Delayed And Limited Gratification: SDCC 2014 Pre-Registration Delayed Until Early 2014

Very little time here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office today. I am here alone with Parker, a cat who was neutered earlier today. And Parker is treating me in exactly the manner one would expect to be treated by a creature whose testicles I had removed by fiat. So I need to keep an eye on this little fella, who is currently only seemingly motivated by contempt towards me and the urge to lick his Hot Zone, in violation of doctor’s orders, to try and grok what terrible thing has happened to him.

However, there is one tidbit of San Diego Comic-Con news I’d like to report: pre-registration for next year’s convention for people who attended this year has been pushed back until after the new year.

On their Toucan Blog, the people from SDCC have announced that they are still working with EPIC Registrations on their pre-reg Web site on not only load testing to handle the demand, but on a few new features:

We want to thank all of the eligible preregistration attendees for their continued patience while we fine-tune the online registration system.  Although we have been working around the clock with EPIC Registration, there is still room for improvement. Because we want to have as fully developed a product as possible we have decided to postpone Comic-Con 2014 badge preregistration until early next year.

We know this is a disappointment and are sincerely sorry for the delay. However it really is our hope to avoid some of the issues we’ve had in the past and the additional time will allow us and EPIC to best address those issues.

Apparently when the site rolls out, it will include a shopping cart to allow users to hold registrations for their entire party, single session purchasing (in the past, if you were buying passes for more than one person, you needed to buy your own first and then start over for the next person), better landing page validation to keep ineligible people out and the load down… along with general network load testing, which, given the performance of the registration Web site in some prior years, I am more than happy to allow them to tweak and perfect.

So the good news is that the pre-registration process won’t interfere with the Christmas holiday. So you can spend money on gifts and time on travel with impunity, enjoy your new year, and hopefully by the time preregistration rolls around, the lacerations on Parker’s nether regions and my hands and arms will have healed.