Comic-Con Thoughts

It is too big.

No really. The crowd, that for the past few years has shown up on Saturday, showed up on Thursday. Even though we had preregistered months in advance, my wife and I stood in a line in the hot sun for an hour and a half on Thursday to pick up our badges. It would have been longer if at some point during our wait they had not opened up the empty "on-site registration" line for preregistration as well. Piss-poor planning, piss-poor planning, piss-poor planning.

In years past they would mail out your badges to you and you could just walk in when you got there. My wife said they may have to look at ID now for security reasons. OK, anyone who did not go this year and wants to go next year will have to stand in line and show their ID, but people who have been going for years have shown their IDs enough times to warrant just sending their badges to them in the mail.

On Friday our shuttle driver had no idea where she was going. She was from San Bernardino, not San Diego and was only there for the convention, but she did not know the city at all. So, when she found it difficult to move into the correct turn lane near the convention center she instead drove us straight into the Marriott parking lot. Unfortunately for us, you cannot make the extremely sharp right turn from the Marriott to the convention center and so she had to take us back into the city, where we encountered a train and two trolleys. Our nine minute ride from our hotel to the convention center took 45 minutes.

Our hotel, the W, was very nice, but since I did not get on-line to book it till 15 minutes after the convention hotels opened, it was the only hotel still available. To get a reasonably-priced room you had to get onto the system within the first ten minutes. So my con hotel cost $400 a night. That sets me back $1,200 before we even set foot at the con. Gee, I wonder why I didn't spend a shitload on books this year?

Did I mention it was crowded?

Well, it was, every damn day. Except Saturday. For some reason, even though Saturday is historically the most congested day of the con, this year it was one of the lightest days, despite being just as sold out as every other day. Maybe people stayed away on Saturday to avoid the crowds.

Next time out I'll tell you what I liked this year (it's a small list).