Gencon Hotels are on sale at 2pm, and all earlier reservations were WIPED

[DaveStebbins]

I'm five blocks or so away, on the edge of Monument Circle, in a more expensive hotel. Grrrr.

You're at the Radisson? We'll (myself, Romp, der_kluge and Cthulhu's Librarian) be there too. Maybe with all the cool folks there, it will become the new Embassy Suites! Heck the Embassy must be old news by now, they even let ME stay there last year.

 

[Taren Nighteyes]

Good fortune!!!

I sympathize with all those who experienced difficulty with the hotel registration system. I did the midnight registration mistake and had it cancelled (double double at the Courtyard by Marriot). I must have invoked the right deity or promised him something I'll regret later, but I got the exact same reservation type (double double at the Courtyard by Marriot)!

I'm excited - I've never been to GenCon, but have wanted to go for the last 15 years. I actually had tickets to the one 15 years ago but my parents pulled the rug from under me just weeks before I was to go because they suddenly thought RPGs were causing pschological harm to me......

I'm still psychologically scarred by their actions!!!!

Taren Nighteyes - GenCon virgin

 

[Rydac]

I'm actually surprised that only 200 people got through since hotel registartion was open nearly 7 hours ???. Sure it was in the middle of the night in the U.S., but I know a lot of gamers who stay up late, and in this day of such quick communication I'd have thought more reservations would've been made. I saw people posting on the Gencon forums who were in the "200" saying they didn't get first choice...with only 200 reservations spread across the hotels?

Another poster suggested they should post the size of the room blocks in each hotel. That way as consumers we could make an informed decision about what our odds were of getting into a particular hotel. I don't see any reason this should be a secret...unless the dirty little secret is the room blocks available for joe average gamer aren't very big.

I'm also surprised they opted to cancel the "200" reservations. I'd think that the hotels at a minimum would've said I don't want my staff to have to deal with someone showing up with one of the cancelled reservations which are valid contracts...so leave them be and someone at the housing bureau needs to apologize and fall on their sword.

Last year I was one of the people who didn't get their housing code for more than 30 minutes after housing registration opened. I wondered why we couldn't have received our code with our membership and just not turn on the site until the appointed time. I was thus pleased to see they went to that system this year, but unfortunately someone opened the gates early.

They then cursed the housing system by sending out the cancellation emails stating reservations were being cancelled due to an earlier "computer glitch". Just be honest it was due to human error, but then when they opened reg. they did have software trouble and loads of people with their registration failing due to them timing out. On top of that I bet they irritated more than 200 people with the last minute reschedule to two hours later for reg opening. Ay Caramba!

 

[QuaziquestGM]

No comment on the "200".

I do wonder if the connection/bandwith problems are the fault of the people trying to register as much (if not more) than the fault of the owners of the reservation system.

If your connection is timeing out because there are too many people trying to access the system at once using up the availible bandwidth....

And you "compensate" by trying to access the system though "4 different browsers".....

You are only making the situation worse by taking up 4 times as much bandwidth. You are actually increasing the time it will take you (and everyone else) to successfully access the system, and decreasing your (and everyone elses) chance of success at any given time during the heavy access period.

In otherwords, you are contributing to a denile of service attack on a system that you want to use.

Think of it as complaing about how long it will take you to get home from work during rush hour, so you buy 3 extra cars from brands you don't usually drive and try to drive them all home at once. Since there are 3 extra cars on the road (and 2000 other extra netscape, opera, firefox, and explorer brand cars from other people doing the same thing) the rush hour is more hellish than usual, and you end up abandoning 3 cars along side the road once you get the first one into your garage.

 

[Nerfwright]

No comment on the "200".

I do wonder if the connection/bandwith problems are the fault of the people trying to register as much (if not more) than the fault of the owners of the reservation system.

If your connection is timeing out because there are too many people trying to access the system at once using up the availible bandwidth....

And you "compensate" by trying to access the system though "4 different browsers".....

QuaziquestGM, you have a very good point, but the wrong guy!

I specifically wrote this (perhaps too vaguely) for that reason:

The first of fifteen serially stalled login attempts on four different browsers.

Bolding added now for emphasis.

Adding stress to a struggling system by starting a new login attempt before the previous one has timed out is not a good thing.

 

[DonTadow]

QuaziquestGM, you have a very good point, but the wrong guy!

I specifically wrote this (perhaps too vaguely) for that reason:

Bolding added now for emphasis.

Adding stress to a struggling system by starting a new login attempt before the previous one has timed out is not a good thing.

I don't think anyone did anything different than last year. I think there were far less rooms this time, making a smaller more vunerable database. There's a discussion on the gencon forums about how the new "VIP program" might have something to do something with it.

I have no problem on capitalism, but it may be that we'll have have to join this program in a couple years just to get the good rooms around the center.

Pour me some kool-aid

 

[Hypersmurf]

I'm five blocks or so away, on the edge of Monument Circle, in a more expensive hotel. Grrrr.

Don't you have to stay in the Official Judges' Hotel now, though?

-Hyp.