Avoiding Hotel Day

10 MARCH 2015

Just a few weeks from now, on 24 March, we’ll have Hotel Day. There’s no reason to fear it; it’s a game of chance, but one that offers you better odds than Open Reg (you will get a hotel room, just not always the one you wanted) and one that’s far less stressful. You go into the system, make your choices, and leave. It’s over with in minutes.

All the same, those of you who don’t have the stomach for anymore risk or stress are usually looking for an alternative around this time. Here’s what not to do: pay some ungodly sum for a nonrefundable hotel. You have Early Bird for that, and those hotels are much cheaper than those outside the system. But you do have other options at your disposal.

San Diego Craigslist

Yeah, I know. But that is where most residents are advertising condos, spare rooms and so on. At the same time, there are a fair amount of grifters, so caveat emptor.

Shake the nerd tree

Ask around Facebook and your digital communities for fellow attendees (or just sympathizers) who are open to letting you crash in their guest room/couch for a minimal fee. Is this weird? It would be for me, but I’m a distrustful misanthrope who needs my space. If you love hobnobbing with strangers, this could be just the ticket.

Hostels and Campgrounds

You know if you’re up for this route. Most of the attendees I know who’ve stayed in hostels were more than satisfied.

Airbnb and  Couchsurfing

Airbnb will continually have new rooms and houses appearing over the next few months so keep checking back even if you don’t see anything reasonable right now.

Split your stay

To hedge your bets, you can book 2 nights at a less-desirable hotel right now and then look for 2 nights through the official hotel sale. Why this ups your chances: because a lot more un-badged people will be flooding in on the weekend just to hang. So if you book Friday and Saturday now somewhere else, then only do Wednesday and Thursday through the hotel sale, you have a slightly better chance at landing at a premium hotel compared to those of us who are trying to book all four nights at the Marriott. Yes, packing up your stuff and taking it on the shuttle is kind of a pain, but it’s not that awful.


Look at non-Travel Planners hotels.

Personally I wouldn’t go this route unless you A) want to avoid the mayhem of Hotel Day at all costs or B) want to blend other vacation elements into your trip, in which case some of these hotels (like the Hotel Del Coronado) can offer a leisurely beach/recreational experience.

These hotels are not discounted, they are not on the Shuttle Grid - but they’re also a sure thing should you want to pay their price.

Pacific Inn and Suites

Harborview Inn & Suites San Diego Harbor

Hilton Garden Inn Carlsbad

Estancia La Jolla Hotel 

Hotel Del Coronado 

Gaslamp Plaza Suites 

Somerset Suites

Coronado Inn 

Comfort Inn Gaslamp 

In the end, remember that your lodgings are just a place to sleep off your SDCC exhaustion. This isn’t the kind of thing that should make or break your Con experience – so be practical and make the arrangements that are best for you. Once you're there in the rush of excitement, you won't care where you hit the pillow each night.

Buyer beware: on badges and scalpers

6 JUNE 2014

 

Every year Craigslist (and Ebay to a lesser extent) lights up with Comic-Con badges for sale. This year I’ve seen more ads than ever, at least in the L.A. area. Most of the single day badges have been selling for $100-200 and the 4-days have been upwards of $600 or best offer.

There are always takers for these badges. I would caution everyone against trusting scalpers and Craigslist sellers - but since you probably won't listen to me, here’s what you should be aware of.

• First-timers, this is how getting your badge works: you go to the Town & Country Hotel or the convention center, show your photo ID and your printed confirmation barcode, and get handed your badge. So if a seller is telling you to just supply a certain name, or is telling you they can send the badge to you in advance, they’re lying.

• Almost always if you see someone on the street, hawking a badge like they’re outside a concert stadium, they’re trying to sell you a fake badge. This is true, at least, in the first days of the Con; sometimes on Saturday and often on Sunday, normal attendees really will sell off their badges. (At least they used to – now that we allegedly need a code off the badges for pre-reg, that probably won’t happen. Though some people will undoubtedly just snap a picture of the badge.) But for those first few days, no one waits in line to get their badge, then tries to sell it on the street. They’ll line up a seller online who has time to get $$$ in cash to hand over.

• If you do procure a badge that doesn’t have your name on it, know that security guards will sometimes just glance at your badge as you pass into the Exhibit Hall and other times, will pull you aside to show a photo ID. How often does this happen? You’re talking about 130,000 people so probably not that often – but it happened to a first-timer I went with last year. She was pulled aside for no reason and forced to show her driver’s license.

• If you’re calculating the odds of someone scamming you for just a few hundred dollars, you need to juxtapose that with the odds of someone waiting in a long tedious line to pick up a legit badge for just a few hundred dollars. Time is money, and few people are going to rise at 2 a.m., go wait in line in the damp San Diego night, get a one-day badge and hand it off to you that morning for $150. That’s barely minimum wage. What’s much easier: printing off a convincing-looking facsimile of a badge that fools you (but probably won’t pass muster at the doors of the convention center.)

• Yes, there are legit scalpers. They come in two classes. There are people who buy badges just to sell them at a profit. Usually it’s only worth it for them if they got a Preview Night/Thursday badge, so they can avoid the long pick-up lines. And there are retail/industry people who get extra unassigned badges which they will sell off on Craigslist – usually not until right before the Con, when they know for sure none of their friends can use them. L.A. is rife with this.

• If you want to just see one panel, or take a spin through the Exhibit Hall one time, you can make an arrangement to “borrow” a badge for a few hours. A lot of people are glad to do this while they go eat or head back to their hotels. There just has to be a level of trust that you’ll return the badge, which is why this usually works between friends.

• CCI takes a hard line on any kind of badge shenanigans, which means that if you’re caught on either end of an underground badge transaction, you’re banned from the Con.

Every year I hear from people who get burned trying to score from a scalper and people who were successful – but the first group vastly outnumbers the second. So caveat emptor. I know you really want to get into the Con. But everyone else knows it too, and some of them make a business out of it.