*Disclaimer: The following post contains opinions based on information gathered through social media and should be taken as such. It is in no way "set in stone" and for the love of all that's holy I hope I'm 500% wrong. Its simply the assembling of facts by a neurotic idiot.
March 24th, 2015 8:59 am PST
Roughly 120,000 participants prepare themselves for the yearly "hotelpocalypse" held through Travel Planners to request coveted downtown hotel rooms for San Diego Comic Con.
What happened one minute later can only be described as the largest failure in recent SDCC history....
At 9.00 am PST users expected to be let into a webpage to fill out their 2015 hotel request form. Most users practiced diligently for days if not weeks to get their completion time below the dreaded 1 minute mark.Instead of being let in, most participants were instead exposed to "Load lag".. their pages simply would not load. For some this lag was a few seconds, for others it was 20-30 seconds, for a larger majority it was 30-2 minutes, for the most unlucky it was up to 7 or 8 minutes! This...in conjunction with other issues, turned this years Hotelpocalype into one giant clusterfuck. Lets break down the 4 biggest issues.
Load Lag
The company hosting the sale, Travel Planners, has been the same for some time now. The form used has also been the same. What DID change is where this form was hosted.
In the past the hotel submission form was located on Travel Planners own website "tphousing.com"
This year saw a change (due to a recent change in ownership of Travel Planners) to "cci-2015-request.elasticbeanstalk.com"
This typically means "new servers"
Previous years saw small hiccups, but nothing really major, but this year users experienced EXTREME load times when accessing the link. For a sale that's all based on TIMESTAMPS this is a HUGE issue. Participants that have been practicing for weeks to get there submission time under one minute were now forced to add one, two, three or four minutes to their timestamps!. This was no fault of their own but simply a failure of Travel Planners to load test the new link location. Its assumed these are new servers and they simply did not keep up with demand as well as previous years. The amount of submissions isn't something that can take Travel Planners by surprise, so its not clear why these new servers were not load tested. This failure alone caused major issues and thousands of con-goers to ultimately be get screwed and wont even come close to getting a hotel room. This issue was also multiplied ten fold by another glitch....
the Auto-submission. (Bad form #1)
While most users waited for their pages to load, almost HALF experienced what is being referred to as a "bad form" this form failed to load java script environments that would make the hotel selection fields work correctly. These failed javascript environments also failed to load the safeguards that do not allow a users to submit a form without filling it out completely.
One of the issues that arouse thanks to this was "bad form #1". This form was accessed by participants, most either typed in or autofilled the contact info area, proceeded to the hotel selection area, realized something was wrong and frantically tried to figure it out. Remember, this all comes down to timestamps, so sitting there trying to figure out a broken form is BAD. Some users, in their efforts, managed to select a hotel, hit whatever keys they could to try and choose, hit enter and BOOM! they received a "successful submission" page without filling out the rest of the form. Most panicked , some called TP, some simply reloaded, got the good form and filled it out again. The part that is the most frustrating (to everyone but most of these participants) was that TP stated that the auto-submitted forms (most submitted in 5 seconds of the form going live, some later) will be honored. Meaning these users suddenly and mistakenly got a 5 or 10 or 20 second timestamp. If you're familiar with the sale you know this timestamp is nearly impossible to get and virtually guarantees you your #1 pick. They were instructed to send TP their picks and timestamps would be honored. This was good news to them but seemingly unfair to every other participant.
Mostly unfair to users that experienced ....
the "Hotelbafoonery" form ( Bad form #2)
These users experienced the same failed javascript elements on the form that did not make the hotel selection work properly, however, they did not accidentally submit the form blank. They tried whatever they could to make "correct" hotel selection. Since this didnt work like previous years, and unlike their practice methods, they were forced to fumble with the hotel selection for an extra long amount of time. Adding as much as 3 minutes to their timestamp.... did I mention this was all about timestamps? . These participants contacted TP and were told to send them the correct hotel submission, but their "horrible" timestamps will be honored. Basically robbing them of any chance at a downtown hotel. This left one last type of form...
The Good form
I for one was in this boat. I had the load lag though, which most but not all participants had. Users that had no issue submitting their hotel walked away from the sale pretty confident. They practiced for weeks, put up stellar times, only to be suckerpunched in the face to learn that every single user that experienced the "auto submission" glitch will get to keep their timestamps. It didn't sink in right away for some, but what this meant was that if there were "auto-submit" forms that were accidentally submitted in 1-60 seconds (and there were A LOT of them) then these forms would essentially "cut the line" and be given priority over a fast "completed" form....blank or not. Bad form #1 users were contacted and asked to fill out hotels at their leisure. This also meant you can put any hotel whatsoever on your form now. I know a lot of con goers play it safe and maybe put the Westin as #1 or another hotel blocks away. They now could all put the Bayfront, the Marriot Marquis, Omni etc.. Why not though right? If youre told you get to cut the line and pick whatever you want of COURSE you'll pick the best option out there. Who wouldn't?
It came down to (possibly)this :
-Bad form #1 = first in line; top choice of anything (if it was a quick auto-submit)
-Completed form= forced to get in line behind most "auto-submissions"
-Bad form #2(or auto-submit form AFTER messing with it for a long time)= very back of line due to long completion times
- Average or slowly Completed forms= pushed back in line as well .. to where? who the hell knows at this point. I've gone crosseyed.
Every submission, with the exception of the accidental auto-submissions (within seconds) is now on the hook and may potentially miss out on a room where they otherwise may have gotten one.
-"Its sorta like being first in Line for Hall H, camping for 24 hours, then SDCC coming along with 5,000-7,000 people who couldn't find the line and just putting them in front of you. You don't know how many, but it looks awfully close to max capacity, you just hope you're wrong"
Who do you blame for this shitshow? Well Travel Planners of course. They failed to properly load test their "new" servers. They KNEW what was coming, its not like they were unaware of the demand. They also failed to properly test their javascript environments under that load. This in turn caused ALL the problems... but hold on....the error on the forms was theirs and theirs alone, but it is Comic Con International that ultimately holds the cards as to what is done about it. In this case CCI instructed TP to "honor" all early accidental submission timestamps (bad form #1) essentially screwing over every other submission after it, in the process. Your 40-60 second submission time on a good form that normally puts you in the top 10% now lands you somewhere from 20%-50%. Its as if you got 2:00 minutes instead of :50 seconds
Its a double edged sword though. By not allowing these auto-submissions they are screwing over users that received the auto-submit glitch. Should they be penalized? Hell no. So its a lose-lose on CCIs part. They just hastily jumped to a decision without weighing all the ramifications of said decision. This caused even more problems and even more anger. If they decided to toss out the auto-submitted glitched forms, Id be here writing about that crapfest instead, but anyway...
What NEEDS to be done is one thing and one thing only. Re-Schedule the hotel sale.(but its highly unlikely this will happen... petition anyone?)Fix the errors they failed to locate the first time around, and hold a fair and problem-less hotel sale. Users that did good will probably do good again and wont get screwed. Users that got Bad form #2 and took extra time to deal with it will get a second chance at not being ROYALLY screwed and users that got Bad Form #1 can simply do what they would have done to begin with instead of being allowed to cut thousands and thousands of others. (I look at it like this. If your payroll department at work screws up and gives you an extra $3000 in your paycheck that was some other workers pay, sure, you probably wont say anything and hope nobody notices, but you really cant get upset if payroll catches it and takes it back.) Currently CCI and TP are deciding to leave their mistake as-is and not take back what would potentially have been someone else's hotel room.
You can only assume that this craptastical error only solidifies the push to move the Hotel sale to the randomized EPIC waiting room system CCI has so ferociously adopted as norm. In the end it doesnt matter, CCI and TP can and will do whatever they want, even if it screws people attendees. Its up to us as fans to ultimately decide if we want to continue putting up with it. I say keep SDCC out of the hotel business and just let con goers book their own hotel rooms THROUGH the hotels. If you really want to go, you'll book it well ahead of time. Make them refundable, etc..... Everything will stay clusterf$@# free.
