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San Diego Comic-Con 2024 Open Registration Recap: It’s the Most Wonderful Badge Sale of the Year

It may have taken two tries, but Open Registration — and Christmas? — are saved.

This year’s Open Reg sale for San Diego Comic-Con feels a bit like The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Much like the Whos in Whoville eagerly awaiting Christmas morning, fans queued virtually last month on October 26 for their chance to score a badge to the big show, but the first round was a mess—like the Grinch sneaking through Whoville, swiping every toy and decoration in sight. The website crashed, screens froze, and the whole process seemed to spiral out of control, leaving hopeful attendees feeling defeated. It was a chaotic morning, with many fans left empty-handed, as though the Grinch had stolen their shot at the ultimate comic convention experience.

But then came the second round on November 23, and everything changed. The process was the smoothest for the year (and maybe even the smoothest in several years), and the Comic-Con attendees sang out in unison… or at least celebrated being able to secure their badges in a pretty painless process.

 

So with that being said, let’s get into the details.

 

ROUND ONE

Back on October 26, the original Open Registration badge sale was meant to happen — but it was instantly plagued by issues. Right off the bat, the waiting room wouldn’t load for many, with several hopeful attendees getting a “Our services aren’t available right now” message.

When the sale finally did kick off, things seemed okay… for a few minutes. A handful of users reported being able to get in and purchase.

Within roughly five minutes though, it was another story. Those who were “lucky” enough to make it in found the system moving at a snail’s pace and freezing, and giving various error screens.F

Finally, at 9:28, Comic-Con “paused” the line, and at 9:36, they announced the sale had been stopped.

 

ROUND TWO – THE WAITING ROOM

Comic-Con worked with Configio behind-the-scenes to hopefully solve whatever technical issues had plagued the first round of Open Registration (as well as parts of Returning Registration), and finally announced that they had a new date for Open Registration — November 23.

The waiting room opened a bit earlier this time, at 7:30am PT versus the traditional 8am PT it’s been for years, possibly to allow for more time in case issues arose or perhaps hoping entry into the waiting room would be more staggered (though we all know Comic-Con attendees are going to click to enter the second something opens, no matter how much we’re told it doesn’t matter when we arrive).

It took until 7:32am, but the waiting room was open, and attendees could begin to enter, with very few reports of any issues (though of course there’s always one or two).

THE SALE 

Once the clock hit 9am users pages were automatically refreshed and those in the waiting room were randomly assigned places “in line” and given both an estimated time as well as the new “Little Green Walking Guy” — now the Toucan. This process was mostly instantaneous.

Most users reported initial wait times of “more than an hour”, but those quickly started to lower.

From there, it was a steady but slow path to begin selling out. Preview Night actually took a bit longer to sell out than we expected — given that at least some people had made it through during the first round of Open Registration, we expected pacing to be a bit faster than last year’s 29 minutes to sellout or faster than Returning Registration’s 35 minutes to selling. Instead, it was the opposite — longer, at 42 minutes. Why? We will never know, but perhaps they were letting people through slower, or perhaps they upped the inventory f Preview Night badges available.

 

Next to sell out was Saturday — and if you might be thinking, well, if Preview Night took longer, then everything else probably did as well, you would be wrong. Instead, it sold out at 64 minutes — which is faster than last year’s 66 minutes, and also faster than 75 minutes during Returning Registration.

This was followed by Friday badges at 75 minutes into the sale, roughly on pace with last year’s 73 minutes and Returning Registration’s 81 minutes.

So then again, you would expect Thursday and Sunday badges to sell out at roughly the same time as last year at this point, right? Since Friday and Saturday did. But again, you would be wrong. Both took longer — with Thursday selling out at 106 minutes compared to 89 minutes last year and 94 minutes during Returning Registration, and Sunday selling out at 113 minutes compared to 89 minutes last year and 100 minutes in Returning Registration.

 

COMMON ISSUES & GLITCHES

Compared to the other two badge sales this year (Returning Registration and the first round of the aborted Open Registration), this sale ran considerably smoother — but some users did report issues, particularly towards the end. This might account for the fluctuating times on the sellouts as well, as perhaps as they noticed more issues, they started slowing down how fast they were letting folks through to purchase.

Some reported getting to the end of the line, only to be kicked back into the waiting room rather than taken to a page to login.

And several reported difficulty adding Preview Night, though it’s unclear if this was system errors or just people not being familiar enough with the clunky way of adding it.

 

OVERVIEW & NEXT STEPS 

Basically: After two glitchy sales, Open Registration (round two) was a relatively painless sale with few hiccups and errors.

One of the most common complaints we’ve seen about both this sale and Returning Registration is that the process to add a Preview Night badge is a little confusing, as it’s not on the initial screen you’re sent to. Instead, once you add Thursday-Sunday badges, it will take you to a new screen to add it (because it’s only available as an add-on if you have all badge days) — or alternatively if you had purchased Thursday-Sunday in Returning Registration and only needed to add on Preview Night you had to click on a specific tab. This isn’t the most intuitive system and could certainly be made clearer.

Certainly the largest problem was (and always is) that everyone who participates simply cannot be accommodated. The convention center has a maximum capacity and the San Diego Fire Marshals are not about to look the other way. 

Compared to last year, it seems like even more people were able to secure a badge — as last year we had 24% report they didn’t get anything, and this year, at time of posting, it’s only at 22.4%. 

If you were ultimately unsuccessful and are currently empty handed in the badge department, there’s always the Comic-Con Museum’s “Legend” Membership tier, which includes a four-day plus Preview Night badge… but it’s $1900.

And though 2024 didn’t see many of them, historically there are also several contests, so keep your eyes peeled. 

So, you might be doing the “Snoopy happy dance” right now, or you might be doing the “Sad Charlie Brown walk”… but we hope either way you have a great holiday season.

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