Well, I can't say exactly what went on since nobody was terribly clear about it. But the laptop getting smashed was certainly blamed for delays that day, (https://twitter.com/MotorCityFurCon/status/581488224855572480) though I notice it does say only 'registration' and not 'pre-registration' (although that might just be that the tweet was written in normal English and tried to be clear rather than exacting) and it isn't like there's any operational plan that can't be brought to a grinding halt by an unforeseen calamity.

Ultimately I don't understand why the pre-registration line was long, except that it seems to have been a side-effect of a critical laptop getting destroyed, and I don't know how that effect followed from the cause.