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PROLOGUE
Long-suffering readers know by now that every year, my two sons (Ben and Sam) and I try to attend the San Diego Comic-Con International (which we'll be calling CCI or "the Con" from here on out, okay?). Then, about a month or two or three later, I use this venue to post a review of our experiences. Those of you who have never read one of my past CCI journals and want a bit more background are welcome to click on this link which will take you to my journal directory where, in turn, you can find links to my CCI journals from the previous 3 years. Of course, if you do that, you may not find your way back here. There's an old adage: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If you're part of that demographic, then welcome back!
By now, I don't think I have to explain the Comic-Con phenomenon. For four days every year in July, it takes over the city of San Diego. It's become enough of a major media event that, during July, you can hardly tune into a TV station or pick up a newspaper or magazine that doesn't include some sort of CCI coverage... the July issue of the American Medical Journal had a guest article by Dr. Who.
As we've mentioned before, demand now far exceeds supply when it comes to landing Con tickets. CCI is held at the San Diego Convention Center, and the laws of San Diego and physics have decided to draw the line at a maximum of about 125,000 attendees. Stuff any more bodies than that into the Convention Center and the gravitational imbalance risks turning San Diego into a black hole, resulting in enormous destruction and the collapse of the role-playing-game industry.
It may come as a surprise to the sparse number of my readers who lead responsible lives, but far more than 125,000 people want to attend CCI each year, so getting tickets --- commonly referred to as "badges" (or "stinking badges" if you don't score one)--- can be a challenge. In the past, my sons and I have avoided the hassle by buying our tickets a year in advance while attending the Con. For instance, while at the 2010 convention, we walked up to a specially-designated kiosk and purchased our four-day passes for the 2011 Con. Some people claim they just can't commit to purchasing tickets and scheduling Con attendance that far in advance, but I've found that it can be done if you carefully conduct your affairs in such a way that you're never invited to anything.
Those year-in-advance tickets are only available to folks who are ticketed attendees of the current Con. If you didn't score tickets for the 2010 Con, for example, you couldn't show up at that Con just to buy advance tickets for the 2011 Con. So for those folks who've never attended CCI, or who missed the previous year, the only way to get tickets is to buy them online when they become available months later. Demand is such that the Con is always sold out in advance; there are never any tickets available during the event itself. Naive folks who have shown up at the Con hoping to purchase tickets "at the box office" are mercilessly ridiculed by the rest of the crowd, and are usually spotted later walking into the ocean.
Every year, the folks who run CCI try to come up with a calm and orderly way to conduct online ticket sales, and every year they have about as much success achieving their mission statement as the spring break chaperones at Daytona Beach. Like I said, because we've been attending consecutively for many years, I've been pretty ignorant of the annual "battle of the badge"... until this year.
This was the year that I discovered that I could give myself the illusion of having Facebook friends by going to different commercial websites and clicking a "I Like This" link that allowed the companies to send posts to my Facebook page. So while other folks get daily Facebook updates from their Aunt Martha, or BFF Tiffany, I get a page full of posts from the Disney Corporation, Amazon, Scottevest, Dr. Pepper, and Hometown Buffet. And, of course, Comic-Con International.
Consequently, this year I was privy to CCI's public announcements regarding ticket sales... and all the Facebook comments that were subsequently posted. It wasn't pretty. At the beginning of November, 2010, the ticketing firm that CCI had hired announced a specific time and date for the commencement of online ticket sales, and within seconds after the starting gun had been fired, the site crashed as 1.21 jigawatts per second shot up the internet pipeline and disintegrated the lone geek who was managing the server. After that debacle, they hired a few more people with little to live for, and toward the end of November tried again. Again, the site was nuked. By February of 2011, CCI had hired a different badge handler, and they tried again.
Third time was the charm, sort of. The site didn't crash, but it experienced so many page-access requests (peaking at 403,000 per minute) that folks who managed to gain access to the site had to sit for hours and continually "refresh" the page to keep in line for tickets. All tickets (both four-day and single-day badges) sold out within seven hours on that single February day. Many folks came to the realization that their time might have been more wisely spent down at the Circle K picking numbers for that week's lotto. It was a harsh slap of reality (which isn't usually an expectation when you're dealing with the Comic-Con).
Once the announcement was made by CCI that tickets were sold out, there was a flood of Facebook comments. Most were carefully-crafted missives along the line of "I HATE YOU COMIC-CON... YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE," or "YOU MORONS, LET ME IN!" or "I DON'T EVEN WANT TO GO TO YOUR STUPID CON... UNLESS I CAN GET TICKETS." There were a few positive comments, like "HA HA YOU LOSERS I GOT MY TICKETS," and "EVERYBODY QUIT WHINING BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T GET TICKETS AND JUST BE HAPPY FOR THOSE OF US WHO DID."
CCI subsequently apologized for being so popular and promised that next year they would continue to try to come up with a more equitable way of offering 125,000 tickets to 235 million would-be registrants.
Many noted that it was easy to get tickets for the 2011 Con if you were at the 2010 Con, prompting a discussion about how CCI was in danger of becoming an exclusive club where only regular attendees had the chance to get in. As one of the regular attendees in question, this observation initially hit uncomfortably close to home, but then I realized that being jammed shoulder-to-shoulder into the Convention Center exhibit hall with thousands of other badge wearers wasn't exactly the same as sitting in the Admirals Club lounge, and any sense of privilege would probably wear off quickly.
Although the majority of the Facebook comments were of a negative (not to say apoplectic) nature, some tried to offer suggestions that didn't involve the horse that CCI rode in on. Some we'd heard before, but some were out of the box:
Change venues--- some folks observed that the San Diego Convention Center simply isn't of the size to accommodate all of the people who'd like to attend CCI (which is why ticket sales are limited to about 125,000) and that CCI should move to a different area that can handle a bigger crowd. Suggested venues have included Los Angeles, Anaheim, Las Vegas, and a small M-class planet on the outskirts of Alpha Centauri.
Make it last longer--- instead of the current 4 days (Thursday through Sunday, plus a Wednesday "preview night"), it's been suggested that they stretch the Con over more days, like say a week... apparently on the assumption that the quadrillion people who want to attend wouldn't want to sign up for the whole week, and more tickets could be sold. I'm not so sure. And even if that were true, I have the feeling that, if the Con operated for 7 days instead of 4, there might be an adverse effect on the exhibitors who have to man a booth daily for 9 or 10 hours in the pressure-cooker known as the exhibit hall. If any of them cracked and went postal, there's plenty of places in the exhibit hall where they could grab a "Legend of Zelda" sword or a Klingon kitchen tool and wreak some serious havoc.
Split CCI into two conventions--- some folks believe that if the convention were held twice a year (say, summer and winter), that the crowds would be split between the two. Again, I'm not so sure, unless the events and exhibits stayed exactly the same at both times. And even then... I don't think folks who re-watch Lord of the Rings or Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan every couple of days will opt out of one of two annual cons. Others have suggested to take the two-con idea one step further: dedicate one Con to comic books, and the other to movies, TV, etc. The people who suggest this are usually the ones who believe that CCI (which, after all, stands for COMIC-Con International) has been overrun by Hollywood and forgotten its comic book roots. My opinion is that this move would only solve half the problem, and only temporarily. Once CCI was split into a comics convention and an every-other-type-of-popular-culture convention, I'm guessing we'd find out that most of the attendance is generated by the non-comics crowd. Ultimately, we'd have two conventions a year: a popular-culture convention that would still be maxing out the San Diego Convention Center, and a comic book convention held at the San Diego American Legion Hall.
It looks like CCI has committed to staying in San Diego through 2015, and there is an effort to expand the acreage of the Convention Center, but that's sort of like California adding lanes to its freeways... there seems to be a people factory that cranks out bodies more quickly than any infrastructure expansion. Unless the convention center installs some inter-dimensional portals, the crowds will continue to fill every nook and cranny for years to come. Keeping that in mind, Ben and Sam and I batted around some other solutions to the CCI attendance problem:
Raise the ticket price to match the demand--- A four-day badge, non-discounted, runs $175.00... and still the tickets sell out within a day of being offered online. It's obvious to any capitalist that the tickets are too cheap. CCI ought to up the price until demand reaches a reasonable level. Start selling the tickets for $500.00 a piece; if the server still crashes, then try a $600.00 price point. At some point in the process, CCI will find that sweet spot where everybody willing to pay the admission price will be able to get a ticket. Of course, everybody attending the convention will look like that little guy on the Monopoly cards, and a good percentage of the attendees will be butlers and hand servants for the rest, but if CCI is going to be accused of being an exclusive club, they might as well embrace the role.
Split the Con into different profit centers--- take a page out of Disney's book and sell separate tickets for the different areas of the convention center. For folks who are only interested in the exhibit hall, but not the industry panels or screening rooms, give them the option of buying a ticket that's only good for the exhibit hall. Sell a different ticket that only lets you into panels. And another ticket that only lets you into the massive Hall H or Ballroom 20 where the Hollywood celebrities appear. Of course, CCI would still offer an exorbitantly-priced "Con-hopper" pass that allows you access to it all, but I'm thinking that overall, there'll be more room in the exhibit hall for the rest of us if all the folks who show up just to breathe the same air as the Twilight stars are limited to Hall H. In fact, it just occurred to me... if CCI just had the Twilight cast breathe into some bottles, and sold those online, it would probably save a lot of people a trip to the Con and help the ticket-availability problem.
Start selling lifetime tickets--- I know, I know, but
hear me out. Lifetime tickets would cost.... oh, let's say about 5% of
the gross national product; and lifetime tickets could also be awarded
to anyone who names CCI as the sole beneficiary of their life insurance
policy. Even at those prices, there's still going to be some
takers. CCI would benefit from the up-front cash flow, but that's just
an ancillary plus... the real trick would be in how they administer the
lifetime tickets, relying on two important facts of life:
1. Things happen and not all lifetime ticket holders will be able to
attend every year, due to other commitments, illness, going back on
their meds, spouses threatening divorce, and a host of other things life
throws in one's way.
2. Even lifetime ticket holders eventually die.
If CCI just ignores
these two facts and assumes that every lifetime ticket holder
will be in attendance every year, then eventually these things will
happen:
1. There'll be less people showing up than expected every year because
some lifetime members won't be able to make it, due to reasons 1 and 2
above;
2. Every year there'll inevitably be additional lifetime tickets sold,
and, given the fixed amount of tickets that can be sold each year, as
the percentage of lifetime tickets increase, the percentage of regular
tickets will decrease. In turn, this will increase the percentage of
(purposefully) unanticipated no-shows and, again, there'll be less
people there than the Soylent-Green level population we're seeing now.
3. In the long-term, assuming new lifetime ticket sales every year,
eventually the number of lifetime tickets in place will equal the
maximum number of tickets allowed due to capacity restrictions. At that
point, CCI can quit selling tickets and just hold an annual get-together
for the lifetime ticket holders. Or, at some point in this process, they
can take the funds collected for future conventions, put them in an
offshore account, and announce that CCI will now be located in the
Bahamas and the only event will be a surfside meeting of the CCI board
of directors.
I thought this last lifetime ticket idea was genius as I pitched it to Ben and Sam, but they weren't impressed, observing that it sounded like something the federal government would set up. I thought they should at least give me points for thinking outside the box, but they said that this was more a case of me crawling into a different box, which was then put on a rocket and shipped to another planet. So the discussion returned to whether Superman's new costume looks okay without the red trunks.
A little bit before the opening of the convention, CCI announced that they were going to institute a new system for selling on-site advance tickets to next year's Con. Apparently last year, when I had just walked up to a kiosk and purchased the tickets, it had created some problems that required them to re-think the process. An old guy like me isn't crazy about change, so I was a bit uneasy about what I'd have to do to get tickets for next year. But we'd cross that rainbow bridge when we got to it.
So enough shop-talk. Next time, we'll move on to the day-to-day recap of our 2011 Comic-Con International visit.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton