If there’s one word that strikes fear into the heart of every San Diego Comic-Con attendee… it’s “Hotelpocalypse”. Anyone who’s attended the convention before and tried for a hotel knows that it’s arguably the single most stressful aspect of the convention, as most attendees want to stay in the downtown Gaslamp area, and there simply are not enough rooms for attendees (and as area hotels have pulled back on the number of rooms in their Comic-Con room blocks over the years, it has also become increasingly harder). Want to book outside the system? Sure, but you may be paying upwards of $1,000+ per night. So for better or worst, Hotelpocalypse — otherwise (now) known as the General Hotel Sale — is often the best option for those of us who care about proximity.
Traditionally, securing a hotel downtown has meant sitting in a waiting room before being let through randomly to fill out a form with your hotel choices ranked, and then waiting several days to see what you were assigned. That’s all changing this year though.
On Wednesday, April 15, the General Hotel Sale will open at 9am PT. Starting at 8am, attendees will be directed to a waiting room with a randomized queue, and then let through to live inventory at 9am.
Yes, you read that correctly. Gone will be the form and the ranked choices. Instead, it will be just like booking a hotel on any other site, except that you’ll be fighting in real time against hundreds if not thousands of people for a room at a hotel that may only have 200 rooms total. (While a few years old, you can see the number of hotel rooms in each hotel here — which includes options like 1,625 total rooms at the Manchester Grand Hyatt and 283 at the Hilton Gaslamp Quarter).
Inventory is not held in your cart, and will only be finalized once your card has finished processing, which means that it could sell out on you while trying to check-out, so speed matters here.
There will still be a two-night deposit required at time of checkout, which is non-refundable (also new for this sale). A maximum of two (2) rooms will be allowed at time of booking.
This change is pretty scary to me personally (mostly related to the fear of selling out in cart and just how quickly or slowly they will be letting us through to purchase to avoid a total bloodbath), but hopefully Comic-Con and onPeak have really thought this through. And there are some potential upsides here. For one, there have been complaints and confusion every year from attendees over the hotel they were assigned from onPeak. This change removes that confusion from the equation altogether, because ultimately you will be the one choosing your hotel from the available options. There has also been a lot of room swapping over the years, and Comic-Con and onPeak may be looking to cut down on that and make the system ultimately fairer (even if, in my opinion, much more stressful).
You can read more about the policy change on Comic-Con International’s site.
We’re not going to do a Visual Guide this year, but for those who like looking at screenshots, here is a look at this year’s waiting room:
And a look at the live availability page from last year:
