By: Revanche

San Diego Recap: Spending, Savings, to the Spreadsheets!

July 27, 2011

The creepiest biggest Smurf ever

For weeks leading up to this mid-July jaunt I kept picking up pretties, and putting down pretties. I knew I wanted things, but I couldn’t sustain the wanting enough to buy them. It was just not there.  As it turns out, this was A Very Good Thing.

My annual pilgrimage to Comic Con has never been such a banking bruiser.  As usual, by planning ahead, we saved on our airfare a fair amount, using award tickets one way and sale tickets the other way.  This was a hotel year as well, shared with two friends, with parking at both ends (hotel and convention site) coming out to $500 for five days and four nights for the two of us. Free cookies coming and going, though! *_*

Tickets for next year were bumped up a huge amount.  Four day passes with Preview Night for adults are now going for $175.  That’s up from $105. 

This year, the officials held back a huge amount of tickets to be sold online due to having sold out entirely onsite last year. That makes sense – I think it was really unexpected and unfair for people who were not attending this year to have lost the chance to buy a full weekend pass for next year just because they weren’t on-site. But then they also set specific times and restrictions on how and when and who could purchase tickets for next year.  In  combination with the memory of an online ticketing system that fell on its face not once, not twice, but multiple times last year, that sudden perception of extreme scarcity led to a run on the tickets and people freaked out.

Lines formed at midnight for tickets that were being sold at 8 am, hell, lines formed the full day before the rest of the weekend because people didn’t trust the online sales system even though the whole point was to reserve tickets for online sales.  It was ridiculous.

Even though I love this annual event, considering the insane hoops we were put through just to buy the tickets, I seriously considered taking our chances online because I hated the idea of letting the spectre of next year ruin this year.  My crazy fiance was selectively deaf to my input on the matter even though this isn’t even his event. 

Resentful of the crappy choices of camping out or risking not even getting tickets if the online system crawled up a drainpipe and died again, I even tried to tell myself (and PiC) that we could just choose not go next year. But the words wouldn’t creep past my throat and he wasn’t having any of it. Apparently, he could feel my future/potential heartbreak as well.  Bless his heart, he even camped out overnight to make certain we would be able to have those badges in hand for next year before leaving this year.

Camping. Sweet butter, there was camping.

We didn’t both stay out the entire night, I just stayed late and he stayed the rest of the night but we were toast the rest of the next day.

I did ever so much more shopping than I’ve done in years past, loading up on 60% off comics pushing myself right over the airline weight limit, and that after I’d emptied clothes out of the suitcase.  All told, comics and various other goodies ran to the tune of $253.55.  Nearly 20 gifts of varying sizes were in that batch, but for the first time, a few presents for us as well.  

Wee Street Fighters!

Considering I went in saying I wasn’t going to spend “much” but didn’t think about my budget beforehand – totally lost in my haze leftover from working days upon days upon days – and didn’t keep an eye on the running tally only recording my purchases as I went, it would seem we escaped relatively ok.  Except. I count pre-registration for the following year in the year it was purchased ($350).

We spent, then, $603.55 at SDCC this year.  Also, we purchased tickets for w00tstock, another $100, and contributed another $150 to the food budget for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.  Holycats, guys. The spending was spread across many months, starting from last year through this year,

Total: Way So Much. ($1500)

Oh, and I met Bruce Campbell!

I’m reeling from sticker shock.  We’ve never had to spend that much on a Con before, it’s always been under $600 including the next year’s tickets.

The airfare and hotel costs are the easiest targets. Between now and next year I can either concentrate purchases to earn hotel points or (probably the better plan) concentrate on earning points where I can redeem for hotel gift certificates which substitute for cash. Doubtful that reward bookings will be available during that seriously high volume time so the latter would be better.

The other option is to find a way to make $3500 over and above my usual income. $1500 for Con, $500 for taxes, $500 for savings and $1000 just to make myself feel better about this year. 😉

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