SWC22 Anaheim Hotels

Is ECCC still going to happen in Aug.?

 

Probably not

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ECCC will now take place March 4th-7th, 2021

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Thank you, I guess it makes sense since everything else is shut down.

 

Honestly, I must be the only person who does not care what Hotel they get. Yeah, its be nice to get the Marriott or Hilton right near the convention center, but I will be happy with whatever I get

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I'll be happy with whatever convention hotel that I can manage to get and has all the days I want availible

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When is the hotel thing going to start? didn't hear about it until recently.

 

I would wager sometime around May-June-July in 2021 is when they will allow booking for Anaheim 2022..

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I paid in full for my hotel thru TIcketsAtWork and asked for a total refund on June 15 which they approved. July 2 they sent an email saying sorry for the delay but the refund is dependent on when the hotel refunds the money to them. Just received another email today saying this

"Thank you for your patience! As part of our commitment to you, our valued customer, we've been working diligently on ways to best support you through these unprecedented times. To that end, we're excited to be able to offer you a refund to a TicketsAtWork.com Credit Voucher in lieu of refunding your original form of payment. This will help speed up the refund process and avoid the current processing delays while granting you immediate access to use your Credit Voucher on a wide range of products on TicketsAtWork.com. Should you opt in, your Credit Voucher will never expire. As an added benefit, we're also giving you a 20% promotional code to use on a future purchase on TicketsAtWork.com when you accept this Credit Voucher.*"

I don't think I'm going to go for the voucher though it does look tempting with the 20% discount. If the event was next year I might think about it but two years is a stretch.

 

"We're excited to say we found a way to potentially keep your money"

 

You might be able to call your bank and have them file a claim to the merchant and request the refund on your behalf. Especially since now they seem to be jerking around on getting you back the refund. In some cases, the bank themselves will issue the credit back to your account while they continue to fight for the refund. Just check and make sure what the whole process entails.

 

So I asked in one of the Star Wars Celebration Groups if people were gonna keep their same reservations or choose another. I guess people that still had reservations that were cancelled by Onpeak would get first dibs at the same place again whenever hotels open back up I believe. I would like to book at the Hilton or Marriott, but I am looking at several other hotels just in case...

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I had to get a hotel outside the convention center area things got snatched up so fast! I would want the Marriott also, close to the Con. center.

 

After thinking about SDCC a lot this past week, I think Disney and the city of Anaheim missed out on an opportunity to create something similar with Star Wars Celebration.

Something that often gets said about downtown San Diego and all the hotels there is how much it facilitates a lot of what goes on during SDCC, and how much the event has become as much of a staple in that immediate area as much as it is on the grounds of the convention center itself. It's the perfect size for it, not like it's just in the center of some big city. And after years and years of SDCC being there, the two have become so intertwined it's almost like you can't separate them. In fact, that's usually the first thing people talk about whenever the topic is brought up about moving Comic Con to a different city. You could even hang out in downtown San Diego during Comic Con as a non attendee and still feel a part of the whole mix.

Interestingly enough, you can actually say similar things about where the convention center is located in Anaheim. There is a lot going on in that immediate area that surrounds it that could create a similar atmosphere during a popular convention. And compared to some of the other popular conventions that go on there, I think Star Wars Celebration would be one that could do that. Over time, if Celebration was held there regularly, even every other year, there could be a similar expectation regarding that immediate surrounding area that people would engage in. Which would also obviously include Downtown Disney and Disneyland, especially now with Galaxy's Edge, where even non attendees could go and still feel a part of the overall event that is happening. They could have done this in 2015, 2017, and 2019 while Star Wars fervor was at an all time and the fandom was the biggest it has ever been. And by now it would have generated that expectation of being this great event, and made it so that it was this whole big thing that took place in the immediate area. And something that could continue to be built on from here on out.

But, unfortunately, I think it's too late for that now. There is already an expectation now for Star Wars Celebration to specifically not have a permanent location. That, and I don't think the interest is there anymore that it was during peak Sequel Trilogy era. <cough> ROS could have been better as well, but that's a different conversation. <cough> I don't know, just seems like that was a missed opportunity to create a really great Star Wars event that would have actually become comparable to SDCC.

 

Tickets are selling out faster for each Celebration. Demand is there and growing. Effects from COVID-19 could have some impact in the near future, but that will be the case for every con. I think Celebration is in the best position to outlast that since it's in 2022.

 

It would still take quite a few years to establish Celebration as a regular thing in Anaheim, especially since it likely would be something that could only happen every other year. Could it be something that can happen every year? Maybe, way down the line. But not to start out, if they were to want to make it a regular thing in Anaheim that is. Which they already had the chance to do during the ST era, and by now it would have been an established event there with the expectation for it to happen at least every other year. But they instead moved it from city to city.

Plus, not to get too much into this, but I honestly think the demand pre-ROS and post-ROS might differ quite a bit. Taking away Covid from the equation, if a Celebration was announced today and tickets went on sale for it, I'm not so sure we would see such a fast sell out.

Now add Covid to the equation, and that just makes it even less likely for Celebration to become an established and regular thing in Anaheim. Something they can't even start doing for another two years. Whereas if they had held all three Celebrations in the ST era in Anaheim, at this point it would simply be a matter of when it would return to Anaheim. And there would still be a lot of hype for the event that it would have become and for its eventual return. There's no way to have predicted Covid, but looking at it from this angle, it kind of solidifies my view that it was a missed opportunity by both Disney and the city of Anaheim.

 

I'm definitely for Celebration to continue to rotate cities.

 

There's a merit to that. No doubt.

But they also have (or had) a chance to make Star Wars Celebration an event beyond just a convention, in a very similar manner that SDCC is.

 

I'd move Comic Con International around too. Give people from different regions the opportunity to experience it.

 

But that's the thing though, I don't think SDCC would be what it is if it moved around to different cities. It would certainly be popular, but not nearly what it is at this point. There's an aura to it, that the way it takes over that whole downtown district gives it. And not all convention centers are like that. Either they aren't located adjacent to or centered around a downtown district. Or if they are, they're located in much bigger city centers that wouldn't necessarily give it the focus that a smaller downtown district would. Plus I think only a handful of conventions out there would generate the kind of buzz that SDCC does. And Star Wars Celebration is one of them. There's a few distinct pieces that have to come together to make for that SDCC like experience. There's the buzz of the convention, along with a specific kind of area immediately surrounding that convention. But then it also takes time to sort of built that up to what SDCC is. And I think the Anaheim Convention Center could have all of those ingredients if they just committed to having Star Wars Celebration there as a regular thing.

 

I honestly prefer Florida to California but that is probably just me.


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I like it better if Celebration was to rotate cities...

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Maybe I should add my grain of salt... I definitely prefer Celebration to be rotating cities. Perhaps I say that because I am from Canada (therefore SWC won't come to Canada, so I have to travel anyway). I really enjoyed Anaheim, as well as Orlando (just not 2017, LOL). I thought Chicago last year was one of the better organized Celebration in a long time. And it was my first trip to Chicago. I really enjoyed the trip and visiting the city after Celebration. I don't think I would just pick a city, such as Chicago, to travel to if there wasn't Celebration. There are two other cities in the "bids"... for those who remember that... There is still Baltimore and Minneapolis. I wonder if Celebration could still happen in those cities. I've never been. Not sure whether the convention centers are large enough. I really appreciated Celebration in Germany as well. I would never have traveled that far if there hadn't been an event like Celebration to drag me in!

 

Maybe regretting now getting my hotel booked through work benefits. If everything happened as planned it would have been gravy, but the cancellation is making me a little edgy. They approved the refund quick, but I keep just getting an e-mail saying they're still working on it and will e-mail a status update in 15 days (which is a repeat of that e-mail). One time they offered a credit to their store (the vendor, not the hotel) to which I declined.

As we're getting closer to the booking date, I was getting nervous about us reaching that date and not having a refund. I was concerned that the booking would be finalized and a refund rejected, but I did call the hotel they at least confirmed it is cancelled on their end. So just twiddling my thumbs hoping my refund comes in sometime soon.