The Engine is having pre-San Diego jitters:
“According to Expedia.com, a lot of the nicer hotels (Hyatt, Mariott, Bristol) have no open rooms (aside from those presumeably set aside for the rush of con guests on Feb. 6) during the convention dates. The Westin Horton (where I stayed last year) has a non-con rate of nearly $500 a night. Fun.”
“I always like the housing tension because on the one hand it’s a total comics culture thing — that combination of very specific consumer desires and smarter-than-you bargain-shopping and expectations based on past availability — and on the other hand it seems representative of several real-world things like gentrification, and the way something can be noodled over on the Internet so that it feels really dramatic, and the Internet as a way of making social contacts that make cons more attractive as a way to consummate (platonically) those friendships, and increased travel costs post-9/11, and, if you think about it, where the money in comics has really gone in the last ten years. Plus the changes in a five-year or ten-year period are hilarious and obvious and feel significant even though they’re not. But it’s not like I didn’t stay 40 miles outside of San Diego in 1999, or that traveling to New York City would be any easier were it not for that city’s time-honored tradition of staying at your pal’s place, or that people haven’t been declining to go as not worth the hassle for a decade or more.”
“You really do need to do a serious logistics workup to attend a show on this scale these days, and not everyone who wants to go is going to be fully aware of how big a lead time you need. No matter how much advance warning you give, someone’s going to not get that message in time. And we have our two case studies about such perils already in hand.”
Sequential Tart’s Katherine Keller offers some pretty good advice:
“If you live in the US and own a car, join AAA. Many major hotels offer a AAA discount. (Speaking from experience, the Westin and the Wyndam do.) The AAA rate is usually about $20 more a night than the con rate. And you can cancel the room right up to the day before. $50 now will save you hundreds later.”
January 17th, 2007 at 9:45 am
And people are always shocked when I say I’m not going to Comic Con.
January 17th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Luckily I have friends in SD that put me up for the weekend so I don’t have to deal with the hassle (and expense) of finding a hotel. Though I do know a few folks that live in town and still get a room downtown by the convention center so they don’t have to drive. Lazy bastards.