Gotta Get: Comic-Con Saturday!

The fateful day is here, preregistration for San Diego Comic-Con International 2014!  What's funny is that Comic-Con's sister show in Anaheim, WonderCon is in April but tickets are not yet available yet here we are on a Saturday morning waiting in an e-queue trying to get tickets for SD in July.  I remember the summer of 2007 when a friend told me Comic-Con tickets were approaching sell out, an issue they'd never faced before.  But the rise of comics in popular culture and the influx of media and movie studios vying for hype began sending crowds of CASUAL FANS to San Diego to see what all the fuss was about.  I believe Saturday sold out that year and since then the 4-day extravaganza of popular arts, previews and cosplay has become a hot item every year with Thursday through Sunday selling out.  SDCC made the conscious choice to cap attendance at around 130,000 instead of just making that greedy cash grab.

For a couple years, SDCC became part of the Hollywood press tour for any big movie coming soon or next summer.  Of course the hype died out when many Comic-Con friendly films crashed at the box office.  Remember 2010?  Scott Pilgrim VS The World shit was EVERYWHERE, they won Con!  And then got slaughtered by Sly Stallone's The Expendables and Julia Roberts' Eat Pray Love at the ticket counters.  When you saturate the main audience, there's really nowhere else to go.  Iron Man helmer Jon Favreau brought 2011's comic book based Cowboys and Aliens to San Diego, hosting a huge premiere for fans but the $160 million hybrid sci-fi western only managed $100 at the U.S. box office.  While many a movie star will visit the Con, a warm welcome is far from a guaranteed hit.  Hopefully this will thin out the herds of randoms walking around aimlessly hoping to see somebody famous instead of actually taking advantage of the show's exhibition floor full of awesome comic and movie swag along with the multitude of panels and events centered around art, painting, writing, filmmaking and so much more.

This year, after several crashed servers and disgruntled would be ticket buyers, SDCC changed their system to make ticket sales randomized instead of first in first out.  So here I am, waiting for the gates to open at 9:00AM PST so I can get a random number and try to throw some money at them.

Good luck and see you in San Diego!

*UPDATE*

After signing into the wait room the process began shortly after 9:00 AM.  I had several friends in line as well since you can buy tickets for 3 people.  A friend of a friend got in after about 30 minutes following an internet outage on the east coast, my tickets secured, I stayed in the room to try and buy for other friends.  After an hour and a half, Preview Night sold out and my friends got in so I carried on about my day.  I believe all tickets set aside for preregistration goers sold out in just around 3 hours.  There is a general public sale coming soon so you'll have another or first go at them.

Stay gold.