As of this morning, you can reserve at the Westin Pittsburgh Convention Center for Anthrocon 2008 (Omni William Penn reservations to come).
Read the instructions carefully! Note that a non-refundable deposit for your first room night will be charged to your credit card approximately 62 days before the convention (typically around April 25).
If you want to know why these measures were necessary, read the background here.
Edit to Add: It has been noted that the Anthrocon pages are experiencing high traffic (funny thing, that) and therefore might be running a bit slow. Also, I found that the Westin’s reservation page barfed when I tried to reserve with FireFox, but it worked OK with IE.
Here is my naïveté showing; I assumed that when you reserved a room there was ALWAYS a non-refundable deposit arrangement thing. Why else would they ask for your credit card*?
Learn something new every day. 🙂
*of course, now I see that it’s to make sure you have a credit card to pay for the room you’ll be sleeping in six months from now…
Actually, typically hotels want your credit card so if you don’t cancel with 24 hours (or 48 hours, or whichever) they can charge you for the first night of the room. The arrangement for Anthrocon is somewhat unusual in that there is a grace period until April for room cancellations. For larger conventions, you may be charged for the first room night at the time of reserving.
I’m going to watch carefully how this goes. Room attrition hasn’t been a huge problem for MFF in the past, but it’s been there and as we grow it may be something we may need to deal with.
You just have more dedicated con-goers, I guess, or maybe a more mature demographic? I can’t judge, since we haven’t been to AC since 2000.
Would that it was how wonderful our attendees are 🙂 More likely it’s the fact that we’re approximately half the size of Anthrocon. As they say, Mo’ money, mo’ problems!
A few years ago, I seem to recall that we had something like 30 rooms canceled at the last minute. I imagine that goes up with attendance, and this year we have more of the hotel booked (and we pretty much have filled the Amerisuites), so I imagine it will be a larger problem. Now 30 rooms are pretty easy for a hotel to fill at the last minute with transients (i.e. non-con attendees), but 75 rooms, or maybe 100 rooms? That starts eating into the bottom line.
There, Done.
Likewise, I found the reservation did not work properly when I used Safari for Windows, so I used the ol’ Internet Explorer. Done!
Hmmm… now I have to sit down and decide if I will be going to Anthrocon for the first time… or should I wait it out another year… *ponders to self*…
Well, I highly recommend Anthrocon, but then I’m on staff there so I’m biased 🙂 It is a heck of a party, though!
Well I enjoyed the two MFM’s and the MFF I’ve been to. It’s just a matter of dragging myself out there, and perhaps bringing a few friends from Purdue with me. We’ll see what happens. ^^
Does LAFF frequently have carpools out there? I think they didn’t but I don’t remember if it was a tradition or not.
I DO NOT like this setup. I seriously question the legitimacy of charging someone’s card 2 months before delivery of service.
You saw the problem and the proposed solutions. I think this was the most equitable solution possible that didn’t wind up penalizing the majority of the Anthrocon membership.
I would care if I had any intention of going to anthrocon. It’s too damn big to be fun…but it’s like Mecca you should go once in your life if you are a fur. That and with the looming expense I am going to have in a few months of a morgage…well no thanks overgrown con.
Well, number one, it’s bad form to disparage a convention that I happen to enjoy and dedicate almost as many hours to help make happen as I do to for Midwest FurFest in my own journal.
That being said, I think that yes, Anthrocon is quite large. I don’t particularly see this as a bad thing; it’s a different experience. Some people enjoy that experience, others don’t, and that’s fine. For my part, I don’t want to go to Convention A, Convention B, and Convention C and expect my experiences to be identical at each convention. Likewise, if I enjoy A and C but not B, then that’s fine – I vote with my feet.
I also realize, however, that conventions are run by volunteers, people who spend an extraordinary number of hours to make sure that things run as well as possible. Even if I’m not going to go to a convention and even if I have no interest in ever attending a convention, I think it is important to respect the work and time that others have put into it and not speak ill of it.
my scarsam is hard to interpret on text. The comment was ment as a personal opinion of that perticular convention. I went back in the day and had fun but for me the cost is high and the crowedness tends to not be my favorite. It was not bashing the staff there or the people who go, I understand how hard it is to keep a con going afterall I have helped out a with MFF every year as far is filling in where gophers are gone or not enough.
I tend to vote with that slip of paper they give you at the voting station…they won’t take my feet.
I also want to laugh a bit at the fallout from the less thoughtful furs who are going to complain about the situation with the rooms.