The San Diego Comic Con beats previous records and sells out under an hour of opening sales.
The tickets, or badges as they are called, went up for sale around 9am on Saturday during Open Registration. In order to buy the badges people need edto have confirmed Comic Con member IDs, which needed to be bought before February 11th. The Comic Con organizers warned potential patrons that the badges would sell out fast due to the fact that there were more attendees than badges, and they sold out quick. All three days of the annual event sold out in less than an hour.
The convention actually runs for four days, one of which is “Preview Night” and then for the weekend. The most popular days, Preview Night, Friday, and Saturday, were sold out within 40 minutes. Last year the event had sold out in an hour, but the event has constantly been in a pickle with housing everyone who would like to come. The event has since overflown from out of the San Diego Convention Center and spills out into large hotels and the streets of California. Every year Comic Con gets around 130,000 patrons in addition to the actors, actresses, directors, and authors bringing sneak peeks for highly awaited news. The “pop culture extravaganza” has come to house many news breaking events, trailers, and panels, which is why interest in the event sky rockets every year.
For this year Comic Con will be held from July 21st to July 24th with Preview Night on the 20th. Daily badges were sold from $40-$55 for adults and lesser prices for juniors, and children under 12 are free when coming with a paying adult. Despite the demand for badges, the entire process is done via random distribution. People all congregate at the same time and put in their interest for tickets and then wait to hear news if they got tickets or not, which is what put fans through more shock this year when getting news that the badges sold out so quickly.
For disheartened fans that may not have gotten badges for this year’s SDCC, there are other options that can help satisfy the comic world needs. Though not as big as SDCC, other events to look out for (and easier to get tickets for) include the, Silicon Valley Comic Con-March 18th-20th in San Jose, CA, Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Experience-March 24th-26th in Salt Lake City, UT, Wonder Con-March 25th-27th in LA, and Emerald City Comic Con-April 7th-10th in Seattle, WA. There are plenty more events coming up for the public, but if SDCC is the only one catching fans’ interest it’s just a waiting game until next year.