San Diego Con Badge Sales begin Saturday!

Stan Sakai · Post by **Stan Sakai** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 10:22 -0700

Badges for the 2012 San Diego Comic-con will go on sale at 8AM Pacific Standard Time on Saturday, March 3rd.

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/badge_sales.php

If you are looking to buy a badge, they recommend you go to

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_reg.php

and download the "Helpful Hints and Tips for Online Badge Registration". This might give you an advantage over those who have not read it. It would be especially helpful if you are a first-time potential attendee, as badge-buying can sometimes be confusing and very frustrating.

Good luck to all Dojo members going to buy badges. However, you must have already registered and received a member ID before you can buy a badge.

See you in San Diego!

Post by **Mayhem** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:34 -0700

I'm interestingly awaiting feedback from people on how this transpires compared to the previous way of buying passes. Mainly to see what things are going to be like for next year, as it's pretty much gonna be all online from now on to my knowledge, no at-con pass purchasing.

Unless I get a job in the next month, then I'm pretty much not going to be able to go this year. But I wish those of you who are going to be trying to buy passes tomorrow all the best.

Stan Sakai · Post by **Stan Sakai** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 16:19 -0700

Last year, we had a contest on how long it would take for con badges to sell out. Silent Phantom was the winner with "One Day".

Post by **Mayhem** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 17:11 -0700

Yeah, I think we were all amazed by that prediction. They do even put contingency in place for that in the advice on the website, saying that if you're in the queue and it's over 40,000 long, you may not get passes. So they evidently think they'll all sell out tomorrow.

Silent Phantom · Post by **Silent Phantom** » Fri Mar 02, 2012 23:25 -0700

I think part of the reason it sells out more quickly every year is because of the fast sellout of preview night passes. Enough people can't get them, so then they start worrying they can't get any tickets, and rush to get the first regular 4 Day tickets. Compound this every year, and with the growing awareness of comics and Comic-Con, there's just not enough tickets to go around.

I'm the most curious about tickets for 2013, since the rumor is there won't be any onsite sales at this year's con. If it's 100% online, will they give some preference to people who have been going for consecutive years, or will it just be first come first served? If it's the latter, I'd expect their servers to melt in about 0.5 seconds.

Post by **Mayhem** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 9:20 -0700

Silent Phantom wrote:If it's the latter, I'd expect their servers to melt in about 0.5 seconds.

This, I believe, will be the case, which is why I'm eagerly awaiting the feedback from how the online sale goes this year. I just clicked on the room myself to see what things were like over an hour after opening, and my number was over 30,000. Yeah... lots of people still in queue.

Not sure if you were aware SP, but the process is now queued for those wanting to buy. You get put in a waiting room with a number, when it gets to your turn, you get taken through to the pass buying process. So the servers should survive fine. It's what people think of the waiting process and anything else I guess.

Robert Kassebaum · Sat Mar 03, 2012 10:09 -0700

I was # 17563 (Around there) in line. By 8:35 am pst, all 4-day passes were sold out. By 8:55 am pst when I finally got in to buy, Saturday passes were sold out. All I needed was a Sunday Pass (I already have Thursday thru Saturday for this year Con). This is the first time in 21 years I will be going to the SDCC with out a four day pass . . .

WOW update: SDCC sold out in about an hour and a half!

Post by **Mayhem** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 13:22 -0700

I imagine many people were buying for each other, and keeping in touch when they got into the lobby; whoever had the lowest number would then do the buying for all of them as they would be the first to the booking server. Only explanation for the four day passes going so quickly. Unless there were not a huge number left after the sales at last year's show.

Makes you wonder just what the chances are to get a four day pass for next year will be like. Still, there are returns to consider down the line.

Silent Phantom · Post by **Silent Phantom** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 14:17 -0700

While it sold out very quickly, it seems like their servers were able to handle it for the most part. The next fun part will be getting a hotel room.

Anyone want to start lining up for tickets for SDCC 2013

cynlee · Post by **cynlee** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 12:02 -0700

Sold out-- was stuck at CSULA for the day-- couldn't get online-- so sad.

Of course, there's always the chance to get passes once they start reselling them, but at this point Comic-Con will not be blessed with my presence this year.

I heard from friends that there was a glitch in the beginning-- some of the links in the email alert did not work or something. Took them 15 minutes to fix I think she said, and by then she was so far back in line it was nigh-impossible to get tickets.

Going to WonderCon in a few weeks-- sounds like that and LBCC will be the only ones I'll get to attend from now on.

Post by **Mayhem** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 14:17 -0700

Yeah, the redirect links if you used GMail or a couple of other providers were not working properly, so people had to copy/paste the URL instead. By the time many of them realised, yeah, it was very much too late...