Drats! Phooey! and Curses! In what is clearly the work of Lex Luthor, Comic-Con, the San Diego convention that has become an annual pilgrimage destination for anyone who has ever dressed up as Iron Man on Halloween, or just for fun around the house, shut down online registration today. The servers just couldn't handle the crushing load of hopeful attendees. The site also crashed on Nov 1, Comic-Con's first attempt at selling tickets this year, and the New York Times is calling this latest epic fail an "online fiasco."
From the L.A. Times:
It’s the sequel everyone was hoping they wouldn’t see: Comic-Con’s ticket website crashing for the second time this month.
Fans hauled themselves out of bed at 6 a.m. Pacific time hoping to secure their spot at the 2011 convention in July, which has seen attendance boom in recent years. What most got instead was a mostly blank page with an error message and a torrent of frustrated messages on Twitter and Facebook. Full article
Here's the statement from the Comic Con site:
REGISTRATION IS CLOSED!
Once more, unfortunately, there have been issues with Comic-Con registration. So we have again decided to close it down.
We are well aware that many people have taken time from work, school or other activities and others woke up very early. There really is no way to convey our level of regret for this turn of events.
We are currently researching our registration options.
The convention's Facebook discussion board is a study in thwarted, panicked, fandom, with intermittent sarcasm:
I cannot believe that this is happening again! Yet another server crash! How are we supposed to get our badges when they cannot provide a decent connection. Seriously not cool! Anybody else have the same problems?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I'm with ya this is crazy me and hubby are both trying - what is the problem now?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Woot I love getting up excruciatingly early to watch servers crash.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------i went from a 501 error message to a 500 error message
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Check back in 2 weeks to see what the new registration date is
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!! REALLY?/?????
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This has got to be the worst experience ever. Why can't you guys get this fixed already. COMIC-CON IS TURNING INTO THE MOST UNRELIABLE ORGANIZATION I HAVE EVER DEALT WITH!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You Just lost The Game of Registration thanks for playing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I knew my dream would come true. I had a dream of being stuck at step one.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Look on the bright side, when we get to try this again in 2 weeks, they might even have TWO servers handling all the requests.
Boy. Sometimes the reality of delivering so much fantasy is just, uh...unreal.