That frog is going to haunt my dreams.
After three months of being useless and disorganized, Comic Con's ticket registration was exactly as much of a clusterfuck as I thought it would be.
Die in a fire, Fail Frog.
So, back in November, CC's ticket registration site couldn't handle the strain of the year's influx of geek traffic on the day the tickets went live, so it threw a hissy fit and crashed. Cue three months of more-or-less nothing from CC's website, other than an occasional "We'll totally be selling tickets soon, guys, we promise!" Three false alarms and three months later, the tickets FINALLY went live at 9AM PST yesterday (or 3 AM, from my time zone).
Of course, the site was down before 9AM PST even rolled around. The helpful advice from TicketLeap's frog-infested error screen and Twitter feed? More or less "Keep spamming F5 to refresh the page, you'll get in eventually!"
I refreshed on and off for half an hour. Eventually, I got as far as the ticket selection page. I chose a 4-day pass. I tried to continue, and got bounced back to the mocking glare of the Fail Frog.
20 minutes of refreshing later, the site had bounced me back to the sale page twice and told me to hit "Confirm" again because it was busy processing other sales. Presumably it had an computer aneurysm and forgot what I was trying to order.
Another 20 minutes of refreshing, it bounced me back for a third time. Except this time, all the 4-day passes were sold out. Even though I'd had one in my cart FOR OVER HALF AN HOUR ALREADY.
Okay. Back to what I did the first year: buy an individual pass for each day. Last option. Otherwise, fuck it.
Another 20 minutes of refreshing the page finally got me as far as the payment section. Which probably took another 20 minutes of refreshing just to get the information to go through, one page at a time.
Eventually...victory? Fucked if I know. TicketLeap eventually dumped me to a page that said I'd get an email from them in, like....a week. Maybe. If they get around to it. I still haven't gotten even so much as a confirmation email or an automated "We're processing your order!" email to tell me whether the purchase went through or not.
By then it was long past 5AM, and I didn't care any more. Now that I've slept on it, I'm STILL not sure if I do.
I won't be going to CC next year because of IRL obligations (or after that, until I get a decent job), so I was hoping for one last go this year. Now, after three months of CC delays that did absolutely nothing to spare ANYONE from dealing with shitty ticket website traffic... All the tickets are sold out. Already. The 1-day passes normally don't sell out until a few MONTHS from now. I suppose that's what you get for making hundreds of thousands of people stew for three months with no word and no recourse; supply and demand supercharged by thousands of geeks in a state of blind panic. (Oh Comic Con, you crafty bitches.)
So. Yeah, after the website idiocy, I don't even know if my ticket purchase went through. Honestly? Part of me is hoping it DIDN'T. As much as I'd like to go this year, I'm incredibly pissed at CC for how badly they've handled the situation for the last three months. The lack of information. The lack of options for ticket sales. The total inability to cope with their own website traffic, and making said website traffic a hundred times WORSE yesterday by dragging their feet for so damn long. Driving everyone into a completely unnecessary frenzy over tickets. Keeping me from planning my summer travel with the (100% justified, apparently) worry that the tickets would sell so fast I might not be able to get one. Not to mention the hotel-booking headache that comes next. (At least I already learned not to to trust CC's website with THAT one if my life depended on it.)
Did anyone else manage to fight through the clusterfuck and score their passes? Even if I did manage to get mine, I'm seriously considering just saying "Screw it!" and refunding them on principal.
Die in a fire, Fail Frog.
So, back in November, CC's ticket registration site couldn't handle the strain of the year's influx of geek traffic on the day the tickets went live, so it threw a hissy fit and crashed. Cue three months of more-or-less nothing from CC's website, other than an occasional "We'll totally be selling tickets soon, guys, we promise!" Three false alarms and three months later, the tickets FINALLY went live at 9AM PST yesterday (or 3 AM, from my time zone).
Of course, the site was down before 9AM PST even rolled around. The helpful advice from TicketLeap's frog-infested error screen and Twitter feed? More or less "Keep spamming F5 to refresh the page, you'll get in eventually!"
I refreshed on and off for half an hour. Eventually, I got as far as the ticket selection page. I chose a 4-day pass. I tried to continue, and got bounced back to the mocking glare of the Fail Frog.
20 minutes of refreshing later, the site had bounced me back to the sale page twice and told me to hit "Confirm" again because it was busy processing other sales. Presumably it had an computer aneurysm and forgot what I was trying to order.
Another 20 minutes of refreshing, it bounced me back for a third time. Except this time, all the 4-day passes were sold out. Even though I'd had one in my cart FOR OVER HALF AN HOUR ALREADY.
Okay. Back to what I did the first year: buy an individual pass for each day. Last option. Otherwise, fuck it.
Another 20 minutes of refreshing the page finally got me as far as the payment section. Which probably took another 20 minutes of refreshing just to get the information to go through, one page at a time.
Eventually...victory? Fucked if I know. TicketLeap eventually dumped me to a page that said I'd get an email from them in, like....a week. Maybe. If they get around to it. I still haven't gotten even so much as a confirmation email or an automated "We're processing your order!" email to tell me whether the purchase went through or not.
By then it was long past 5AM, and I didn't care any more. Now that I've slept on it, I'm STILL not sure if I do.
I won't be going to CC next year because of IRL obligations (or after that, until I get a decent job), so I was hoping for one last go this year. Now, after three months of CC delays that did absolutely nothing to spare ANYONE from dealing with shitty ticket website traffic... All the tickets are sold out. Already. The 1-day passes normally don't sell out until a few MONTHS from now. I suppose that's what you get for making hundreds of thousands of people stew for three months with no word and no recourse; supply and demand supercharged by thousands of geeks in a state of blind panic. (Oh Comic Con, you crafty bitches.)
So. Yeah, after the website idiocy, I don't even know if my ticket purchase went through. Honestly? Part of me is hoping it DIDN'T. As much as I'd like to go this year, I'm incredibly pissed at CC for how badly they've handled the situation for the last three months. The lack of information. The lack of options for ticket sales. The total inability to cope with their own website traffic, and making said website traffic a hundred times WORSE yesterday by dragging their feet for so damn long. Driving everyone into a completely unnecessary frenzy over tickets. Keeping me from planning my summer travel with the (100% justified, apparently) worry that the tickets would sell so fast I might not be able to get one. Not to mention the hotel-booking headache that comes next. (At least I already learned not to to trust CC's website with THAT one if my life depended on it.)
Did anyone else manage to fight through the clusterfuck and score their passes? Even if I did manage to get mine, I'm seriously considering just saying "Screw it!" and refunding them on principal.