Lucky me...got selected again in second round after declining first round. Appears this price increase is a disaster for their demand. Was under impression if you got selected in first round, you were ineligible for 2nd round? I didn't even enter again yet got email saying I was drawn again.

Apparently first round lottery winners were mistakenly e-mailed in round 2. Below is what Escape From Alcatraz posted on Facebook:

We apologize for the confusion. We had a bug in the email system that sent registration links out to all previous round winners in addition to the new winners.

They are responding on their FB page (to this issue at least), but it's confusing.

First they said the second round emails were due to a "glitch," but then they are telling folks that didn't take first round slots but got second round slots that they're slots are still available. I believe the rules were that if you didn't take first round you were out, as you state,

"We apologize for the confusion. We had a bug in the email system that sent registration links out to all previous round winners in addition to the new winners. Your name (or your wife's name) and slot are still secured and you should be receiving an email from Active. com shortly explaining for the issue"

The boat only holds so many people so my guess is they got a pretty big dropout rate in round one.

I supposed I'm satisfied by the reply that it was a glitch that shouldn't have happened. When I thought that people didn't get in the second round because people in the first round were included didn't seem right to me given the "rules."

If they allow people who won the first lottery to still register given they now how registration links, I don't care much about that. I doubt that there would be a significant amount of people from round 1 that would sign up now after letting the registration deadline come and go. I'm going to guess most people didn't register because of price, rather than forgetting about when they needed to sign up by.

Hopefully they can do some damage control with the race because if they've alienated a lot of their volunteers, the people that do sign up will potentially get a lesser than usual experience in some part of the weekend.

That explains why I got selected in the first round but never received the registration email. Price + US/CDN was too much for me to get past, so I never chased it down.

There were probably a couple hundred posts by people on EFA's facebook page saying they got in round 1 but wouldn't be buying (and a surprising number saying they didn't even know the price until they went to register). Would not be surprised.