I know it seems like the end of the world because you didn't get a downtown hotel room.  I promise you, it's not.

People will drop hotel rooms, here on the forums and in the system.  It does happen; people tend to overbook.

There are rooms still available as of right now outside of downtown.  While I like to have a downtown hotel room, I know last year I never returned to it after I left in the morning, until sleep time.  I could have taxied or Ubered in to save money.  There's plenty of hotels in Southport, 15 minutes away, that have rooms for well less than $100 a night, right now.

It is not the final judgment if you don't get a room this moment.  More rooms will open.  Please be patient and persistent.

Exactly.  And Southport is really NOT a bad location (especially now that the highway construction is done!) there are restaurants and bars right next to the hotels at Southport Crossing, and shopping nearby.  Yeah, it's not connected, but they're full of gamers and we had fun when we stayed out there.  :)

In addition, if you go in early enough (before 7-7:30am), you most likely won't have an issue parking directly adjacent to the ICC, either.  Is it optimal?  No.  But it's not the end of the world, either.

I would totally agree with this, if not for the change in the way the wait list work. I have consistently put myself on the waitlist for the JW for the last three years running and I always received a room, though it always ran to the wire before I received a call. Now that the wait list has been changed, I will have to constantly troll the site hoping to pick something up, and as an adult with a job and life responsibilities, I do not have time for this. So, unless I get very lucky on the seeking board or glancing at the housing site one night, it appears that I will no longer be attending Gencon.

For some of us it's not worth the fight.  Last year my friend spent months checking every day to get a room and finally did in late June.  For my wife and I, this is a vacation and we're not willing to spend hours pecking through forums and websites in the hopes of getting a room.  There's a cost to be patient and persistent, and not everyone is willing to invest the time as well as the money in the hopes of getting lucky.  YMMV.

I understand the frustration.  Gen Con is very popular now.  There's not a whole lot that can be done.

What address do we use to send badge cancellation requests?

Although having a random time slot is fair way to handle the traffic it doesn't help those on the short end of the random stick (twice now).  So as much as I was looking forward to going I just submitted a request for a refund on my badge.  For those of you attending hope you have fun.  I might try this again next year but if I get blanked out 3 years in a row I'm more likely to give up on GenCon which is too bad.

Because it's almost impossible to keep a wait list for thousands of people that have varying needs and varying preferences in hotels manually maybe?  I would assume.

[email protected]

Thank you!

Yeah, It's simply too big for indy now. 1 hour and 40 minute wait for a 14 mile out hotel. Indy HAD BETTER  up their cab and transit game if they want to  keep this.
Also, can't figure out what waiting period is for or how to apply. There should be another whole randome wait lists, based on range and price (come on people computers right?).

Another option, possibly for cosplayers or people with more gear, is the new Blue Indy service. They work sort of like the bike sharing service, but it's an electric car. Hopefully they can let people make use of more of the downtown hotels that are further out.

https://www.blue-indy.com/

How you do you get on the waitlist for a hotel besides just posting on the forums? We got rooms at outlying hotels but we'd like to be on a waitlist downtown if possible.

Just been told no wait list this year...

Spot on. If they don't move soon a lot of people are going to stop going. They have capped out and the con won't grow if they don't move. Frankly, I'd like to see them split into an East/West thing.

This is our first year not being able to get a hotel for Gencon. We absolutely need a downtown one, due to physical limitations, and "go catch a cab" is not an option. While BlueIndy is great for those who are capable of driving, it's not an option for those who are not. From what others are saying, if you get a wait time of anything past 1 hour 15 minutes, you won't get a downtown room. So now, in addition to my having sat and waited, and then checked and refreshed for 2+ hours, I'm told I get the honor of checking daily for months, in the hopes I can actually go.

When is the cutoff date for badge refunds?

We've had discussions ad nauseum about other locations, though Gen Con is committed to Indy through 2020.  If you want to feel free to rehash those discussions, you can do so in off topic, but honestly, there's no better suited location in my opinion, but that's a topic for another thread.