Prepare For The General Hotel Sale on April 8: The Process, Prices, Finding Roommates, More [Updated]

Comic-Con International has just announced on the Toucan Blog – what Travel Planners confirmed to us back in February – that the General Hotel Reservation Sale will take place on Tuesday, April 8, at 9AM PT. The General Hotel Sale is the biggest hotel sale for San Diego Comic-Con, because it’s when the hotels closest to the action (the Gaslamp District downtown, as well as several hotels by the airport and in Mission Valley that are on the shuttle list) become available to attendees at a special, discounted con rate (ranging from 152/night for one person at the Comfort Inn and Suites Hotel Circle South Seaworld in Mission Valley, up to $375/night for one person at the Hard Roch Hotel suites). You can view the entire list of all 50+ hotels, including prices, by clicking here.

CCI will e-mail a link to Travel Planner’s website 72 hours before the sale, though the form on that page won’t go live until April 8 at 9AM PT. Beginning then, Travel Planners will open their site to hotel requests, and attendees must submit six hotels (no more, no less), in order of preference. Travel Planners will then look at the time stamp of each application and assign rooms based on the time submitted. The closest Gaslamp hotels go quickly (if you’re submitting two minutes after 9AM, your chances of scoring a downtown hotel don’t look good).

Once the form has been submitted, attendees will receive a confirmation e-mail indicating which hotel they’ve received no later than April 10. According to Travel Planners, if you choose to accept the room you’ve been assigned, you’ll need to provide a deposit equal to two nights’ room rate plus tax, within 72 hours of receiving your hotel reservations confirmation. After those 72 hours, any rooms without full deposits will be canceled.

To help familiarize with the process and improve your ability to get through the request process quickly, we recommend checking out our SDCC Hotel Sale Guide, which walks you step-by-step through the information you’ll need to complete the form.

Even with the special con rates, Comic-Con hotels can be costly, and one of the easiest ways to help cut down on that expense is to add more guests to your room. We’ve made finding a roommate even easier this year, and you can scope out our Find a Room/Roommate forum on reddit, where you can submit what criteria you’re either looking for or offering, and to help pair you with good matches. We recommend including a little information about yourself, where you’re hoping to stay or where you’re already booked, and anything else you think is relevant.

Here’s the full update from the Toucan Blog:

Comic-Con International 2014 Hotel Reservations open on Tuesday, April 8. We’d like to offer you some tips and advice to get ready for that day.

First of all, click here to go our Hotels page and download the Comic-Con International 2014 Hotel List toview info that you need to know to reserve a room. This list contains all of the hotels currently in the Comic-Con 2014 room block and their prices, plus other useful information, such as shuttle stops and the time it takes in minutes to get to the Convention Center. Additional info includes smoking or non-smoking rooms, pet-friendly hotels, and hotels offering breakfast.
How it works

Badge holders will receive an email at least 72 hours before April 8 that will contain a link to the Travel Planners hotel reservation website. That link will not be active until Tuesday, April 8 at 9:00 AM Pacific time (12:00 PM Eastern time). HANG ON TO THAT EMAIL. You will need it to access the site. The URL of the Hotel Reservations site will also be available on April 8 on our website’s Hotels page at www.comic-con.org/cci/hotels. You will have to cut and paste the URL on the Hotels page and place it into your browser window to access the Travel Planners hotel reservations website. (After April 8, when the hotel reservations website reopens after the initial sale, you can visit www.comic-con.org/cci/hotels to access the Travel Planners site to make changes or cancellations to your reservation.)

Once you get to the Travel Planners website, you will be asked to list SIX (6) hotel choices in order of preference. Everyone making a hotel reservation will be asked to do this, and it must be six choices. Study the Hotel List PDF to pick your choices in advance so you’re ready on Tuesday.

Please keep in mind that the Travel Planners hotel request form website is best accessed from a desktop computer. Accessing this form from a tablet or smartphone device may slow your progress. We highly recommend you use a desktop computer during this hotel request process.
Be realistic in your choices.

There are 55 hotels in the Comic-Con room block, with 29 of them located downtown. Yes, everyone wants to stay downtown, but the hotels located outside of the downtown area are just as comfortable and are serviced (with the exception of three of them) by the Comic-Con Shuttle service, which runs continuously from Thursday, July 24 through Sunday, July 27 at 7:00 PM. (Shuttle frequency varies throughout the day.) If you want to be close to the Convention Center to take advantage of Comic-Con’s nighttime programs and events, you can still hop the shuttle back to your hotel away from the crowds and noise of downtown. And after dealing with crowds and noise all day, doesn’t that quiet getaway sound inviting? You can even book a room NOW during our Early Bird Sale, which features a separate room block in Mission Valley and near the airport and ends April 8 when hotel reservations open. Click here to visit the Early Bird Sale page. (Please note the Early Bird Sale requires a full down payment, plus is non-refundable. Be sure you’re coming to Comic-Con before reserving—and committing—to these rooms!)

Remember:

There are 130,000 attendees at Comic-Con and only so many hotel rooms downtown and in the greater San Diego area. Odds are you’re NOT going to get what you want right off the bat. Hotel reservations opening on Tuesday are for Attendees and Professionals. Exhibitors who set up the great booths in Comic-Con’s Exhibit Hall where everyone loves to shop have a separate room block.

Additional hotel rooms may become available as we get closer to Comic-Con.

People do cancel rooms and those rooms are reassigned to members on the wait list. Check back to see if your other choices become available. Dates to note are the ones when the refund policy changes: April 30, 2014 (when full refunds go away) and June 1, 2014 (last date to cancel and pay for only one night’s room). Cancellations occur after those dates so people can avoid paying for rooms they no longer need.

Please keep in mind that the Travel Planners hotel reservations website is not optimized for smart phone use. We recommend you use a computer during the hotel sale.

Many people will try to access both the Comic-Con website and the Travel Planners website on Tuesday. We anticipate times when both websites may be very slow to respond. We ask you for your patience and to keep trying if at first you don’t succeed. Keep in mind the hotels outside of the downtown area and choose your six choices wisely. Remember that additional hotel rooms may become available later, after cancellation dates.