It’s the most dreaded word in a San Diego Comic-Con attendee’s vocabulary: Hotelpocalypse. And it’s coming, very soon.

Comic-Con International has confirmed that the General Hotel Sale (the main hotel sale, which is essentially a lottery) is set for Wednesday, April 17 at 9AM PT. Just like usual, this sale will utilize a QueueIt randomized waiting room, similar to the waiting room process for badges.

Attendees will be e-mailed a link to onPeak’s system on Monday, April 15, and then be able to enter the room at 8AM PT on Wednesday, April 17. At 9am PT, you will be randomly sorted and then see the iconic QueueIt “little green walking man” to indicate how fast or slow your progress in. You’ll be randomly let through to fill out the form for your hotel preferences (you can view all hotel offerings here). You’ll also be able to call at 1-877-55-COMIC, but they essentially just walk you through the form on the phone, so if you have access to a computer, we recommend doing it yourself.

Once you get through, you’ll see the form – which you can view a sample of here. You’ll rank up to twelve hotels in order of preference. You will only need to select one hotel to submit the form. Requests will then be processed based on the order you receive access to the form.

You can also choose to select for onPeak to book you into a hotel that is closest to the Convention Center, regardless of rate and shuttle availability.

onPeak will be emailing notifications on Monday, April 22, and you’ll have 72 hours to confirm your reservation with a 2-night deposit. Just like in 2023, there will only be ONE round of hotel confirmations.

In 2016, we confirmed with onPeak that duplicate submissions were based on three factors: phone number, e-mail address, or a unique identifier associated with the user’s queue/waiting room session (likely the QueueID at the bottom of the waiting room). So if you have multiple roommates working together to try to secure a room, make sure you’re using unique information.

Hotel rates include a $10 per night reimbursement to Comic-Con to help defray shuttle and convention costs (this charge is subject to change). There is also a non-refundable service fee equal to 3% of each hotel deposit that will be charged to the credit card provided for each reservation. Any change to a reservation that increases the required hotel deposit amount, such as extending the length of stay, changing to a more expensive room type, changing hotels, etc. will incur an additional non-refundable service fee in the amount of 3% of the additional deposit amount. 

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 $195/night for one person at the Days Inn San Diego Hotel Circle, up to $409/night for a Hard Rock Suite at the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego). You can view the entire list of all 50+ hotels, including prices, by clicking here.

If you’re still considering booking an Early Bird hotel room, do so quickly, it is closing soon. You can check out our comparison of the two hotel sales here.

You can find more information on Comic-Con International’s site.

We also highly recommend reading our 2023 recap, to get a better understanding of what went right and wrong in 2023 – and hopefully how to avoid some of those problems this year.

Will you be trying to get a hotel? Let us know in the comments.