Comic-Con International announced today on the Toucan Blog that the General Hotel Sale, or Hotelpocalypse, will take place on Tuesday, April 5 at about 9:00 am PT. Read on for more details!
San Diego Comic-Con 2016 Hotel Sale
If you are a badge holder for San Diego Comic-Con 2016, you will receive an email from CCI at least 48 hours in advance of the hotel sale with a link to the onPeak (formerly Travel Planners) hotel reservation website. The link will also be posted on the Hotels page of CCI’s website.
Unlike the hotel sale in past years, where it was based solely on a first come, first served basis, and depended on how quickly you could click on the link and fill out the registration form, this year’s hotel sale will operate more like a lottery system, similar to recent SDCC badge sales, where you enter a waiting room before the sale begins, and are put into random order at the start of the sale regardless of what time you got into the waiting room. You can enter the waiting room as early as 6:00am on April 5, though the sale does not start until 9:00am.
Once you are randomly selected for a registration session, you will fill out a registration form, in which you will be required to select 6 hotel choices, in order of preference. Reservation requests will be processed in the order received, so you should already have your 6 hotels picked out ahead of time, and be ready to fill them in as quickly as possible — so speed is still a factor, once you get past the waiting room. The question is whether it will be too late at that point to be able to secure a coveted downtown hotel.
By April 8, if you’ve been placed at a hotel, you’ll get an email notifying you of your placement. You’ll then have 72 hours from the time you receive that email to confirm your reservation by making a deposit for 2 nights plus tax. Otherwise, your reservation will be canceled. If you make the deposit, but need to cancel your reservation, you’ll need to do so before April 30 if you want a full refund. After that, if you cancel by June 1, you’ll be charged for one night plus tax from your deposit.
The pricing for downtown hotels ranges from $195/night (1 adult/1 bed at Best Western Plus Bayside Inn) to $391/night (Deluxe Room with Concierge Service and 2 adults/2 beds at San Diego Marriott Gaslamp Quarter), while non-downtown hotels start at $178/night (Days Inn San Diego Hotel Circle South) and run as much as $392/night (2 adults/2 beds at Hotel Del Coronado). Click here for the list of hotels and prices, shuttle travel times, and additional hotel information.
One good tip is to find roommates and team up with them. Friends of CC Forum has a thread for finding roommates.
If you’d like to avoid the stress of Hotelpocalypse, and don’t mind staying in the Mission Valley area, the Early Bird Sale Hotel Sale still has rooms available, and will be going on up until 8:00 am PT on the same morning as the General Hotel Sale.
