Tomorrow morning at 9:00 PST, rooms in the convention block go on sale for this year’s Comic-Con International. I was going to write up a bunch of tips last week, but CCI beat me to it by launching their own blog, Staying In San Diego. Visit it today, because it’ll probably be swamped tomorrow. (Though if it’s actually hosted by TypePad, direct visits may not take it down.)

Update Wednesday Morning: Well, I made it through. Oddly enough, in exactly the same amount of time as last year. I had the confirmation number at 10:04. Weird.

Once again, I was completely unable to get through by phone. The website was hit and miss, and actually crashed at one point, serving up only a “500 Server Busy” error. Right after I entered my name and address for a reservation. Nice. The current blog entry is filling up with complaints from people having similar or worse experiences.

Update 2: The Beat has a growing comment thread as well, and notes that the con hotel blog is making noises about trying to get Travel Planners to fix the problems. I think having an official place where they can read exactly what people are going through is helping convey the fact that the reservation system is broken, and that it’s not just the imbalanced supply and demand for rooms. (end of update 2)

I’m going to repeat some of my criticisms about the actual website, which seems designed expressly to make it bog down under this load: Continue reading

Spent a good chunk of last night looking at travel websites. Accomplished 2 things:

  • Arranged for a hotel to stay in San Francisco next month.
  • Arranged for a back-up hotel for San Diego Comic Con, just in case we can’t get a room through the convention desk.

Hotel rooms during Comic-Con have become a scarce commodity over the last few years, as attendance has shot up by thousands (it actually sold out before the doors opened last year!) but only a few hundred new hotel rooms have been added to Downtown San Diego. Rooms in the convention blocks have been selling out in a matter of hours. The con website has crumbled under the stress, and the phone lines have caved. Last year it took me over an hour just to get through. This year, they haven’t even published a list of which hotels are involved, and it looks like they’ve dropped fax from their options. And booking downtown hotels directly isn’t an option: either they’re sold out, or they want $350/night-plus.

So, just in case I can’t get a room downtown when they go on sale next week, we can at least stay someplace near a trolley station. And if I can get a closer room, even if they charge me $25 to cancel the first reservation, it’s worth the peace of mind.

(Originally posted at LiveJournal. Brought over here to fit with the rest of my convention posts, and as a snapshot of the days when you could get a backup hotel. Not downtown, but in…it might’ve been Old Town? In any case, I cancelled the room once we got our confirmation from the convention block hotel sale.)

In early August, we went up to Santa Monica to visit my brother and his colleagues as they returned to Florida from Wikimania 2007 in Taipei… with a 10-hour layover at LAX.

We carpooled with my parents, and arrived while the group was still stuck in customs. So we wandered around the Santa Monica Promenade and pier for a bit. Not surprisingly, there were some strange things about, like this turtle-themed drinking fountain.

Turtle and drinking fountain

Then there was this sign, on the Johannes van Tilburg Building, which I couldn’t quite decide how to take. “Free Will?” “Free Willy?”

Frey Wille

The most disturbing was probably this mash-up of two movies on one of the many theaters on the promenade:

Marquee: Knocked Up, Bratz

Is the American public ready for that film?

There are topiaries sculpted into the forms of dinosaurs scattered along the promenade. This stegosaurus came out the best:

Stegosaurus topiary

As I mentioned, we did wander out to the Santa Monica Pier after a bit. Nothing terribly odd, just a couple of photos to set the scene:

The pier viewed from the cliffs

Santa Monica beach and cliffs, seen from the end of the pier

Night EyesOur first night in San Diego, we picked up our badges for Comic-Con, then went out to see Avenue Q. We took the trolley back, and as we walked up the hill from the Little Italy trolley stop, we saw a pair of giant cartoon eyes looking out over the city from a balcony near the top of a nearby building. I thought they might be satellite dishes with convenient lighting, but then I remembered the number of odd publicity stunts connected to the Simpsons movie. No idea whether it’s related or not.

The shuttle route from our hotel to the con passed by this mural, which plays with the nature of the constructed reality. The wall is a newspaper page. The face is a sculpture, a painting. The hands holding the chisel and paintbrush, of course, are just as artificial as the face being created.

Mural on a building

We noticed an interesting coincidence at Horton Plaza. Just a few doors down from the Post Office was an Aeropostale clothing store:

Aeropostale and Post Office

Bench: Sit.  Stay. Heal.This bench was in front of a hotel, probably the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp. I suppose that makes the pun on dog training more appropriate, since it’s a block away from Petco Park stadium.

Quiznos DrinkI’ve always figured standing out on a street in a mascot costume must be miserable, especially in summer. But how much worse to be dressed as a giant soft drink? I suppose this would go with last year’s walking sandwich.

Now, you have to wonder about AMN Healthcare. It’s clearly a set of initials…but how often do people complain about health, insurance, and the healthcare industry? It’s just one letter off from “Damn Healthcare.”

AMN Healthcare

Awning: Sin NiteclubBack to the shuttle route, next to (or possibly connected to) the Martini Ranch spotted in a previous installment of this series, was this nightclub that made no pretensions about what people are going there for. Also note that it’s a “niteclub” — is that a nightclub with fewer calories?

Then there’s this place, which employed the ultimate euphemism:

F-Street: San Diego's ultimate sensual well being adult store

That’s got to be the most convolutedly delicate way of saying “sex shop” that I’ve ever seen.

Look for the Spartans.

Whew! I’ve been sorting and labeling all evening, and I finally posted this year’s San Diego Comic-Con photos!

I’m still adjusting the descriptions and titles and such, so the text will change a bit over the next day or two, but all the photos are up! 293 pictures of costumes, convention sights, San Diego and more! And read on for all our SDCC 2007 posts!

While they may tell you that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, they’re not entirely correct: some of it escapes onto the internet!

So here’s the lighter side of our recent trip to Las Vegas.

Sign: Really Living FurnitureLet’s start with the drive out. Somewhere between the Cajon Pass and Victorville, we saw a warehouse with this banner. We had to wonder what “really living” furniture was. Trees grown into the shape of chairs, perhaps? A topiary table? We didn’t get the camera out in time to snap a picture, but we caught it on the drive back.

Henry’s Moving (Truck)Then there was the moving truck. Somewhere around Barstow we got caught behind this veeerrrryyyy sssslllooooowwwwwlllly moving truck, with the company name and phone number spray-painted on the back. We joked that it was “Henry’s Moving… slowly.” (About 45 MPH on a 65 or 75 MPH highway.) What was really odd was that, two hours out, we’d run into a car from our own area code. Once we could get out of the lane, we passed them and left them way behind. Perhaps 45-60 minutes later, we made a stop in Baker. Bathroom break, new drinks, top off the gas tank, and stop at Alien Fresh Jerky. We pulled onto the freeway…. and there was Henry’s Moving.

Speaking of Alien Fresh Jerky, perhaps they get their supplies from the flying saucer perched above Las Vegas’ Fashion Show Mall.

Saucer above the Fashion Show Mall

Continue reading

The MGM Grand Hotel has a lion habitat: a zoo enclosure with glass walls facing the casino floor. After all, Leo the Lion has been MGM’s mascot since the early years of the last century, so the MGM Grand is all about the lions.*

We paused there as we passed through last Thursday afternoon, and overheard an announcement that they would be introducing a pair of lion cubs to the habitat the following morning. So Friday morning, after checking out of the hotel, we drove over to the MGM Grand to take a look at the lions again.

Sitting lion.
Lion chewing a rawhide toy.
Two Lions.
Lion Cub being fed.

*Well, it used to be split between lions and The Wizard of Oz. It’s green because it was basically the Emerald City. Sometime between 1998 and 2005 they seem to have ripped out all the Oz stuff. Katie pointed out that they really missed their chance. If they’d kept the theme, Wickedmania would have brought them an entirely new class of Oz-seeking clientele.