The Dreaded Waitlist

So, as I stated before, I had originally put in for a hotel room for Comic Con. Their way of getting a hotel room is/was as daffy a scenario as I could possibly concoct but it was the only way of getting a hotel room as you could try to check Expedia or one of the other search engines for hotel rooms and try to reserve one (which I tried a few months back) and you only get the "sorry, no available rooms for that date" box.

In the ongoing saga which is the additional hotel room scenario, I received an email for the email address I used when asking for an additional hotel room at 10:30 a.m. the day of reservations for hotel rooms off the Comic Con site.

The email I received stated that we still cannot find you a hotel room but you are now on a waitlist. They go further stating, we know you want to have a hotel room and we are sure that many people made duplicate hotel rooms until they found their perfect hotel room and will be canceling the duplicates. However, since we made the new policy of paying for an evening's room and tax, we are not sure exactly how many are duplicates but you are on a waitlist anyway. If you don't want to be on the waitlist (and essentially don't wany any hotel room within 10 miles of Comic Con), then let us know and we will gladly take you off.

So what is a person, who placed their reservation order at anywhere from 15 minutes (or 9:15 a.m.) on supposed to do if they want a hotel room and there are none available? Perhaps not asking for 12 responses in hotel rooms or finding another way to do this might be in order. I'm sure that the reserving of hotel rooms is NOT Comic Con's problem and I'm sure they take great strides to make sure that their paying guests find hotel rooms because it would not make sense if they didn't considering the number of people who obviously attend this convention every year, but what is a person supposed to do if they can't find adequate room and board?

I can talk like this because I do have a hotel room reserved but for those poor souls who don't and are traveling to get there (we are traveling for 8+ hours), they should have some place to stay. While San Diego is a big city and there are numerous places to stay, this is terrible for someone who wants to join this convention and would have to travel miles just to go every day, let alone have to find parking, pay for the parking and then travel back to their hotel room.

The dreaded waitlist saga continues. Let's see what they'll do next to accommodate us shall we?

Difficulties Along The Way

While I have started this blog a bit on the late side, only two things have happened thus far. I have paid for our tickets to Comic-Con and just made hotel reservations. Both were as difficult as getting into the inaugural ball at the White House. I have had trouble getting tickets to places before such as concerts and movies but this has been the most difficult for something as simple as a convention.

I paid for our tickets last year around October. I was not surprised at how quickly they went after talking to my son who is one of this conventions biggest fan even though he's never gone. He has talked about this for a few years and finally I decided I would take him. The tickets were sold out in a matter of a day or two. He said it would be like that but I didn't really believe him, however, it was true. We got the complete package. I wanted the full experience.

This last week I made our hotel reservations. What a pain in the behind. I have never had such a terrible time making hotel reservations for something like this. I figured if purchasing the tickets was bad, this would be worse and I was right.

I think I have a pretty fast Internet connection with Comcast, had a shortcut already logged in and just needed to wait for the time to come. I had the option to call or do this online. I opted to do it online knowing my computer, that everything was set up and thought I would be okay.

At 9 .m. when we were able to get online and make the reservations, I was not able to get online until approximately 9:05. I was very, very frustrated thinking it was my computer or the connection itself. It wasn't. I finally got online and into the reservation area but then I didn't know how they had set it up never having done this before. What a complete joke. You had to specify 12, yes, that is twelve places for hotel rooms. I knew ahead of time having read and re-read all the information and knew what to do just not how to do it. I could feel my fingers flying along with buttons and handling the cursor with ease. Unfortunately, I did it backwards which took more time. What felt like hours took three minutes total. By 9:08 a.m. I was pressing the "submit" button and waiting, and waiting. And waiting some more. It took what seemed like forever for them to have my reservation.

Then I had to wait again. I had to wait for them to give me a room. I wondered what would happen if I didn't want to have that hotel or that room. What then? I emailed them regarding that question using a different email address. I didn't want to screw up any karma regarding my first reservation. I got an automated reply back. They were supposed to let you know about any hotel reservation within 3-5 hours.

I got my hotel reservation by the 4th hour. It was my second choice. Not the one I wanted and none of the others. Not the most expensive but nearly. There were two others that were $50-75 dollars more than that one. I was not happy. I was lucky but not happy. I had to keep convincing myself that it was okay. That this hotel would be all right. It was, after all, a hotel that was one of the adjacent hotels but still, it was not the one I wanted.

Another four hours went by when I began receiving emails regarding the email I sent. I had sent along another hotel reservation application citing all the same hotels to see what would happen. The emails began telling me that whatever hotel they put you in was the one you got. They also sent me emails telling me there were no other hotels and we didn't get a reservation for any of them but that they would keep me informed if one opened up. I was happy because I had a reservation, unhappy it wasn't the one I wanted, happy I had one that was close, unhappy that they kept sending me "thank you but no thank you" to my email.

I know it sounds like I'm being a stupid girl but you know, you spend this kind of money to go to something like this and everything seems to be out of your control. This is not okay for someone like me that is usually in control of everything.

So, for now, I have my tickets and my hotel reservations and we are good to go. I am waiting to see who will be showing up. So far, Stan Lee is the one autograph I'm going for but I know there will be more.

I'll keep you posted.