For better or worse, several thousand Comic-Con attendees have their badges for 2024 — and several thousand more don’t yet.

Returning Registration for San Diego Comic-Con 2024, the badge sale for eligible returning general attendees, took place today. Last year, Comic-Con International launched a completely new system, which utilizes a QueueIt waiting room and Configio, moving away from Expo Logic. Last year’s sale was plagued by several issues and even a delay in launch time, though last year’s Open Registration ran relatively smoothly.

So by comparison, how did Returning Registration for SDCC 2024 stack up?

The Waiting Room

At 8am, everyone who entered the Member ID portal began refreshing to try to enter the QueueIt waiting room. This was relatively uneventful (especially compared to last year), with no issues with the waiting room that we saw during this period.

Just like last year, anyone could technically enter the waiting room, as you aren’t prompted to login until you actually are selected to checkout after 9am. This doesn’t mean anyone could purchase — but if you wanted to waste your morning sitting in a waiting room, you certainly could.

Everyone waited patiently for 9am (even if they also had a lot of anxiety), when the great randomization would begin.

The Sale

Shortly after 9am, those in the waiting room were randomized. Just like last year, the randomization happens very quickly, in which everyone is randomly assigned a place in line. Once you were, you saw QueueIt’s iconic “walking man” and green status bar, giving you a rough estimation of how long until you’d be able to purchase badges — for some, only a minute or two away, and for others, more than an hour.

From here, all you could do was wait. Sales started almost immediately, with several reporting getting in within the first few minutes.

At first, things seemed to be going very smoothly, with users reporting getting through quickly.

From there, it took 29 minutes into the sale for Preview Night to sell out — significantly faster than the 41 minutes it took in Returning Registration.

Around this time is when the problems seemed to start, though. The most common issue that we saw was the system kicking people back to the queue/waiting room as they were trying to finish checking out.

For some, though, the order had actually gone through — but rather than being taken to a confirmation page, they were being redirected back to the queue/waiting room, and only knew the order had processed because they received a confirmation email.

Some had to attempt to purchase again in order to get the order to actually go through.

Possibly in an attempt to resolve the errors and many reporting that the checkout process had slowed to a crawl, times started to jump up in the waiting room, frustrating many, but a very normal occurrence with QueueIt.

There were a few other errors happening as well, though as always, it’s impossible to know if some were down to possible typos or user errors.

Things slowly seemed to start improving and times started speeding back up again, with Saturday selling out next at 66 minutes into the sale, compared to 71 minutes the year before.

It wasn’t long before Saturday also sold out, at 73 minutes into the sale, compared to 80 minutes the year before.

Traditionally, Thursday and Sunday sell out at roughly the same time, and that was still true this year. We heard chatter that Thursday possibly sold out a few seconds later, but both Thursday and Sunday were gone by 89 minutes into the sale — basically right on pace with the 96 minutes it took the year before.

 

Overview & Next Steps

After Open Registration had gone so smoothly last year, we had hopes that this year’s Returning Registration would be equally as smooth. And it wasn’t terrible, but there was definitely room for improvement, with many still reporting more glitches and errors than normal.

The good news is that according to our very un-scientific poll, it seems that the vast majority of our readers walked away from the sale with a badge — with 79.3% reporting as of press time that they were able to secure at least a single day badge.

That number actually seems unusually high to us, so perhaps with the SAG-AFTRA strike continuing on, some don’t want to risk the possibility of another “not normal” San Diego Comic-Con, increasing the odds for everyone else.

Still, 7% reporting glitches preventing them from getting a badge is not a good look. If you were someone who was affected by an issue during today’s sale, we highly recommend you reach out to Comic-Con International here.

All hope is not lost, if you weren’t able to get exactly what you wanted today. Open Registration — the badge sale available to anyone with a Member ID — will take place sometime in the near future (likely late November or early December). During this sale, all badge types will be available (so just because a badge sold out today, doesn’t mean it’s gone forever). So long as you didn’t purchase all four days plus Preview Night today, you’ll be able to participate to pick up any days you weren’t able to get today.

Badges will be mailed to the U.S. addresses in your Member ID. Make sure you verify your address.

As for all other badge types? General hotel sales should be sometime after Open Registration (likely in April), and all other badge registration events (volunteer registration for those on the interest list, Trade Professionals, and more) will be “at a later date”.

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