SDCC 2013 Open Registration – My Story

Today was the day for SDCC 2013 Open Registration – or all those people who didn’t attend SDCC last year, or missed the pre-registration tickets that went up for grabs in late 2012. I fell under the boat for one of the people who didn’t attend the convention last year.

I was so nervous that I wasn’t going to be getting tickets for the convention that I took every precaution possible to prevent it. I double checked my Member ID, updated my computer, restarted my computer, pre-entered my credit card in a text file for easy copy-paste, and watched the registration video over about 20 times.

The registration video that SDCC released about a week ago proved to be about the most useful piece of information that was available for today’s madness. Watch it, you might learn something if you didn’t get tickets. Maybe you will be able to get tickets during the re-sale.

This morning I woke up early and made sure my computer was good to go. I did the updates and restarted it. With plenty of time to spare I had to practice my clicking skills so I went and browsed around on the web to distract myself. (the anxiety was killing me!)

10 min. before 9 A.M. PST I opened a real-time world clock and the registration link (each in separate windows) and sat there and waited. 30 seconds before 9 A.M. PST I started to click on the Green Button and then 3 seconds before 9 the page started to load. For 3 minutes I had the white screen of death and then I was in – #6765. At 09:28 I had purchased two 4 day passes with preview night.

I made it sound a little bit easier than it was. I had some serious problems right after I got into the waiting room. Right after the first refresh the server was overloaded and I received an ERROR that the page could not be displayed. I picked up the phone to call their support number, but it was busy. I didn’t know what to do. I refreshed the page about 5 times and I was back in at about #5500.

Needless to say it was one of the most stressful ticket purchasing times of my life. I’m just glad that I was able to get the 4 day pass with preview night – the tickets that I wanted. What is your story. How did SDCC 2013 Open Registration treat you?