Yesterday I joined the mass of people who were trying to book their hotel room online for this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Like many folks who posted on the Con’s hotel blog, I found the whole process very frustrating, but once the pages finally loaded, took my credit card number and gave me a confirmation number, I was happy I had a room … or so I thought.

Then I read Laura Hudson’s post about her experience with the system:

Today was the big day, guys! Like everyone else in comics, I waited with bated breath until 9 AM PST, and then began a full-on internet and phone assault for a San Diego Comic Con hotel reservation, with myself my parents attacking nonstop on both fronts.

Finally I got through on the reservation website, which was itself an accomplishment, as it kept going down. I selected a twin room for the Marriott Hotel and Marina, the hotel Tim and I decided would be our number one pick, and EUREKA! It was available. I gave them all my information and credit card number, submitted everything, until finally it said they had accepted my credit card information, and that the transaction was completed.

Awesome, right? Who could have asked for a better SDCC hotel reservation experience? Except that it as an experience of LIES. After receiving no confirmation email after over an hour, I finally got through to the reservation service on the phone, only to learn that the web program had screwed up and despite what it had told me, NOT PROCESSED MY RESERVATION. And now, all of the rooms at the Marriott and surrounding hotels were booked up.

Eek. That sucks.

So my wife tried to call Travel Planners, but they were already gone for the day … she left a voice mail, then tried to go back to their site and got this:

So I called the Holiday Inn, and they had no record of my reservation. I don’t think this is reason to panic just yet, as the information probably hasn’t been passed over. A poster named Erin on the SDCC hotel blog seems pretty sure this is the case:

I just want to reassure some of the posters that if you have a TP conf # but have not gotten a conf from the hotel itself, you are OK.

TP does not give the hotels the information until later, hence why changes you make before a certain date need to go thru TP.

This is how it’s been in the past and I have never had a problem with it (in my experiences).

If you were a “lucky one” then congrats!

So we’ll see what today brings. I have a confirmation number, but like Laura, no confirmation email. I’ll update this post when/if we can get through via phone to confirm our reservation.

Update: And we’re good … the reservation went through, but the system never kicked out the confirmation email. Travel Planners was able to send it to us manually today.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 8:12 am and is filed under Conventions, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.