Despite hiring an outside firm to handle badge sales, the San Diego Comic-Con has once again been forced to halt ticket sales. The Epic registration site crashed almost immediately after badges went on sale at 9:00 am EST. The site has still not come up again and now the con has officially suspended sales:
Once more, unfortunately, there have been issues with Comic-Con registration. So we have, again decided to close it down.
We are well aware that many people have taken time from work, school or other activities and others woke up very early. There really is no way to convey our level regret for this turn of events.
We are currently researching our registration options.
Perhaps, as some of our commenters suggested, the idea of an all-or-nothing Passoween isn’t even a good idea.
Demand melted to slag the website of Epic Registration, a professional meeting badge vendor:
EPIC’s mission is to partner with trade show organizers to deliver value added trade show registration, lead management services and housing solutions. The attributes and quality of our products and services will help our customers differentiate themselves from their competitors. We will never sacrifice quality for growth. We will seek to continuously improve our products and services and focus development on activities which offer a strategic advantage to our customers. We will deliver them at a manageable growth rate. We will accomplish our mission in a stimulating and enjoyable environment through team-oriented associates accountable to each other, our customers and our shareholders.
Obviously, Epic had never met anything the size and scope of Comic-Con before.
How do they sell tickets to the Super Bowl anyway? Maybe (and it gives us no joy to suggest this) badges need to go on sale through evil, evil Ticketmaster or some such. Those guys handle surges for things like Justin Bieber concerts, so maybe they could handle Nerd Prom.
Do it the old fashioned way. Print out a registration form found online. Mail check or credit card information to a post office box. Mail is processed as it is received. Wait six to eight weeks for delivery (or since this is Comic-Con, 28 Days Later).
Or… turn on the ticket sales immediately after Comic-Con (after sales at Comic-Con). Sales will trickle in until the online counter reaches critical, at which point everyone blogs about it (oh nose!), at which point the surge kicks in.
I say double the price of registration. Seriously. They’re already maxed out and need some way to cut down on the size of the crowd.
Or go to a lottery system.
Comic-Con? I thought the one in San Diego was Glee-Con.
I managed to buy a pass… to Emerald City Comic Con. All the comic guests I could want and none of the -ween.
Will I still be able to meet the cast of The Big Bang Theory. They never cease to amuse me, what with their antics and stories and laugh-worthy jokes.
EPIC(‘s) Fail?
Nothing like an artificial scarcity of resources on top of a REAL scarcity (126K
tickets/attendees).
Wonder if the difficulty in scoring SDCC passes will lead into an uptick in REED Pop Group/WIZARD Conventions attendance, as the Nerd newbies failing in their attempt to sample a taste of the “Comic-Con” experience will instead turn to these other “Comic Cons”? (Though sadly, I don’t think that those new attendees would be going for the Comics part of the ‘Pop Culture’ extravaganza at those shows; Movies and TV certainly… and Gaming too.)
/glad I have my 2011 passes
HA!
friend of mine works for ticketmaster. they support a propietary system for large venues and he has said on many occasions that a 100,000+ ticket event like sdcc could be handled by the system without breaking a sweat. wouldnt you pay a small fee to goto sdcc and be hassle free doing it?
They should have used Digital River.