Comic Con’s Technical Flaw

I finished registering for Comic Con International 2012 around 8:45 this morning. When I got into the system I was in position #16,XXX or so (It may have been around 12,000). By the time my slot opened, 4 day passes had sold out. So I have registered for four individual day passes, at a cost savings, but I know the time it will take to pick up the badges will be frustrating.

Comic Con’s Glitch or Gaff

The first line of Comic Con’s email to registered members announcing the sales said “The wait is over! Comic-Con 2012 badges will go on sale at 8:00 a.m. PST on Saturday March 3rd, 2012. To access the EPIC online registration website, click the following link: http://www.comic-con.org/cci/badge_sales.php.” The link however was a redirect with the following path:

At 8:01 I clicked the link and the browser stopped with no web page loading. It looked as though it were waiting for the response from the server. Several minutes later I noticed the URL and reasoned that it may be part of the problem and just cut and paste the link into my browser, clicked the registration button, and was in the system.

I can understand Comic Con wanting to gather some data from their members, but every second matters when your place in line is being determined. When your users are punished for following your directions, that’s a real problem. Unfortunately there’s not much of a remedy for it. The product, attending Comic Con, is quite finite and in limited supply. Comic Con can afford to have many such problems in how it operates.