, size B. The pencil is a few years old, but has not been used much, and has a secure grip for a firm, confident line. The pencil does not come with leads, but I’m sure you can find those at any stationary store.

This is a good deal, please give it some serious consideration.

Good luck to everyone caught up in this trying time. And as is now traditional for speaking of Hoteloween, “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

PS: I know that the hashtag used among Hall H waiters is #hotelpocalypse, but I’ sticking with #hoteloween because you never know what you’re going to get and I was here first.

Arrrgh, the most tension filled day of the year for Stately Beat Manor is tomorrow. San Diego Comic-Con hotel registration opens up at noon EDT, 9 am PDT. Gentlemen, start your browsers….and do not refresh. There are more rooms that ever this year, and the cancellations are refundable until April 15th so even if you get nothing tomorrow, DON’T PANIC. I have to hints tips or tricks to give for this since I’m competing with the rest of you. But you should definitely study the hotel list, since they’ve made it more complex by making separate listings for particular KINDS of rooms at various hotels, and getting a room depends entirely on how quickly you go through that list, so study up/

With the hotel lottery about to take place, the Unofficial San Diego Blog takes a look at 10 Years of San Diego Comic-Con Hotel Rates with a chart that is, tbh, a little hard to read, but the general idea is that hotel room prices have risen! Except for one hotel which started out as a $300+ luxury hotel but is now a $289 regular hotel. There is also a scan of the hotel list from 2006 which shows that really, a LOT fewer hotels were even ON the list then. As the person who has been covering the hotel hell for longer than anyone, I can attest to this. It’s part of the city’s ongoing proving it’s love for Con that has forced more hotels to sign up for the discounted rates instead of charging an arm and a leg.

And just in case you don’t get a room in the lottery, there are some area rooms available on hotel sites, mostly way more than $300 a night. But if money is no object and you can’t stand the stress….

ALSO, Tony Kim has a list of the best hotels for seeing celebrities, and it’s a pretty sound list. I figure everyone who wants to see a celebrity already knows this stuff, so there’s no harm in writing it out. But if you stand around the Hilton Bayfront lobby for any amount of time, you are pretty much guaranteed to see someone who is on TV.

Anyway, may the odds be in your favor.

Remember back in the day two years ago when you could go on the Ace Parking site and buy advance parking for the San Diego Comic-Con?

Well, this is no more. A new random lottery based system has been put in place, to go with all the other random lottery systems for Comic-Con:

Comic-Con Fans: This time around, we’re doing it differently. We want to provide the best experience possible and take the pain and pressure out of the process. So for this years sale, we’re going to a lottery based system.
How does it work?
Registration is easy. Send an email into [email protected] and you’re done.
Ace will collect entries until April 12th and then hold a random drawing to select the winners.
If your entry is selected, you will be guaranteed a spot at one of our Ace locations.
The lots will be filled in order as shown below:
Convention Center
Hilton Garage
Petco Lots (excluding Campus lot which will be closed for construction during Comic-Con)
Padres Parkade
Diamond View Tower
Horton Plaza
Gaslamp City Square
Entries will be selected at random up to the capacity of each location. If your entry is selected, you will receive an email back from us by April 15th. Included in that email will be details on how to purchase your permit at the location you were drawn for. If you choose not to purchase your permit, it will be forfeited.

There WILL be inventory space available after these premium spots are filled.

Advance parking is a great way to reserve a space to avoid hours of circling, running over zombies and missing panels. Another great way to do that is to get one of the shuttle route hotels and take the shuttle or the trolley to the con every day.

Please, do not attempt to get a close hotel. Leave those for The Beat.

It’s the scariest day of the year! Well, scariest if you already have a badge that is. Hotel registration for the San Diego Comic-Con took place at 9 am pdt, and it didn’t take long for the close hotels to go – this tweet went out about 9:23:

No surprise, but: welcome page message on #SDCC hotel request form already updated to say downtown hotels are gone. pic.twitter.com/DcG5zR3DGJ

— ConShark (@ConSharkNews) April 8, 2014

And now the waiting begins. Reservations within a three second block are considered the same time and go into a tie breaking lottery. My own time was 2:20, which is pretty good but…will I ever see you again Horton Grand? One pro tip: autofill, autofill, autofill.

This is as good a time as any to note that there is always some jockeying for rooms and swapping and shenanigans and what not, although the steep two day deposit has limited that. There’s always Airbnb, too although private rooms are going for $400-1000 so not exactly a bargain option.

Still, you know what? It will all work out.

Tweet

As the lamentwitterations filter over the land, the results of this year’s Hoteloween are being discovered. And while the lucky ones who got their first hotel choice smile to themselves, the tweets of the homeless fill the air.

Us? We’re somewhere in the middle. We didn’t get the hotel we’ve stayed at for many years—a quiet oasis in the middle of everything that has come to feel like home — and instead got stuck right in the middle of the hurricane at the Hyatt. Do not look forward to negotiating that Stella Artois and Charybdouche every night, but at least we don’t have to pack an electric kettle.

Based on what everyone is saying, it seems this was less of a lottery than in past years, and the time you got in, did your business and got out is really what netted people first choice hotels. Since we were in and out in just a tad over 2 minutes, it seems like if you were in and out in anything more than 3 minutes you were S.O.L.

This year it really depended on whether you checked other options, as well. For instance you had the option to get any downtown hotel, any downtown hotel at market rates or any hotel PERIOD. If you didn’t check all of those you didn’t get put on the list for those options.

A lot of good people who have been Comic-Con mainstays for decades didn’t get rooms. They’ll have to use their while and smarts to find accommodations if they plan to attend—the exhibitor hotel room lottery which took place last month is now the nexus point of many schemes and dreams.

There’s also the feeling that today’s Jim Parsons fans and cosplayers are just more motivated and more nimble. At least that’s how we feel here. It really didn’t matter when you got in but when you got out. After getting into the hotel system you had to quickly make six hotel choices from a lengthy drop down menu, type in your name and address and make other check box decisions on the fly. It took the concentration of a fighter pilot. When they make the inevitable Comic-Con reality TV show this needs to be one of the challenges!

In the larger sense, as we’ve been saying for a decade, there are more people who want to go than there are close hotel rooms. There isn’t a thing the con or the mayor or Jim Parsons can do about it. And until they start docking giant cruise ships outside the show, this is how it’s going to be.

To those who got the room of their dreams, congrats! To those who didn’t…perhaps Ron Marz is on to something:

The Pope leaves office and then nobody gets SDCC hotel rooms. Coincidence?

— Ron Marz (@ronmarz) February 28, 2013

For those who got the golden ticket, Bryan Singer has a picture of empty hotel lobbies for you.

How many days until @comic_con? #XMen #DaysofFuturePast #SDCC twitter.com/BryanSinger/st…

— Bryan Singer (@BryanSinger) February 20, 2013

That's right, even if you weren't on the internet at 12:00:00 pm pst ON THE DOT, there are still excellent hotels available right now. Many are on the shuttle root, many are name brand resorts.

Hey @morganspurlock, I think you need to do a doc on how to get a hotel room at Comic-Con next! :)

— Edward Douglas (@EDouglasWW) April 2, 2012

Okay, hotel room reservation notification for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con stated rolling out last night…and it was a mixed bag. Although The Beat got a room at our second choice, lots of people didn’t get a room at all. And based on an informal Twitter survey, it all seems to have been pretty random. People who got in between 9:03 and 9:09 seemed to run the gamut from first choice to no choice.

Was this really just a lottery? SOMEWHERE, we SEEM to remember reading that time stamps within 3 minutes of each other would be treated as a tie and processed in random order….but now we can’t find that language anywhere on the CCI site, so maybe we just imagined it? At any rate this kind of process would explain what happened.

Of much note, even the far out hotel rooms will be connected to the con by a new 24-hour shuttle service. That’s a huge investment by the con committee and should take at least some of the sting out of having to to stay near Sea World.

So what to do if you have no room?

• Hang tight. A two-night deposit must be made by Tuesday to secure the rooms already doled out. In some cases that’s a $500-600 dollar outlay so expect a bunch of room to become available on Tuesday. Although we haven’t seen the letter that went out with requests that weren’t able to be filled, it was suggested that there will be a secondary Hoteloween for these rooms.

• Rooms will keep opening up until May 5, when deposits become NON RETURNABLE. So keep checking.

• If you are really determined to go, there are still some rooms available in outlying areas on services like Travelocity and Hotels.com. They are not cheap — some are going for around $400 a night. You can still book a room at the Hotel Del Coronado for around $300 a night. No shuttle but you can take a water taxi at some times during the day!

There were more rooms than ever available as pat of the hotel block this year — that was part of the deal that saw the Con staying in San Diego. However they went just as fast as ever.

In case you’re wondering how they handle things when celebrity x gets booked for a panel at the last minute: exhibitors already got to book their rooms, so we’d imaging that WB or whoever just books a giant block of rooms at that point. Because Gerard Butler staying at the Days Inn Moonlight Beach Legoland probably wouldn’t work out so good.

In a few hours, reservations for hotel rooms for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con are going to be available, kicking off the annual rite known as Hotel-o-ween. YOU never know what you’re going to get—it might be a trick, or it might be a treat.

This year, we’re promised more rooms available than ever before—part of the negotiations for keeping the show in San Diego involved prying more rooms from the hotels who wanted to charge market, i.e. $400+ for their rooms, so that’s great news.

As in 2011, this year is a bit of a lottery: you can select up to 20 hotels once you get into the system, but they will be apportioned on a first come, first served basis.

Our advice: print out your hotel list, and make sure you have your member ID handy!

Good luck!