This year, the San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) goers have had to wait for the past five months to know when the release date would be for the official Comic-Con badge sale. The wait is now over and badges will no longer be
available for the public.
For the past three years, Comic-Con has had an exponential rise in ticket sales from previous years, according to the official SDCC blog. Its popularity has been exposed to not only the city of San Diego, but the entire world as well. With the vast amount of panels, booths, Comic galleries, and other activities the Con has to offer, hundreds of thousands have taken an interest and are willing to drive or fly the distance it takes in order to arrive at the San Diego Comic Con Convention (sdcc.co).
Due to its popularity, Comic-Con has had a hard time managing its registration process. The Comic-Con website released a statement saying, “When Comic-Con badge sales begin, thousands of people will be trying to access our registration system at the same time. Because of limited space at the San Diego Convention Center, we are required to limit attendance and do not have enough badges for everyone who would like to attend the show. Unfortunately, the high demand and limited availability can make buying a badge challenging and time consuming.”
According to a science fiction website, this year, the planners of Comic-Con had people sign up for a Member ID in order to buy a pass. Before the tickets go on sale, members were sent an e-mail link that went live on March 3 2012 at 8 a.m. (Pacific Standard Time) in order for them to make a purchase. Within 90 minutes, the 4-day passes were sold out and soon after the entire event was sold out (sciencefiction.com).
Senior Kat Joslyn was one of the hundreds of thousands who waited her turn online to purchase her badges, and was able to get the four-day pass with preview night. “Purchasing ticket this year was extremely efficient compared to last year. The site was able to facilitate the thousands of people trying to buy tickets without crashing, which has happened the past few years,” said Joslyn. “The system was extremely thorough this year because you had to have a member ID to purchase a four-day pass or any single-day passes. I thought this idea was great, because it will supposedly eliminate a lot of the purchasing that people do just so they can sell tickets for a large profit when the convention comes.”