To Whom It May Concern at Comic-Con International:
I know that you will probably never see this, but I feel that if you ever did, you may at least listen since the constant changing of systems year-to-year shows you’re invested in figuring out the smoothest way possible for preregistration for the following year’s Comic-Con.
My husband & I participated in the mandatory online preregistration process this morning. While we were relieved to not have to get up and get in line to get them at 6:00am like we had to last year, we were not thrilled with this process. [UPDATE: My husband just read this and said he much prefers this online process to getting up early and waiting in line, and thinks it was a system that worked really well.] We got ourselves set up at our computers almost a full 30 minutes before they went on sale at 8:00am PDT and found ourselves incredibly nervous that in a way, our desire to get 4 Day with Preview Night passes for San Diego Comic-Con 2013 was out of our hands. Rather than have no one to blame but ourselves if we didn’t get in line early enough, we had to rely solely on the click of a URL link. We, like everyone else we knew who wanted more than anything to make sure they were able to return to Comic-Con again, had to be dependent on the speed of our Internets and the luck of whatever spot we ended up in once the dust settled as we waited to even get a number in the “Waiting Room.”
The idea that no one would have to spend time waiting in yet another long line at an event now infamous for its long lines is certainly appreciated. I thank you for that intended courtesy. However, it’s unfair that someone who has faithfully attended SDCC for the past 30 years should, pardon my language, get screwed because their Internet loaded a web browser mere seconds slower than someone else did. Is that the luck of the draw? Perhaps. But it’s still frustrating. The system this year failed many of my friends and fellow longtime attendees.
My husband and I were very fortunate. My years of flying Southwest have trained me to instinctively click “Go” as soon as the clock turns go time. We both clicked the link within 5 seconds of each other. I got the page to load after about 30 seconds. My husband’s page did not load for over a minute. We were 10,000 people apart in line. I was beyond lucky to be able to purchase tickets for both of us. Thank you for making it that someone could purchase 3 tickets at a time.
So anyway, these are my words on the new process of preregistration. I’m sad that many of my friends who were not as fortunate as I was were unrewarded for their loyalty. I hope that next year, we can maybe go back to how it used to be. Preregistration was never this big of a drama until 2011, but I guess now that you made it such a big deal, there’s no going back now…
Thank you for listening to my humble opinion.
