Let me start off by saying this, if you have the opportunity to experience Comic Con San Diego, do yourself a favor, take a rest day at the end. Don’t be a hero! You’ll thank me later. We’ll get back to that later. Now with that said, this was one of the most memorable experiences of both of our lives. It wasn’t a flawless vacation, but we learned a lot along the way, and I’m really excited to share my experience with all of you.
I have a tendency to over-analyze my plans and, an unreasonable fear of being unprepared, especially when I’m literally traveling all the way across the country. Call me crazy, but I’m willing to bet there are many people out there just like me. In this post I want to touch on all aspects of our vacation from expenses, to packing, and the unexpected. My hope is that something that you read here today will lead you to have a Comic Con experience that’s just that much more memorable for you. Alright enough foreplay let’s get into it.
Trip Planning
If you don’t already know Comic Con San Diego tickets go on sale between February to April for everyone. It’s not the exact same date every year so I recommend creating a member id here https://secure2.comic-con.org/memberid/ , to stay informed of when tickets do go on sale as well as stay up to date on events, creators and vendors you may be interested in seeing on your trip. Social media is honestly key to get to experience all the things Comic Con has to offer. Most people who will be there will let you know their schedule on their twitter, instagram or snapchat. So it’s definitely worth it to follow them and keep tabs during your stay in San Diego so that you don’t miss out.
Knowing this is instrumental to success in the planning stages. Leading up to the month of February is when you’ll have to start saving for purchasing the badges as well as paying for your stay. Whether it be at a hotel or AirBNB it should be done the same day as the badges are purchased to ensure that you secure the best rates as well as the closest stays to the venue. Its paramount that this is made a priority. I can’t stress enough how difficult it was to find a place to stay in San Diego the week of CCSD at a reasonable rate. If funds aren’t an issue for you, more power to you, but for the rest of you, you’ll have to calculate how long it’ll take you to save up the necessary funds.
Speaking of necessary funds. Below I’ve listed how much it cost us to to stay in San Diego and how much the badges were.
April 9th the badges went on sale to the general public at 12 pm est. The way it worked was that everyone waiting to purchase tickets were put in a virtual queue. Depending on where the system determined we would randomly fall was our position in line to buy tickets. Unfortunately by the time I got to buy our tickets, the 4-day passes were sold out. Redina and I decided to buy badges for Thursday, Friday and, Saturday amounting to a total of $240.00 for 6 Badges. It would have been about the same price for the 4-day passes, meaning we paid quite a bit more for the individual tickets seeing as we’d only be there 3 days instead of 4 but we were just excited to be going at all.
One of our most expensive mistakes was not booking our stay the same day as we bought the tickets. By the time we decided to, prices were sky high and locations, except for the most luxurious, were all booked up and we were not about to spend $300+ a night to stay within walking distance of the venue. Lucky for me, Redina works very well under pressure and found us a great AirBNB location for $173 a night and booked it on May 11th. With good planning we could have possibly paid the same for a hotel near the event or paid around $100 a night at the same distance that we ended up but, you live and you learn. It wasn’t walking distance but it was a beautiful area with plenty of restaurants and a pharmacy nearby for any necessities. Either way we figured we’d UBER to the venue for those three days, It was a 20 min ride and ran us about $18 a ride, which didn’t break the bank, and was absolutely worth it.
Packing/First Aid/Essentials
I wanted to touch a little bit on what to pack. This is one place where my wife and I don’t underestimate ourselves. We pack the house! I’m not saying you have to, its just the way we are. There are just some amenities that I can’t live without, and by some, I mean all of them! All jokes aside if someone were to put a gun to my head, and told me to pick ten things, this would be my list.
- Backpack
- Running Shoes
- Water Bottle
- Blister Band-Aids
- Anti-Chafe Balm
- Sun Block
- Laptop
- GoPro
- PowerBlock
- YOUR BADGES!!!
Honestly this list is pretty self explanatory but just want to touch on a few that were clutch to our success on the floors of comic con.
1,2 and, 3 have to be the most obvious, you need a pack to keep all this crap in, not to mention all the CCSD loot we plan on coming home with, and to get those things you’re gonna need to stand in some crazy long lines so a good pair of shoes are a must, and it doesn’t hurt to stay hydrated in a 3 hour line. Yes 3 hours, and that not even a long time.
4, 5 and, 6 are not to be underestimated people. You’re not gonna have a good time if your uncomfortable. Your mood will make or break your trip reducing chances for discomfort will definitely help reduce the stress that comes with any Comic Con, it’s just the nature of the beast.
7, 8 and, 9 are important to me doesn’t have to be for you but I like the security blanket of a spare charge in case my phone, laptop, or GoPro are dying at an inopportune time.
Seriously people don’t forget your badges!!! You’d be amazed at how many people do this. If this happens to you, for lack of better words, you’re screwed. There are probably ways of resolving this, i’m not gonna begin to guess how.
Personally I’d probably just try to salvage my trip with other new experiences in San Diego. It’s a really great city with lots to see and be enjoyed but that’s a post for another day. Just don’t forget or lose your badges. Redina kept them in her purse from the moment we left Boston, if they weren’t around our necks they were in her purse.
Social Media
This is one of those things where i really dropped the ball. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t really mess with social media. I mean I have twitter, instagram, snapchat, and Facebook, I just dont use them. This really hurt me at CCSD. I’ve mentioned before that the days spent here are chaotic and stressful. Events get moved around, guest reschedule and surprise events are occuring at any given time. All of this is blasted through social media, mostly twitter and if you don’t keep up, you’re gonna miss out and hate yourself for it. I recommend following everyone you’re interested in seeing on twitter. Whether it be exhibitors or creators your going to want to check in on them in the morning before arriving and kind of set up an itinerary for you day.
Transport
I’m not gonna lie, im not really sure about the best way to go about this so i’ll just tell you how we went about it for us to enjoy this trip stress free. To start we arrived in San Diego via AMTRAK from Los Angeles. From the moment we arrived we literally used UBER to get everywhere. Probably not the most affordable option seeing as San Diego has a great bus system that takes you everywhere and was very easy to understand. We really just didn’t want to spend hours of our days waiting on buses and making a million stops. Besides who carries cash anymore for bus fare? Its kinda tough to give an estimate of how much we spent on UBER seeing as we kinda went all over San Diego, not just CCSD. I want to say $400 were spent on UBER in San Diego which when we weighed out our options seemed like a viable option seeing as renting a car would have been around the same price. We were happy with this at the end of the day.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, we are all going to have our own experiences that will be unique to us and it’s all about making great memories. Although not perfect I feel as though we had a great time and we made the most of the cards we were dealt. I feel as though we missed out on a lot and, it really put a damper on my trip for a little while after. But looking back at it now I wouldn’t change a thing. Its difficult to put things into perspective when your in the thick of it but at the end of the day there were many things i did that other missed out on and vice versa. It’s what makes our experiences unique. I hope this helped some of you out there. If you have any questions feel free to ask. There are many things that were left out, and if you have any specific questions we’d be happy to try to answer those for you. So this is me signing off and I’ll leave you guys with some pictures from our experiences. Enjoy and Thanks for reading.
