San Diego Comic-Con 2015 Preregistration Recap: Faster Than Ever

badges sliderFor better or worse, several thousand Comic-Con attendees have their badges for 2015 — and several thousand more don’t yet.

Preregistration for San Diego Comic-Con 2015 (the sale that’s only available to those general attendees who attended in 2014 and who validated their badge in time) took place this morning, in a sale that mimicked last year’s new system, but which also promised to improve upon a few flaws.

Compared to last year, the process was much the same, with two exceptions: Those who entered after 9AM PT would not be able to re-enter, and those who experienced issues once the sale started at 9AM would be able to re-enter, without losing their placement in line.

So just how did the sale go over?

The Waiting Room

The EPIC Registration waiting room opened promptly at 7AM PT, and compared to last year, fewer people seemed to be having problems. Most reported being able to enter without issue, though there were still a few glitches for the occasional user.

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Compared to last year’s server error screens, most seemed to have problem in two places — either the blue spinning circle would stop, or the Badge ID wouldn’t work. In most cases, users were simply incorrectly entering the Member ID into the Badge ID screen, but not in all cases:

For the most part, most issues seemed to be easily resolved with refreshing or trying a different browser. Since the sale didn’t kick off until 9AM, those who experienced issues earlier had time to find a solution.

The Sale

Shortly after 9AM, those in the waiting room were randomly assigned a placement in line. While for 2014 Preregistration this process took about 15 minutes, this year, the sorting was done within 5-10 minutes, and attendees were already getting through to the purchase page. Throughout the entire sale, the general theme was that everything seemed to be moving much faster than for 2014.

We only saw a handful of issues once the sale actually started:

However, with a faster sale, that also meant that badges began to sell out faster. While in 2014’s sale, it took 30 minutes for Preview Night to sell out and roughly 80-90 minutes for Friday and Saturday to sell out, this year the timeline was sped up. This year, Preview Night was gone within 23 minutes, and Friday and Saturday sold out at the same time within 39 minutes.

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Less than 50 minutes in, all badges for Preregistration were completely sold out — less than half the two hours and 26 minutes it took for 2014 Preregistration to sell out.

Overview & Next Steps

So why the huge gap in time for this year compared to last year? Were there less badges available?

According to Comic-Con International, not necessarily. Although CCI does not release information on what percentage of badges are offered in Preregistration and what percentage are kept for Open Registration, they did say that there were “technical issues” in 2014’s sale, and they have since been able to tweak the system and make improvements.

Overall, we agree that Comic-Con International and EPIC Registration were able to greatly improve this year’s sale. The process was quick, and with much fewer issues than we have seen in previous years. For what problems attendees did have, hopefully by Open Registration or for 2016, the teams behind CCI and EPIC can solve.

As always, even if you weren’t able to get the badge you wanted today, there is still Open Registration, which will take place in “early 2015”. During this sale, anyone with a Member ID, regardless of whether they have attended San Diego Comic-Con before or not, will be able to try for a badge. Even if you already purchased some of what you wanted during Preregistration (Example: You wanted Friday and Saturday but only got Friday), you’ll be able to try for the rest during this sale.

Were you able to get what you wanted today? Let us know in the comments.

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