A good number of prospective attendees were up in arms when it was announced last week Comic-Con International was doing away with the four day show badge. Now event organizers have posted an explanation regarding the controversial move.
The post reads:
Now that you’ve had some time to let the new pricing and purchase guidelines sink in a bit, we’re here to address your most important questions!
Some of you have contacted us directly or taken to social media with concerns about the new single day badge policy, so we feel it would be helpful to show you our badge selection screen.
If you make it to the front of the line in the EPIC Registration waiting room, you will begin your badge registration session by entering your Member ID and last name. You will also select the number of people you are purchasing badges for (up to 3 maximum, yourself included). On the following page, you will see the badge grid above. Here you will enter the Member ID and last name of each individual you are purchasing for, and then “validate” their information. Once a member is validated (ie: they are eligible to purchase), you will select the desired and available badge categories for each person by using the simple checkboxes.
For those who want to attend the entire show, simply check the Preview Night box, and all other badges (Thursday through Sunday) will be automatically checked for you. Just one click to get your 4-day with Preview Night option! However, if you do not want to attend Preview Night, you can select the days you wish to attend as individual items. Keep in mind that you may not purchase Preview Night as a stand alone option. If any one of the four single day badges are sold out (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday), the Preview Night checkbox will not be available for purchase.
The decision to move from a 4-Day badge option to single day badge options was to give each attendee more flexibility when purchasing. Since we no longer offer a discount for purchasing all four days, the 4-Day option was repetitive and often led to people purchasing a 4-Day badge despite not needing to attend every day. We hope this change will allow attendees to purchase only the days they truly need and maximize the number of people who can get a badge to attend Comic-Con.