Will you land a hotel tomorrow?

30 APRIL 2017

Happy Hexennacht/May Day. Tomorrow is the day the first round of emails go out notifying us of our hotel assignments - if we were lucky enough to get one. While it seems pretty solid that your form access timestamp will determine your ability to get a hotel, it's not entirely clear who will hear when.

Patterns from previous years include:

• Rejections going out first.
• Hotel assignments going out in alphabetical order by hotel. In other words, people with a room at the Andaz would be notified before people at the Hard Rock who would hear before the people at Manchester Grand Hyatt.
• No pattern at all, with people finding out they got their first choice days into the notification process.

We don't know exactly who will find out what tomorrow. But my best guess is people who got downtown rooms will get their emails. They'll have until Friday, 5 May, to make their deposit or let the room go. By the following Monday, 8 May, OnPeak will have a few relinquished rooms to assign out and the next crop of attendees will hear. I'm guessing these will include some downtown rooms and the non-downtowns.

At some point by Monday, 15 May, everyone else will get the deadly email that their "request could not be accommodated" and they'll be added to the wait list if they requested it.

So should you be worried?

Not yet. If you got in at 9:09, then you probably won't be at the Hilton Bayfront. But you'll still get some room, somehow (seriously, there are always a few stragglers left long after everyone's made their deposits) and you may be able to trade for a room. The Friends of Comic-Con site does a great room exchange, although you must be a forum member to participate.

For what it's worth, I didn't get a room at first pass the last 2 years. In 2015, a stranger gave me his room at the Hard Rock and in 2016, both the Hyatt and Hilton Gaslamp were available when I got through on the wait list. So if you don't hear tomorrow, if your heart is sinking because your timestamp was late in the game, try not to stress. You'll find something.