Drunken Comics Rage

For the second year in a row, I've wanted to find the company Travel Planners, and burn something down. I'll admit that the site is nice for what it does. It's nothing fancy, but it's functional, at least I assume it is normally.

The only time I've had any dealings with the site is during the time to register for a hotel during the San Diego Comic-Con. The first year I went, 2006 (yeah yeah, I'm late to the party I know) the site wasn't good, but not horrible. In 2007, it was pretty much useless. I was lucky to get anything at all, and eventually I was called by Travel Planners (TP as they will now be known) and they set me up with a decent hotel room. It was still about 11 blocks from the convention center, but not horrible. Plus it gave me a chance to have one of the very cute girls on one of the bicycles give me a ride. That's another whole article though.

Seeing as how they got me something walkable close in 2007, and they made it a point to tell everyone how they had upgraded for the 2008 offering, I had a little hope. That was of course crushed in about the first minute thirty of hotel registration going live. Let me count the problems….

First, the site slowed to a total crawl. You could actually watch the graphics pop in one by one in your browser, and of course the button that you needed was always damn last to load. Second, you could only get one room at a time. Even though the damn thing said you could get 1-9 rooms, you could only get one at a time. Not sure if it was a last minute change, something over looked, or a flat out lie, but it did NOT make the Ghostshark happy (and yes, referring to myself in third person made me laugh. I might now do it all the time). Third, at some point the site totally went down. I don't mean slow, I mean that they had to reboot their freaking servers kind of down. So much for their upgrades. Lastly, I did get a room in a hotel I liked, which I think was total luck, and a hotel quite a ways away for friends since they couldn't even get anything at all. What annoyed me was a day or so after the massacre, they sent me an email asking if I needed both the rooms, and they might cancel one of them. I tried not to totally unload on the poor guy that sent me the email, as I know he was just doing his job, so I nicely replied that in no uncertain terms should they delete one of the rooms, that their system was crap, and I was very unhappy.

Here's a tip TP. GET A FEAKING BETTER SYSTEM FOR 2009!  It's not like you even have to buy a bigger line, or bigger servers. Contact your provider, or a third party provider. Work it out with them to use the system for the SDCC hotel event. Charge everyone an extra dollar to pay for it. That's right, charge me a $1 extra. I will happily pay an extra $1 - $5 to actually get a room without wanting to hurt someone in 2009.  

See? Everyone would win. SDCC wouldn't have a headache on their hands about the hotel thing. Myself and others that want to go to the Con would have a much nicer time. The third party would make a little money for one days work. You'd charge us a few extra dollars so it wouldn't cost you anything, and you wouldn't have thousands of people telling everyone they know what a horrible experience they had. I'm sure the set up wouldn't be all that easy, but I bet it would be worth it to everyone involved.

Of course, at this rate I have very little faith that 2009 will be any better than 2008. This fact makes Baby Jesus cry. 

How was your experience with the TP site this year? Let me know by leaving a comment. 

Filed under: Comic-Con, Ghostshark's Rants