Have you been anxiously waiting for Comic-Con International to announce when Preregistration for San Diego Comic-Con 2014 will take place? Well, it won’t be anytime between November 1 and December 31, 2013, as promised in a previous update. Read on to find out more!
Although in an August 1, 2013 update, CCI had announced that 2014 Preregistration for SDCC would take place sometime between November 1 and December 31, 2013, it appears that is no longer the case. In order to make the 2014 Preregistration process run more smoothly, CCI announced on the Toucan blog today that Preregistration has been delayed until early 2014. Below are the details of CCI’s announcement:
“We want to thank all of the eligible preregistration attendees for their continued patience while we fine-tune the online registration system. Although we have been working around the clock with EPIC Registration, there is still room for improvement. Because we want to have as fully developed a product as possible we have decided to postpone Comic-Con 2014 badge preregistration until early next year.
We know this is a disappointment and are sincerely sorry for the delay. However it really is our hope to avoid some of the issues we’ve had in the past and the additional time will allow us and EPIC to best address those issues.
Here are some of the new features we are trying to implement in hopes of creating a smoother process for 2014 preregistration:
A shopping cart!
The new EPIC shopping cart should allow you to hold available badge inventory for all members of your party during your registration session.
Single session purchasing!
In the old EPIC Registration system, attendees had to purchase their badge first and then start the entire process all over again for their next guest. Now, when you begin your online registration session you will enter the number of people you are buying badges for and on the following page all available badge inventory should be held for each member of your party. You will not have to make a second purchase!
Landing page validation!
In the past, non-members and ineligible attendees could access the landing page and waiting room, potentially taking up space in line that should be reserved for eligible participants. In order to keep non-members and ineligible attendees out of the waiting room, we are implementing a unique registration code that must be entered prior to arriving at the landing page. This means that only eligible attendees (and possibly a few muggles) will be able to access the landing page and attempt to gain entry into the waiting room.
Extensive load-testing!
Have you ever tried to shove 100,000 jellybeans through a funnel all at once? The experienced engineers at Web Performance are virtually attempting just that, by following time-proven load-testing methodologies. Extensive load-testing in advance will not only give us information about EPIC’s user capacity, but also pinpoint potential problem areas.
We are thankful that so many of you offer feedback on what does and does not work. We value that information and are working to address many of those issues. Unfortunately, we are still faced with the problem of having more demand than badge availability. We hope these new features will help alleviate some of the more difficult parts of the badge purchase experience.
Thank you for sticking with us through this process and we hope to have more information for you after the New Year.
Happy Holidays from the Comic-Con team!”
What do you think about the delay? Are you relieved that you don’t have to stress about SDCC Preregistration during the holiday season? Or are you just frustrated that it keeps getting postponed? In comparison to last year, 2013 Preregistration took place in August 2012, a mere few weeks after SDCC 2012 wrapped up. Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Just a reminder, only those that purchased a Comic-Con 2013 4-Day attendee or 1-Day attendee badge and have a valid Comic-Con Member ID will be eligible to participate in 2014 Badge Preregistration. Otherwise, you will need to wait for the general registration, which took place in February last time.
