Understand how the wish list works, how buying a ticket ONLY if all are available works, and how getting a ticket for you, and one other works. I use two methods depending on how much I want to do something and how many somethings there are I want to do.
Method A for when you only have a couple super duper important things:
I'll use True Dungeon, A painting event and an Intro to Shadowrun game to explain.
You want all three. There are 80 sessions of True Dungeon and 8 of the Intro game and only 1 of the painting event.
You would do something like this:
Painting
Shadowrun time slot 1
True dungeon slots that overlap timeslot 1. Do not put anything that overlaps the painting event AT ALL.
Shadowrun time slot 2
True dungeon slots that overlap timeslot 2.
Rinse repeat.
When your wishlist finishes, realistically you'll end up with MAYBE 1 Shadowrun, PROBABLY 3-5 True Dungeon, and PROBABLY not the painting.
Edit your cart to remove the extra True Dungeon runs you do not want. Add in secondary events you figured would not fill up. LEAVE THE PAINTING CLASS in your wishlist. Someone might choose to drop it. If you overlap it with another event, you won't be able to pick it back up.
Run your wishlist again. Repeat until your schedule is satisfactory. When Gen con comes, bring generic tickets to the painting event.
Method B for when you have a lot you'd be interested in. Divide this one up into timeslots. Order your list accordingly. So say you want Chtulhu, Shadowrun, RPGA, True Dungeon, Nascrag, the Orc Stomp run, The Stink, PLaytesting, and Ticket to Ride.
I usually divide my day up like this: slot a is early am to 1pm. slot b is 1 pm to 6pm. slot c is 7pm to late.
slot a thursday I usually leave blank because I like hitting the dealer hall but so does everyone else so you might want to stick something else there.
So slot b thursday would have all interesting Cthulhu games that were in that timeslot, followed by all interesting Shadowrun, followed by...you get the idea. Basically everything I would want to do that fits into that timeslot is next, and then I move on to slot c. Repeat.
But. Why you ask? Why not list events in the order I want them? Because I might accidentally lock myself out of an overlapping event. Wishlists are indeed processed from 1 on down, but they do NOT allow for overlapping times. So once it finds an open event for slot b, it skips everything else in that timeslot, and proceeds directly to slot c things.
This is where you have to, I cannot stress this enough, HAVE to make SURE you have accurately checked your boxes. You are bringing your sons, so you should decide now, not during event registration, if you are willing to split your group, if you are willing to have two of them play and you watch, or if all of you must participate or it is a no-go.
If you do NOT check the 'only get it all are available' box you WILL end up separated into different times. If you check it for some events and not others, you may get blocked out of something. For instance, you want to play a D&D game with your friend, so you don't check the box. You get in. But you also wanted to hit this other game with all three of you, so you do check the box. Well, the second event had seats but you were already signed up for the D&D game so it skips that event.
Make sure you and your buddy are friended, each way, in the system.
And lastly, don't sign up for the seminars until early august unless you REALLY WANT TO BE THERE, because they always add many late events and I cannot tell you how many times I have seen teeth gnashing because a seminar overlaps with something and the last day to let you exchange things has passed.
