One thing that no one’s mentioned is that the San Diego Comic-Con was originated in 1970 by another Sheldon – Sheldon Dorf.
I had no problem with JEJ’s deliberate hamminess. The whole point of the episode is that Sheldon finally gets close to one of his media idols, who he soon finds just as annoying as all the others found him. The perfect ending would have been Sheldon trying to file a restraining order against JEJ.
Regarding transfer of tickets: Comic-Con is four days long. It would be very easy for four people to split the price of one ticket, and each of them use it for one day. That’s the reason for the rule. You’re not being charged with petty theft for stealing someone else’s ticket. You’re stealing from the con by not buying a separate ticket for each person.
According to their website, you pay for each day you want to attend. No discount for multiple days that I see, so one person going 4 days nets them exactly the same money as 4 people each attending one day.
Unless the four people swap the badge around to allow them to attend partial days (for example, if one person wanted to attend a seminar in the morning, and another wanted an autograph from an author who was only going to be there later that same day).
In my experience (going the last two years), nobody looked closely at my badge, nor did they check it against my ID again any time after I actually obtained it (though they did stringently check before they gave it to me in the first place). I think as long as someone didn’t borrow a badge from someone of the opposite gender with a wildly gender-specific name (like a big hairy guy wearing a badge from someone named “Tiffani” or something), nobody’s going to check. Caveat: I never tried to get into any of the really high-profile stuff. I don’t know if it’s different/more scrutinized for that kind of thing.
I’m sure it’s also a capacity issue. they make assumptions about what percentage of people will stay all day, or actually attend all four days, and then over-sell the actual space capacity accordingly. So a four-day pass used for the full time period every day can result in a one-day passholder waiting at the door for entry.
But the primary purpose of these types of regulations is to protect the conference-goers from scalpers. They really are mainly working on behalf of the people who support them, and against those who would like to bleed money from both conference host and attendees through no more effort than buying a pass and then jacking up the sale price of it.
What’s new for this year is that you have to buy four separate day badges, rather than a 4-day badge (though once you’ve secured your 4, they’ll upgrade them to a 4-day badge unless you request them not to).
I’m not sure what the point of this is, exactly. I’m pretty sure in previous years, the 4-day badge wasn’t any cheaper than four individual days. Overall, the price for 4 days went up.
And don’t even get me started on hotel room prices.
