TOPIC: Another bad experience with Gen Con Housing

My experience was the same. I went on as soon as it opened, waited in queue, picked hotel, had system crash on me. Waited to get in again and by the time I got done I ended up 10 miles away from downtown for the first time ever. The single day bookings for Friday killed it. I was booking Wednesday to Monday and it is insane that booking as soon as it opened that I could not get a downtown hotel.

They really need to get a new system. I refuse to purchase VIG (if I could even get one) just so I don't have hassle of hotel booking. I did VIG in the first year it was available and it was NOT worth it.

Agree this was the worst year yet! Had the same story to include the crash when going to pay after entering all the info. Crazy frustrating. Managed to get into the "JW Monolith". But who really needs that kind of stress.

Ramsildor wrote: For some reason a huge number of "Friday Only" or "one day only"slots were grabbed up which destroyed full 4 or five day requests. It would also drop you in mid-payment/request mode back to the beginning.

Personally GenCon needs to give preference to 4day attendees over any other kind when it comes to Housing, but it seems everyone no matter the badge type has an equal shot at room nights. I use to run one of the largest Cons on the East Coast and we ALWAYS gave preference to our full weekend attendees.

Seriously!!! What the heck was up with that. I managed to get in after 8 minutes, but Friday night (only) was taken for 80% of the hotels near the con. How the heck do they allow that to happen? Were their significantly fewer Friday nights available, or were there just that many single night people booking? System is very broken.

I'll give this topic a "Me too". I'll be commuting every day. Submit button was unresponsive.

Alvin Oliver wrote:

Kim Lindgren wrote: I had to book out by the airport as well.

We still got attached housing, but at 370 a night instead of 218 a night from the block. Now we are determining if we are just going to have a nice retreat place, or if we will be looking for roomates

Perhaps you should put a GenCon housing fund on your wedding registry.

Kim Lindgren wrote:

Alvin Oliver wrote:

Kim Lindgren wrote: I had to book out by the airport as well.

We still got attached housing, but at 370 a night instead of 218 a night from the block. Now we are determining if we are just going to have a nice retreat place, or if we will be looking for roomates

Perhaps you should put a GenCon housing fund on your wedding registry.

LOL we tried to get a token or TD registry and it wasn't ment to be. Jeff was looking to put a TD gift card on the store so people could buy us those twoards our tokens. We have already put our order in and now just crossing our fingers for a golden ticket or two for this year .

I had the same experience. Repeated crashes. Then when I finally got a spot, the room was gone by the time the personal info screen loaded.

I really think GenCon is getting too big for Indy.

Or maybe just too big period

At least you got rooms. It took me 10 minutes to even get to the waiting room then another 10 to get into booking. At that point I ran into all the problems everyone else had. 40 minutes of playing musical chairs with friday slots and I had to get back to work. By the time I got home there was nothing left. Now I get to see if I get something from the wait list.
The fun!

I don't have a room. The problem is Friday night. There are still hotels that show availability, but not for Friday.

Looks like Greenwood or Southport again.

It would also be nice if there was an option to show you only the hotels that had availability for all the dates you specified.

Worst experience on hotels for me also. My friend and I (who I share a room with each year) both kept trying and failing. The closest I got was JW Marriot, where I was all the way to the payment page when it dropped me out. For the first time ever, we weren't able to get any room at all. We are on the wait list, and I did get a hotel room on my own (at a significantly higher price) as a backup just in case. Clearly they need some more hotel rooms downtown. I think I heard that one of the limiting factors to another Indy Superbowl was the need for more hotel rooms also.

I just hope that event registration goes better than hotel registration did. I do see why they make you get a badge first, I'll bet there are a lot of people that weren't able to get a hotel room that are regretting getting a badge in the first place.

They really should show some priority to the 4 day pass buyers for hotels.

It was pretty bad, but I can't really complain. Didn't get my first choice, but did get my second.