Gen Con | Gen Con Indy 2025

Hotel lottery?

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Posted by gfmorse

#76

Yeah, this is crazy. Buddy had a 12:18 time, queue was over a half hour. I have a 12:38 time, queue is over an hour.

Posted by del_grande cman811

#77

 cman811 wrote:
12:37 Lottery time only to get a "more than an hour" second queue time. Frankly, what is the point of even doing the lottery this way from what it has been in the past?

The best guess anyone seems to have at the moment is, they compressed the times into a 4-hour block (presumably so there wouldn't be complaints about how people had to miss Super Bowl pre-game parties because of this), but there were so many entries open at a particular time that the servers just can't handle it quickly enough.

Posted by llenlleawg

#78

It may not be much comfort at the moment, but on the Gen Con discord, that have said that they are aware of the problem (high volume of people getting on the portal) and are "working on it".

Posted by squirecam gfmorse

#79

 gfmorse wrote:
Yeah, this is crazy. Buddy had a 12:18 time, queue was over a half hour. I have a 12:38 time, queue is over an hour.

Yeah this is terrible. Don’t tell people to be waiting at 12:45……and then tell them it’s another wait over an hour

Poor job this year. Either spread out the times or have servers than can handle it.

Posted by squirecam llenlleawg

#80

 llenlleawg wrote:
It may not be much comfort at the moment, but on the Gen Con discord, that have said that they are aware of the problem (high volume of people getting on the portal) and are "working on it".

currently says 1000+ people ahead of me in line.

Posted by squirecam kevinrg

#81

 kevinrg wrote:
If there was a change back, I really wish Gencon would have been upfront so we could have been prepared rather than surprised that you get a time and then have to wait some variable extra time.

this 100%

Posted by roderick

#82

From Gen Gon: "We are experiencing a high volume of attendees entering the portal, please be patient as everyone is experiencing a delay in accessing the portal. Rest assured the spot in line is secure as long as they don't close the window"

Posted by cman811 del_grande

#83

 del_grande wrote:

 cman811 wrote:
12:37 Lottery time only to get a "more than an hour" second queue time. Frankly, what is the point of even doing the lottery this way from what it has been in the past?

I feel like this could have been avoided by simply looking at a calendar and picking a different date other than one of the biggest social events of the year.

Posted by kevinrg llenlleawg

#84

Who would have thought people would hit the portal at the time they were given. I'm shocked...

Posted by squirecam roderick

#85

 roderick wrote:
From Gen Gon: "We are experiencing a high volume of attendees entering the portal, please be patient as everyone is experiencing a delay in accessing the portal. Rest assured the spot in line is secure as long as they don't close the window"

it’s funny cause the page says you CAN close it without losing your place in line.

Posted by mscaveney del_grande

#86

 del_grande wrote:

 cman811 wrote:
12:37 Lottery time only to get a "more than an hour" second queue time. Frankly, what is the point of even doing the lottery this way from what it has been in the past?

It's probably not a server issue, but an issue of limiting access to the portal to X number of users at a time to ensure accurate inventory counts for subsequent users. In this day and age, it's trivial to add on or configure some extra instances via AWS or whatever cloud provider they're using to make sure that the sheer number of people don't crash the site, but I woud have more confidence in a system that allows 2-4 users to book at a time rather than 20-40 at a time to deliver correct inventory, esp when you consider that there are a good chunk of room types already sold out at downtown hotels from VIG users.

Posted by mscaveney squirecam

#87

 squirecam wrote:

it’s funny cause the page says you CAN close it without losing your place in line.

LOL, I'm sure, I wasn't gonna take that chance.

12:26 time for me, about 300+ ahead of me in line, got in at 12:42, no problem getting my preferred room, looked like there was plenty still there at least as far as singles went

Posted by hahnarama

#88

It has nothing to do with SB weekeed=nd, this happens EVERY year.

There is such a simple solution but they will not embrace it

Posted by roderick

#89

Gen Con sez: "better safe to let the counter reach zero, than to be sorry if the page start you over." (theyre typing fast over there, forgive the grammar)

Posted by roderick

#90

Gen Con passes on a note from the Housing people:

It appears there was a system glitch with the third-party application and only a handful of users were getting redirected to the Passkey booking site.
The issue with the long wait should now be resolved but there are still some people in the queue waiting to get redirected. I’ll share another update soon.

Posted by austrianadam

#91

[This post has been removed]

Posted by del_grande

#92

Reports are that the "second queue" problem has been fixed - a lot of the earlier "hour waits" ended up being only around 15 minutes, and somebody reported at 1:15 that they didn't have to go through the second queue at all.

Posted by mamabarry del_grande

#93

 del_grande wrote:
Reports are that the "second queue" problem has been fixed - a lot of the earlier "hour waits" ended up being only around 15 minutes, and somebody reported at 1:15 that they didn't have to go through the second queue at all.

My experience, that is correct. Our first time as 12:14 and we did not get in until 12:37. Our second time was 1:09 and we were able to get right in.

Posted by jimdigris

#94

With my time, I'm not getting anything downtown. Does anyone know who was running https://genconhotels.com/ from last year? It's separate from the Gencon site. It gives room availability at a glance.

Posted by del_grande

#95

Looks like the downtown rooms are all sold out, except for the occasional straggler that might pop up if somebody cancels a reservation, as of about 1:45.

Next up: when will the first "What do you mean, the Hampton Inn Indianapolis South is 10 miles away (and it's not near any bus lines, either, so that's not an option)?" complaint appear?

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