Wow, what a crazy morning! The final big hurdle on our journey to Comic-Con. Tensions were high minutes leading up to 9:00a pst as nervous tweets flooded the Twitterverse. It was only a few years ago when the hotel sale was relatively unknown and only the ‘hardcore’ would use it. Fast forward to today and now it is affectionately knowns as #Hotelpocalypse. With the exception of the aforementioned early years, I have not had good luck getting a hotel in the past year tries. Well, this morning didn’t prove to be any different :(. Once the page finally opened after the first minute, the hotel window didn’t properly load. I was left with a list of hotels that wouldn’t respond to clicking. Confused, I reloaded a few more times to no avail. Finally after about 5 minutes, it loaded in normally and I could make my selections in order. I didn’t submit till about 9:09. Not good. I then checked on Twitter and it sounds like a number of people had similar issues- and it doesn’t seem to be localized to a certain browser type. Needless to say, I don’t think I got a hotel this time but I’m hoping someone in our party did.
I know all this is so stressful leading some to think, is this worth it? Getting a hotel downtown really does make for a special experience. While not necessary, it is more conducive for the overall immersive experience that is San Diego Comic-Con. Plus, the collective gauntlet that we all have to run creates an unparalleled relief for all the fans once we are there. Being at Comic-Con is like the celebration at the end of a marathon (so I am told). It’s grueling and painful, but the hugs and high fives make it so worth it for our weird little tribe.
If you had issues, don’t freak out. Wait for your e-mail in 48 hours then respond or call Travel Planners. They have been very responsive in the past- and given time, I believe they will work to resolve any issues.
I hope you fared better than I did today. Leave a comment with your time, mistakes, issues, and questions. 105 days and counting!
**Update Tuesday, 3:30 pm**
Travel Planners is sending up a follow up e-mail to those that submitted the form without hotels chosen because of the faulty form. If that is you, you should receive an e-mail to resubmit your 6 choices. I waited till I got the right form which was not the right thing since it delayed my time stamp significantly. Special thanks to Travel Planners for doing everything they can to make it right.
Crazy 4 Comic Con 
a lot of people had the page load issue, including myself (only about 20 or 30 seconds) but ive heard some didnt, so good for them, bad for everyone else I guess. I also heard there was a glitch with some folks using Chrome. It submitted blank forms from the hotel selection down, just users names, address and email. This happened when users tried to select hotels, used hot keys or something and it submitted instead of picking hotels. Some contacted TP and were told their submission COUNTS and these users will be contacted and given their hotel preferences. So about 10 seconds in and they get through on a loop hole.. Again, good for them, not good for everyone else.
I just hope my time was good enough
Very interesting. I guess I should have just submitted it blank then. Sounds like Travel Planners has their hands full over the next couple of days. Thanks for commenting!
As mentioned on Twitter, I got the “faulty” page as well. Used the CTRL key to multi-select my hotel selection and submitted. The submission was successful (got a screenshot just in case). Then all the hub bub about the faulty page. How my selections my not be valid. I did managed to get get through to TP to re-confirm my hotel selections and ranking. My submission online was done in under 4 minutes. Is that enough? Who knows. Just have to check my inbox.
Great job getting screenshots- and hopefully they will honor it. Let me know how it goes and thanks for the comment.
I got through at 9:00:45 or so. I had two Chrome windows open, and I was reloading each. One window crashed, and the other got through, and I finished around 9:01:15. I didn’t see any of the dropdown issues others experienced. My only hiccup was I couldn’t find my hotels (I kept looking for “San Diego Hilton” instead of “Hilton”, for example).
On thing when I was trying to get through to the site: I was CTRL-F5’ing, which I believe MAY have helped me, since CTRL does a force-reload of all elements instead of reading from cache. If what I hear is true that JavaScript code wasn’t loading properly, there is a possibility it’d still be cached upon future reloads, so even if HTML comes up, the bad JavaScript would still be used. But that’s just a wild guess on my part. Maybe I just got really lucky.
Makes sense. That was a heads up play and I hope it pays off. Let me know and thanks for commenting.
I had no issues other than the initial load slowness which seemed like a few seconds, although to be honest, I was not looking at the clock. But I will quite peeved if anyone who got to submit a blank form taking 10 seconds to submit, versus going through the entire form completion process, gets ahead of anyone in the timestamp queue. Because that is simply not fair to everyone who had updated browsers, java , etc etc etc *whatever the technical problem was*.
It took a little time to load – I had Chrome and Explorer open because Explorer was taking “forever” and I thought ‘what they heck open Chrome’. I had no issues with the form at all, at least I don’t think I did – I recall it looking correct and picking hotels and seeing them listed. I think I got in under 9:03am (well 12:03pm in my world). The only funny I had was I had watched Con Shark’s video from last year on how to fill out the form. It was a great video but I realized I never actually read the questions on this year’s form, I just clicked the same spots as from her video. So at this time I have no idea what the questions actually asked and I hope I don’t lose a leg, an arm or my first born 😉
Were there this many issues last year? If not, why did they “fix” it? If so, then I guess I was lucky two years in a row to not have the issues.
Now the wait for the official email notification. Sigh
That’s good to hear. There wasn’t as many issues last year so I don’t know if it’s a capacity issue. The box you checked was “It is okay to place me in Mexico’ 😉
Let me know how it goes for you and thanks!
It’s good I like Mexican food then ;P
I was very nervous!! so much that even my hands were trembling and almost couldn’t move the mouse :S
I did had a loading problem at the beginning (20 – 30 seconds approx) … I think I got my submission down to 2:00 minutes which is too much compared to my past times (1:00 – 1:30) …
I hope I can get a hotel ><
At 9am, I had a 20-30 second wait and didn’t reload. I just waited patiently and got my choices done at 9:02am. and screen capture my confirmation. Good luck to all. Ps. my computer is old school and patience is key!
If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what will! Congrats and let me know how it turns out for you.
this just in!!!. ive had friends just get cancellation emails from travel planners saying their form was a duplicate but they DIDNT use he same names as anyone… i find it highly inappropriate iftravel planners is accepting uncompleted forms and rejecting completed forms. Theyre going to reach out to TP and let some profanities fly i guess
Woah, very interesting. Sounds like we have a new hashtag #HotelGate. Let me know how it turns out and thanks for the update.
disregard…. it was all an elaborate hoax on me due to my over planning, aggressive hotel form practice tactics and constant worrying. My buddy made up a fake email from travel planners and took a screenshot of it. looked real…. then got 2 others involved on the gag…. got me good. Basically they told me they got rejected because they did the opposite of everything i told them NOT to do.
Ha ha! That is cruel. Now if you land a hotel, it’s your turn to tell them that ya’ll didn’t get one. Make them sweat it out. Good to hear no crazy shenanigans went on.
I accessed the link from my phone and got all 6 of my hotels in by 9:03. Sorry to hear about the issue. That’s SDCC for ya!
Looks like anyone who submitted this morning will receive an email to send in their hotel requests again. I got it, and it mentioned it will take into account the time stamp from the first submission.
Now that the e-mails are being sent out to people who sent in flawed forms, is a precedent being set for next year to have people insta-click and submit a flawed form in the anticipation of getting a great time stamp and then having the option to casually fill things out later? I did like you, Tony…I waited until things worked properly and then submitted. Now I’m saddened that others who just clicked anyway will get successful reservation while I won’t.
Good point… however, simply submitting a blank form wont work. There should be safeguards in place that prevent you from submitting if everything isnt filled out. For those with the glitch, those safeguards failed to load with the page off the server.
You really wouldn’t know if you had a bad page or not.
But good point. Just makes you think the only way to get a hotel is to follow suite and just submit in 3 seconds with no info.
Thanks to all of this, I wont be surprised to see the hotel sale be taken over by the random Epic waiting room next year. Good for people who keep striking out in the hotel sale, bad for people who practice their cans off and consistently put up stellar times.
Hit the link at 9 am and yes had the lag (seemed to be around 30 seconds ) filled out the form. (used Firefox) Could not get one of the hotels to add but eventually it did. Could not sort but was lucky it was in a decent order. Did screen caps of the main parts (names, hotels, dates). When I hit the submit there was another lag of around 5-10 seconds. Grabbed a screen cap of the “thank you” screen. Managed to get in at 9:01:19. Haven’t received an email from TP at all. This was stressful to say the least.
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I had page-loading issues last year and I didn’t submit until the five minute mark. But, I didn’t encounter many other people with the same problem. This year, I made sure I was on a faster connection. The page still took about a minute or more, but it was a little faster than last year and I got in when my clock was on 12:03. the delay made me really nervous and my hands were shaking so much I could barely move my mouse. I selected a few incorrect hotels because of it and had to correct myself.
It seems more people had the problem than last year.
SDCC clearly has to make a change like they did with the badge sale. The first change I would make is to limit the sale to people with confirmed badges. I think the increase in traffic is due to non-badgdholders. After all, the number of badgeholders hasn’t changed in years.
Soooo should I have gotten a confirmation email of my choices already (not what I get but what I filled out)? Because I did not. Last year I got one the same day as us entering the form but nothing this year. I’m worried now. Advice?
Hubby just re-read the screen shot and it does say it may be 48 hours to get the confirmation…. although odd since that would also be the same time you are supposed to receive your selection email. Hmmmm
I haven’t heard of anyone getting their confirmations yet. I’m sure we will start receiving them tomorrow.
Just got my confirmation email!!
I filled out the question wrong. LOL!!!
Mexico here I come.
“I have not had good luck getting a hotel in the past year tries.”
Didnt you stay at the Hilton Bay front last year?
I
Yes, but someone kindly passed on their reservation to me. In 5 years of doing the hotel sale I have struck out every time 😦
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Hey Tony, sorry about what happened with your delayed submission of the form. Here is what happened with me. I was using chrome and waited about 20 seconds for the form to load. I used auto complete to fill in most of the form and thought it was weird that they showed all the hotel choices but with no way to select them, so I just hit the submit button at the bottom of the page thinking that the next page would allow me to choose my hotels. It turns out that I did not check the three check boxes near the bottom of the form, so I got an error message telling me finish checking the boxes. I did that and hit submit again and got an error message about not selecting any hotels, so I scrolled back up to the hotels and the first pull down menu was there (which was missing the first time the page loaded) , so I proceeded to enter my 6 choices and hit the submit button for the third time. I was done at about 9:03 AM. No e-mail so maybe mine got in okay, who knows 😀
Yea, as clumsy as that sounds, it seems like your form got submitted. Thanks for your story and let me know how it turns out for you.