On the Open Hotel Sale / wait list

 24 APRIL 2023

Tomorrow the SDCC hotels open back up. If you're wondering why you didn't get a reminder email and aren't sure what to do, here is your directive: "We urge everyone who needs a hotel reservation to check this page on April 25, 2023." No time is given, which indicates they're trying to avoid the site being trampled under our elephant-like weight.

The page you want to check is: https://comic-con.org/cci/hotels.

This sale is everything - Round 2 and the Wait List and Open Reservations.

This is it. There won't be anything else. If you can recall the days when we would just go online, see a bunch of hotels and pick the one we wanted (yes, SDCC innocents, it was really that easy once) that's how tomorrow will work - but with a lot more competition. Essentially, it will be a free for all, and I predict the system will crash. Why this wasn't also handled like a lottery, with people grouped into access times, I've no idea.

So if you've faked a dentist appointment or something else to get out of your morning meetings, thinking you'll just go in and grab your room and go back to work - it might take longer than that. Be prepared for a frustrating experience where you may not get in and if you do, all the good hotels will be gone. Or you may get to the confirmation stage and something goes wrong.

The two strategies here are to:

1) Wait. Downtown hotels will flicker in and out of the OnPeak site over the next few months. You'll inevitably hear stories of someone who locked down 4 nights at Hilton Gaslamp after Memorial Day Weekend. You can try to be that person if you commit to vigilant, ceaseless stalking. But it's going to be super rare to find a full 4-5 nights which brings me to the option to....

2) Split up your nights. I've done this before and it doesn't bother me much since I travel light. As those downtown hotels appear on the site, you may discover that the Omni only has Wednesday and Thursday, or the Hyatt has just Saturday. If you have nothing at all, my advice is to grab what nights you can and then spend the others at a fallback hotel. If you think packing up your stuff mid-Con is tiresome, then this isn't for you. But for some of us, it's worth it to spend at least some of the Con downtown.

You will get a room eventually.

There are always hotel rooms somewhere, so don't cancel your Con if you don't score a room tomorrow. You'll find something. In the meantime, look around and see who needs a roommate. I expect most good Airbnbs are gone but new ones may become available. (Though the possibility of the host cancelling your booking is real.) 

In essence, don't give up. You will eventually find something.

See you tomorrow!