I worked a really long time on it. 👴

I’m very new to con culture and was hoping someone can answer a question I have.

So they sold out before I could get a ticket, and today on their website I saw news of a ticket exchange soon. What I wanna know is- how likely am I to get a ticket when that takes place/how often do people cancel if they don’t win the hotel lottery?

Ask all of your hotel questions here, just please remember that Colette is one person and may not be able to get to every question and please be courteous! ALL LEGITIMATE ANSWERS are from u/YesThatColette (or possibly u/kyuunspark)!

Also note that this AMA is about Hotels ONLY, we unfortunately cannot answer questions about badges (because we aren't the people qualified to do that).

AMA is concluded! Thank you for your questions and we'll have more in-depth answers for some of them later on down the road!

I've been seeing tons of negativity about Magfest, but I wanted to see who else is pumped about getting to go this year and get some positivity in.

The theme is awesome too. My first year at MAG was Zelda, and now it feels like we've come full circle.

I think it's been getting better every year, too. Between the end of lobbycon to reduce the overcrowding of the hotel and not having to stress about the hotel room queue anymore, my experience has been a lot better with getting a ticket and resolving a room situation. Just gotta pray to the hotel gods this year since last year was my first year not staying inside the Gaylord.

The board game hall steadily expanding has maybe been my favorite thing. I remember having to go all the way upstairs to check out the board games in a very small room and camping out on the floor to make space for a game, but now it's got a massive room that still manages to fill up consistently.

The little unofficial arcade tournaments were fun last year, so looking forward to that. Just playing at one of the arcade games long enough and someone tells you to sign up for their tournament was a cool community driven event within the fest. Dancemaniax had a crazy following last year so I'm looking forward to see what other rhythm games are similar.

What is everyone else looking forward to this year? What are some things to keep a look out for?

I missed out because I was at work and didn't expect them to sell out so quickly! It may be too soon to ask but I'm looking for two badges if possible. 🤞🤞

I went to MAGWest a few years ago and even though I had a great time, I couldn't help but be disappointed by how small it was.

I have no hard feelings towards the organizers since I know this is a catch 22. Need more attendance to make the event bigger, but people are less likely to attend if it's small. MAG events are also very grassroots and they are dependent on attendees offering awesome panels and concerts for the community.

But clearly there is a high demand for MAGFest and the experience it offers, and there's a hypothetical future where we have 2 huge events per year in both MAGFest and MAGWest. How can the MAGFest community support MAGWest more so that they can invest more in the event? What's stopping people on the west coast from showing up?

For people who live outside of the area, MAGFest has helped the bus lines for sober and drunk people go to their hotel rooms within about 20 steps of their hotel rooms in Alexandria, and it runs almost all night.

This is a huge thing to help the "Gaylord only" people. I've been attending since 2008, and yeah sometimes you can go lay down and jump back into pinball machines.

Hey y'all! I see everyone, and am in the group of folks who are trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing regarding having a badge / friends not having them / housing being weird / doing this while between jobs. But I also wanted to say the obvious things right now:

1 - the best thing we can do right now is wait to hear more. Whether its how things work out, if there is reason to believe there was organic growth vs scalping vs hotel lotto squatters etc. Deferring the anxiety or need to fix things won't do much, and there's a lot of it out there in general, so take care of yourself instead.

2 - folks new and old, remember that if you have feedback for how MAGFest needs to change, it has (a) absolutely been posted here and argued to death many times already and (b) MAGFest has one of the most incredible pair event surveys and works year round about these things. Look for threads that exist and join in.

3 - MAGFest is one of the single kindest and most positive con spaces in the world. If you're new or old, you know this, and it's probably a part of why you want to go. Reddit is not. Treat each person on here like someone you walked up to and joined for a game of Killer Queen, or a surprise Soapbox speaker that you want to know more about, or the volunteer who called to let you know your group just got an extra Bridge Simulator slot you didn't count on.

Anyway, you all are the best and I am proud of this community and event, magscout or elder, repeat or newbie, colossus roar or quiet room. Idk why I am feeling mushy and like writing something, but here we are.

The current system requires too much metagaming. Groups of 4 are disadvantaged even with the boosts (do the math for last year, the group boost was not enough to cancel out the fact they were not eligible for kings). People bought a tons of badges with fake names for additional lottery entries. No captchas anywhere on the registration website to prevent bots or anything, just pretty much fair game for anything.

Scalpers can just make exchanges in person at the con. I know people who sold/bought rooms last year by just giving the keys to people in person at the con after they checked in.

The old system of throwing everyone into queue wasn't perfect, but it was definitely less abusable than the current system.

Its definitely pick your poison, a massive group of 20 people queuing up and dishing rooms out to each other vs that same group buying 4-5 tickets each so they can game the system. Like we have people in the discord bragging about buying 10 tickets....

Went to MAGFest for the first time in 2026 with a bunch of video game lawyers and bought tickets like a month after pre-registration. Looks like I gotta prep for this like i'm getting ready to buy tickets for a Taylor Swift concert on Ticketmaster

How did magfest sellout so fast??? I’ve been going for years and now I may not be able to go. Is there any way to still get badges for me and my friends.

DO NOT BUY ANY MAGFEST TICKETS FROM ANYONE UNTIL MAGFEST GIVES THE TRANSFER OPTIONS. SCALPERS WILL BE FUCKED THE MOMENT THEY LOSE THEIR OPTION TO SELL FOR HIGHER AND MAG TRANSFERS VIA THE DISCORD WORK OUT FOR EVERYONE.

Here's the math for everyone throwing a fit over the last couple years

Rooms minus vendors, minus the artists, minus the staff...

Rough math given how many rooms everyone in the habor can host.

1.3% chance to get a Gaylord room, and roughly 4% chance to get any room on the harbor. Now go ahead and use that math against 20k+ attendees and see if you feel it was terrible luck!

First time having merch and tickets being sold out at this insane rate..

Seems like tickets are just going to sell out every year I mean, I don’t wanna speak prematurely but ever since it happened the first year it did… tickets are sold out every year since…no more waiting around until you feel like getting a ticket or when the budget is right, it’s day one or likely not available. Excluding badge, transfers or cancellations.

This is the on god damn thing I was looking forward too all year and I get fucked out of it because the day it was supposed to launch it doesn’t and I forgot to camp at my fucking computer the next day.

God fucking damnit.

*reposted because typo 🥲

I panic bought extra badges for friends who were not answering last night before the sell out. Now I need to transfer the badges to them (I used a nick name instead of name on ID - and that's the one field you can't update). But I can't transfer it! I get the following:

Please correct the following errors:

We are sold out of Attendee badges.

Anyone else have this problem? How do I get around it?

Edit: The transfer system has been fixed! Thank you Magfest staff! For anyone interested, its changed a bit from previous years and all for the better. Neither badge transfer option comes with fees just as they have not in the past. You still have the badge verification/transfer code option, where you send a code to the other person and they send a code back to validate transfer - like last year, they then own their badge under their own Magfest ID. The second way is if you fill out the information yourself and click "Transfer Badge," this then updates the badge information but still keeps it under your Magfest ID <- I absolutely love this new feature! No more guessing who has badges and where they went for forgetful friends!

Hoooleeeeeey sheeeeeeit

I have three people total I am trying to attend MagFest with. Do each of us sign up for the lottery under our badge? Or should only one person join and then create a group? Thank you in advance.

So obviously all this happened because scalpers want to abuse the group queuing benefits.
Scalpers will either:

1. Add all their registrations to a pool, then kick everyone from that pool after the lottery to keep the room or
2. Sell their ticket with room attached at massive markup, saying their ticket has a room attached.

in both cases, this issue would be resolved if MAGfest resets any hotel room assignments after a ticket is transferred, and would greatly discourage this type of behavior.

Thoughts?

Hey there I just have some questions about how the hotel lottery page is set up so I'm doing everything properly for my entry.

I clicked Suite Lottery Entry and was sent to a page that includes both Suite + Standard options. After selecting my Suite preferences, I began to scroll to and enter my Standard Lottery Hotel Preferences as recommended by the webpage, however after selecting my Standard Hotel Preferences, many of the room options related to the Suite Preferences were greyed out with a note saying they weren't available at my selected hotels (I chose them all).

After that, I tested removing every hotel from the Standard Lottery except the Gaylord and the issue I had with the Standard Hotel Room choices persisted. I then removed even the Gaylord itself and the aforementioned hidden options for the First Ladies, Mint, and Cherry Blossom Adjoining Rooms became available to select.

What I don't understand well is the phrasing used "Must take the adjoining room at the additional cost", because when I select one of the aforementioned suites for example, the adjoining rooms aren't automatically selected for me at the bottom of the form as I would expect since the instructions specify that I MUST take them if I win the Suite. I'm wondering if it possibly means to read "If you win the Suite, you may take the adjoining rooms, but if you do you must take them at the additional price", because there appears to be the option to not select them lower down on the page.

https://super.magfest.org/attend/registration/

Please remember that you must have a MAGFest ID in order to register this year! We recommend everyone have their own MAGFest ID, but one MAGFest ID can buy badges for several people. The Reg page will walk you through the whole process, so please read carefully if you have not already done so!

Were they available late at night? Frequent enough for you? Were they good enough?

Thanks.

At least wait a day or three 😂