It's official: Our full hotel reservation for Comic-Con 2011 is secured!

Didn't want to jinx this so I wasn't waving any flags around...but here's some great news from a few weeks ago.

As I'd mentioned before, the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel decided this year to change their policy just as The Marriott we use to stay at did last year; your entire reservation requires payment in full, in advance. I seriously didn't want to miss out on getting our foot in the door for 2011 so I decided to reserve our room for three of the six nights we'd be there. Most notably the three prime nights that would probably sell out sooner rather than later; Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Paying the full amount now would have been ridiculous and I was trying to skirt around this obscene policy!

As expected, I had to pay for all of those nights up front. Now all I needed to do was wait a few weeks and, with more paychecks coming in, slowly add another night and another night and another night. Suddenly, one day I decided to try my luck at talking to another customer service rep. from the hotel who might accidentally slip past that demand by not looking at the fine print and give us our room with no additional money down. Thankfully, I was right and it totally worked!

It must be because I'd already secured this same room and was only pushing the stay out a day...I don't know. But it happened. All I asked for was to add one additional day, Wednesday, the 20th. She punched the info in and I received my confirmation via e-mail immediately...NO MONEY DOWN! Woohoo!!

Then the very next day I got a little greedy. Initially thought I'd wait a couple and then add a second day. Twenty four hours later...NOPE! I just decided to go for it and add the rest of our intended stay which included Tuesday and the following Sunday. Spoke with a new rep. who did the very same thing; added the two extra days without asking for additional funds. GOD BLESS IT!!!

I basically didn't want to jinx the good news by posting it here too early, then getting a notification a day or two later saying 'hey, you need to pay the money or else we can't reserve your additional nights'. That notification never came!

So, I am happy to announce that we now have reservations for OUR ENTIRE STAY AT COMIC-CON 2011!!! All I have to do is pay for the other half of our six days sometime between now and July. What I really want to do is just get it taken care of as we roll into the beginning of the new year. Then, for the first time in history, I will have paid for everything well in advance of the actual event...both the 4-day membership w/ preview night as well as the entirety of the hotel.

Regardless of what happens work wise as we approach that crucial final month countdown, I'll have the satisfaction that all I need to accumulate is spending and food money, which is far outgrossed by the six nights at the Hilton.