Convention Ticket Woes

I’ve been going to conventions since the year 2000 starting with Anime Expo 2000. Conventions have always been a great place to mingle with your fellow nerds, meet like minded people, meet celebrities, see awesome events and panels and much more.

Even if you’ve never attended a convention, you no doubt have seen images of massively crowded convention centers and read complaints about “con-funk”, long lines that stretch all around buildings, and rude attendees and staff.

However, in recent years, you should consider yourself lucky if you can even experience any of that, let alone even step into an actual hotel or convention center. Or even getting an actual badge. Because the problem isn’t going to the conventions anymore.

It’s actually attempting to get into them now.

Up until the 2020’s, I’ve never really had any trouble getting badges for conventions. I would simply go online to the convention’s website, enter in my credit card info to their ticket vendor to buy my ticket, reserve my hotel online, and be on my way.

Now people can’t even get to the “buy my ticket, reserve my hotel online, and be on my way” part anymore.

Unless they queue up early and have alot of luck.

Ever since the pandemic and at the time of this writing, I personally haven’t been to a large scale convention since E3 and Halo Waypoint in 2019. The closest have been Xbox Fan Fest in 2022 which only had around 500-ish people and Vintage Computer Festival SoCal which is also a much smaller 500-600-ish event that’s pretty chill. I’ve also been to Summer Games Fest and The Game Awards which are also smaller events, but nothing compared to Anime Expo and E3.

I decided at the time of this writing that I wanted to go to large scale conventions again now that E3 is gone, so I attempted to finally get tickets to Blizzcon and Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest. I only live less than 30 minutes away from the Anaheim Convention Center where both are being held and my workplace is only 10 minutes away. I figured it was finally time for my old man self to get back into the large convention scene again.

I tried to get tickets to Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest and wasn’t able to get the early bird access for subscribers who actually play the game. I’ve been playing since 2021 and have been subbed ever since, but getting the early bird tickets was a no go.

I made sure to be at my computer for the general ticket sales and after waiting 20 minutes in the queue like the image above, here’s what happened:

Me and many disappointed fans expressed our disdain on social media when Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest was sold out of tickets immediately in less than 20 minutes. Some people had already booked hotels and now were either forced to cancel them or just decided to go to Disneyland or anywhere else in Southern California instead.

All of the previous Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest events were also lottery only to prevent overcrowding of the venues which also disappointed many fans.

However, I was lucky a week earlier to grab early access tickets to Blizzcon 2026. Even though I’ve been a Southern California resident my entire life and still am, I never went to Blizzcon for a variety of reasons. I would always spend most of my convention and travel budget on Anime Expo, Anime Weekend Atlanta, and other various events than Blizzcon when I was more interested in anime.

Kind of ironic I would spend more money on a flight + hotel + ticket to Anime Weekend Atlanta which was far more costly than just spending the ticket to Blizzcon and driving over to Anaheim.

When Blizzcon started in 2005, Blizzard’s primary focus was on World of Warcraft which I was avoiding at the time as a poor college student (yet, I spent a ton of money going to Anime Weekend Atlanta 2005). I know I would have enjoyed seeing Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 and 4 in the later Blizzcons, but still never decided to go.

My interest in anime began to wane heavily in the 2010’s as I was more into video game conventions and events like E3, PlayStation Experience, Twitch-Con, Halo Waypoint, and many more. Sadly, I still skipped over Blizzcon because I wasn’t interested in World of Warcraft and Overwatch at the time.

Now that I’ve been playing World of Warcraft for over a year and enjoying it, I finally made the decision to go to Blizzcon 2026.

On the day Blizzcon early bird tickets went live, I was able to get mine with no issue, but I was unable to get the Darkmoon Faire ticket as it sold out immediately. I wasn’t interested in the more expensive Charity Night, but that also sold out fast.

Within a day, all of the early bird Blizzcon tickets sold out even though people on social media and reddit said “Blizzcon 2023 was a disaster, so they won’t sell out!”. I was almost considering waiting until I got my tax return to get tickets, but I’m glad I jumped the gun immediately. I also got my hotel on the same day which was a bit pricey, but within a day, most of the hotels in the surrounding area were immediately booked and sold out.

Never trust anything people blindly say on the internet.

Every year, actually in fact, every day, more people are entering the workforce and/or getting credit cards with money to spend on their hobbies and fun, regardless of the economy. More people also want to attend bigger social gatherings to meet fellow like minded people which is why conventions are so popular.

If 60k people attend a popular event, expect twice that many people to come to the next one.

Gone are the days where you simply bought a ticket to a convention or an event at any time of your choosing and knowing you can attend. Now you have to be prepared with not only your credit card, but hopefully some luck you’ll even make it in the ticket queue.

I know alot of people are saying “Why cap and set a limit on tickets?”

Convention Centers, hotels, etc and more have extremely limited space for people to move around. If these places get flooded with people, it increases the chance of risk and the fire marshal shutting the whole event down. There was a time that Anime Expo got so crowded that the fire marshal almost shut it all down.

Due to the massive influx of returning and new people always attending conventions, conventions now have to enforce a limit on attendees to keep things safe and for people to navigate.

Since nobody can stop the new and returning influx of people going to conventions every year, the best thing to do is have your credit card ready, make sure you’re queued up on the convention/event website/payment processor and wish for the best.

I would recommend using your credit card and making sure you can pay it all back later. If your card gets hit for fraud or overcharges, it’s far easier to get your money back without it hitting your actual bank account.

Definitely use a computer rather than your phone to make accounts on the convention websites and payment processors to checkout as fast as you can as the ticket queues get flooded incredibly fast. If you’re stuck at work with a firewall blocking most websites, pray that the convention websites and payment processors aren’t blocked at your workplace. Your fingers will type far faster on a keyboard than the small keyboard on your phone.

Alot of people (myself included) usually want to wait for a big payday, a bonus, tax return, or any other more convenient time to get convention and event tickets. I always waited a while to get most of my tickets and avoided Day 1.

However, the more hardcore and dedicated fans with bigger bank accounts and credit cards don’t care about your situation and will show no mercy as they will always gobble the tickets first. Some of these people will even have the nerve to scalp tickets online for much higher prices for desperate fans willing to pay 2x-5x more who weren’t able to get the tickets.

There’s not much you can do about anything, so just arm yourself with your credit card, a fast internet connection, and hope for the best.

If you’re lucky, consider it a privilege to be in massively long lines with con funk!

Good luck!