Hotel Reservations UPDATE...

We've been in touch with our travel agency, Travel Planners, numerous times today about the ongoing problems with their website. They're trying to fix the problems you've all been having, but they're also in the midst of processing phone reservations. We urge you to try again online, or call Travel Planners directly at 1-877-55-COMIC (1-877-552-6642) or 212-532-1660 if you cannot get through online.

Our Board of Directors expects an answer from them as to what went wrong, but that answer may not come today. And we can assure you: we're NOT moving to Vegas.

Comments

[Tom T.]

next year, Ditch travel planners and instead get reservation codes for the hotels and post them along with the hotel chains reservation phone numbers so the load is distributed to the hotels instead of having a single choke point. I almost had a room at the marriot but got a java page error then I was able to get a room at the sheraton suites after almost an hour of trying. I tried the phone number constantly as well and just got a busy signal every time for the first hour. If Comic con org continues to use the incompatent travel planners I may stop attending. {or have the travel planners IT staff visit sideshow collectibles and ask how they can handle massive sudden internet spikes when they have a pre-order.}

[Alice]

It's day two.....any UPDATES? I'd be interest to hear how many rooms were actually allotted to CCI, and the ratio for individual vs group reservations. Looks like Travel Planners are more interested in sucking up to the companies for future business. "Convention Housing. Unconventional Service" HAHAHAHAHAhahahah WHAT SERVICE?!?!

[Matt]

So were you not able to get ah old of Travel Planners today? Their phone lines were clear all day.

Fire the bums already if they can't be bothered to respond to you in a more timely manner. I'm sure there are plenty of competent companies out there that would love to work with Comic-Con (in Vegas).

[CG]

Three hotels are showing up as available.

[TT]

I agree to dump the travel planner and let us to reserve it directly with the hotel, it makes our life much easier. It's going to be expensive anyway during the con days regardless the con rate.

Most of us cannot get a hotel close to the con. center due to the jammed network. If you don't mind a bit further away, I suggest you get a hotel somewhere close to where the trolley running through, at least there're rooms available and cheaper. Try the areas like Old town, Mission Valley or Chula Vista...etc.

[disgruntled]

Town and Country is showing availability for the con but is TEN miles out.

[Rob]

I have to say that Travel Planners infrastructure probably isn't up to the task of booking the housing using the current one day, first come first served model. This is my third year attending ComicCon, and each year has been more of a nail-biter than the last.

This year, it took me an hour and a half before I was able to get a transaction through the Web site and get a room booked... and I was probably only able to do that because I tend to choose one of the lower demand hotels as my first choice because I like the place and don't mind walking.

The experience unnerved me enough that, while I was hitting refresh trying to get a transaction page to load, I called a non-con hotel directly and booked an emergency backup room for the first time. My transaction with Travel Partners did go through, but like many commenters, I did not receive a confirmation email, which made me concerned that my transaction hadn't "taken."

With that said, to give credit to Travel Planners: I was able to get through on my first call today and confirm that my reservation was legit. The woman I spoke to was extremely pleasant, confirmed my reservation quickly and waited on the line with me until I received her manually-sent confirmation email. And the poor woman sounded just as punch-drunk from yesterday's activities as I felt by the time I got a transaction through yesterday.

However, I believe it's clear that Travel Planners simply doesn't have the infrastructure to handle booking in it's current form, and CCI should consider changing the hotel booking procedure, or using another provider.

[Bill]

Hmmm... Okay, color me confused about the Group Reservations. :/

Interesting view about yesterday's stampede (at least the exhibitors rightfully got a helping hand):

http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2008/02/07/a-day-of-triumphand-tragedy/

[Steve]

Maybe, maybe not... Just for kicks, I started the procedure for 12 rooms July 23-27, and I got all the way to giving a CC # without being told that the rooms would not be available....

[Bill]

Took a look at that Group Reservation link... The listing covers from 7/18 thru 7/29, so yes there are rooms open between those dates, but the con dates are still filled up (the instructions still say to check the Hotel Availability matrix for the open accommodations).

Judging from the newsfeeds, there's a lot of Pros and Exhibitors who were in same boat as we were yesterday...

[disgruntled]

Ok i just discovered something truly frustrating... if you go to TC planners web page and click "group reservations" instead of the other one they show availability at TONS of hotels, but you have to request at least 10 rooms.....

Really now, who is booking rooms in blocks of 10 or more? Media, and the really big exhibitors like Sci Fi channel (which is also technically media as well).

That doesnt seem right to me especially when you KNOW there is a room shortage. Also worth noting, is that big media outlets have their own departments that can handle their travel and don't need the services of TP.

Once again the paying customers get screwed in the name of big buisness.Release the rooms!!!!

[Ed]

Might I suggest http://www.elcordovahotel.com/ not on the list but reasonably priced... a short ferry ride across the bay and then a two mile trip from there but it's available none the less!

[Bill]

Scratch that, Coronado Marriott now filled...
(Man, that was fast!)

[Bill]

As of now (6:40 PST), the Coronado Island Marriott still has rooms for the entire con (prices comparable to the Marriott Marina).

Interesting, looks like all of the Old Town / Mission Valley hotels have been removed from the list as well...

[Justin Copp]

Not to sound like I'm gloating, but I got my first choice hotel booked in 25 minutes. Last year I got it in 35. I don't know what I'm doing right that everybody else seems to be missing.

And good lord, people. Vegas is a terrible place for anything.

[C.B.]

Guys, just simply moving to another city isn't as easy as 1-2-3. It's definitely not happening anytime soon (probably not for another few years, though it could change). Moving to another city might give people more hotel options around the new city (whether it's Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix); however, that wouldn't necessarily solve the bandwidth problem or the phone problem. I do agree that Comic-Con International needs to at least be better prepared next time; and try to figure out something for the people that have attended in recent years. More importantly, if Travel Planners can't get its act together, then CCI needs to find someone more reliable.

[Liz]

Count me and my party of 2 more as having given up and not attending. It's just not worth it. It is also a slap in the face that you won't even consider moving to a city which can handle an event of this size.

[David G.]

I don't think I have much to add to the existing comments but I'll restate them just the same so I can vent my family's frustration.

This was my second time using CCI's system with TPHousing. My first time was two years ago and I had a similarly nail biting, stress filled experience. Unlike a lot of people today I was lucky to get TPHousing's pages loaded and get a week long booking at the Hilton Gaslamp. My wife was trying simultaneously at our house as backup and my mother was also trying at her home. Both got loading timeouts and never were able to book a hotel. My mom resorted to booking direct at $400+ per night and is still looking to secure a couple of more nights stay for the week.

Some observations:
1) As many have mentioned, the site itself is not well designed to handle high loads of customers. They should've put up a streamlined site instead of one with too many of graphics and unoptimized HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The reservation workflow has useless pages like the one that says "click here to enter your credit card info" and others that trap you into a potentially fatal reload when your hotel and room choices are unavailable. All of these little things add up to unnecessary strain on the frontend servers. I can only imagine what's happening with the database backend. More oddness: at one point I saw my browser stalled while trying to load something from hitbox.com, apparently related to the web analytics company Omniture. I have to ask, why have such dependencies on other sites which also might not be able to handle such a spike in load?
2) Someone mentioned Amazon Cloud and there are many other companies offering similar scalable, on demand computing solutions. It's obvious TPHousing doesn't need to deal with this kind of traffic every day so why don't they spend a little money (or more appropriately CCI spend a little money) and rent some real computing resources for the day instead of adding a couple of PCs and think they got it covered?
3) One thing that may help streamline the process and reduce the stress of getting a block of nights is to simplify the options and make a minimum stay for the full the duration of the convention. For instance, why not start at a three night Thursday thru Saturday stay at the minimum with a couple of options expanding the number of days? Seeing just Friday or Saturday blocked out on some of the hotels is maddening. A benefit is that it would make for an easy status page where hotels have a simple chart indicating that 3, 4 or 5 night packages are still available. People would be free to add individual days before or after the blocks directly with the hotels on their own or through TPHousing at a later date. There are lots of other options for selecting a workable stay other than the standard, choose hotel and dates, spin the roulette wheel and see if the ball lands on your number.

This will be our fifth year Comic-Con and probably the last for a while. We just had a baby last year and thought it would be great to have a full family outing including the grandparents to San Diego and Comic-Con. Given how hard it is to get a week long block of rooms easily accessible to the convention for both the very young and the not so young without breaking the bank, we might start a new summer vacation tradition next year.

[Erin]

Another suggestion, if you are going with several people, is to look on vbro.com. You can rent houses/condos/apts/ etc. They have many options near the Gaslamp Dist. and the prices are better than the ones the hotels are asking for (outside of the TP prices).

You will have plenty of room and, since the rentals have kitchens, you can save money by making your own meals.

Most rentors will kindly let you know how close to the conv. center they are, or how close they are to the trolley stop.

[Erin]

I just want to reassure some of the posters that if you have a TP conf # but have not gotten a conf from the hotel itself, you are OK.

TP does not give the hotels the information until later, hence why changes you make before a certain date need to go thru TP.

This is how it's been in the past and I have never had a problem with it (in my experiences).

If you were a "lucky one" then congrats!

[MsTuri]

I have been attending the Con since 1991. I can still remember a time when I could book a room, using the Con rates with relative ease. I always attend the entire 4 days plus even the preview night. Like those who have posted before me, the experience of trying to get a room each year is becoming intolerable. My friend and I were on 2 different computers (on two different servers) at exactly 9 am. After several attempts, one of us finally got close enough to book a room and of course (when the credit info had been entered and sent) the system crashed on him. And regardless of how many tries, by the time the system allowed us back to choosing a hotel, the days that we needed were already taken. We tried calling the travel planners at the same time and never heard anything but a busy signal. I did eventually send an email to the travel agency and was briskly told they had no available rooms on the dates that I needed though I gave them about 6 choices and to come back at a later time (what?!). I agree that cci needs to take responsibility for this yearly fiasco. Every year the attendance increases but they don't seem to take that into account! If they had a customer survey right now, I'd say they merit a -1 out of 5. I used to look forward to the Con each year but now I dread the idea of finding a room with rates that didn't rival those of a Las Vegas hotel. My frustration and disgust of the entire process really has me seriously thinking about not attending anymore.

[MBF]

Same problems as everyone else. I had clicked "book it" on at least 3 or 4 rooms, got timed out, and had to start all over. Phones busy the whole time. People have jobs, I know it's hard to believe, but some of us have to be at work after 9am. Can't they have registration in the evening? I'm almost glad we're in the same mess, cuz it means I'm not stupid. This was my first time trying to book through this system and I see why everyone's been complaining.

I have had a room booked outside of the city for months now, but I really wanted to get a suite close to the con. Meanwhile, prices are going up, doubling or tripling, at places way outside downtown. Even though this would be my fifth year, I still haven't bought my pass. I almost don't want to if I have to put up with this crap.

I really like the idea of being able to at least get on some sort of priority list when you register. I also like the suggestion that they spread out the registration somehow so that their stupid servers don't crash.

If they move to LA, I won't mind since I can drive, but I don't know that it would solve the problems they seem to be having. Vegas would be kinda neat, except for the heat, but at least there are more hotel rooms.

[disgruntled in NJ]

Moth,
I was at PCC as well and what a difference! I had 2 phones, and 2 computers with IE and Mozilla in each running on broadband and did not get a room until 2.5 hours later, at a hotel that looks nice but isnt really practical for my groups needs.

This was a big wake up for me.Why do we give our money to a company that doesnt respect us?

[Michael from Texas]

So where is the Craigslist-type roommate matching message board?

The first three hotels I was able to get to were all sold out on Friday and Saturday. The fourth got me as far as filling out my personal info and then hung there for six hours until I had to go home.

[rodrigo]

been getting the same message for the past few hours