I have been to 7+ GenCons and the last few years have made it nearly impossible to go.  We do all the things you recommend, buy the badges ahead of time, sign up the instance the hotels are open, build a wish list of events and process the moment the counter reached zero.   Yet once again here I am with no hotel and no events from my wishlist.  

I was ecstatic to see half of my 7 wishlist items available but when I went to process it received a site level error, 500, my cart was emptied and I had to jump back into the processing queue at position 7453.  Doubt I will get any of them now.

I have very fond memories and was really excited to bring my son for his first ever GenCon.   I get hotels are very limited, but don't set expectations like folks have a chance.  Don't ask folks to build a wishlist only to have the process fall over due to server load and loose any chance to getting those items.  

What a frustrating and disenchanting situation.

Oh... while typing this out I got back through the queue, went to purchase my one and only ticket that was available out of the 14 events just to have another 500 error.

What a disappointment

I had a similar thing happen to me, but I wound up with my events.  Sometimes there is a lag.  This would be the first time I would have heard the cart getting completely emptied out.  Still a nervewracking process.

We had the 500 error, but refreshing allowed us to return to where we had left off and the items processed.  Definitely lots of glitches today, though.