[FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Posted on the FRC Blog, 12/8/15: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...ration-opening

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Just want to pop in and say "Thank You FIRST!"

We've never been pre-qualified for CMP before, but this makes the process that much smoother for us. The gesture is much appreciated!

-Mike

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Even if we have no plans to attend Championship, is it a good idea to book a block of rooms on Dec 15 just in case we become eligible to go and later decide to?

Can I later drop the rooms if we do not become eligible, or decide not to go? I haven't really done this for Champs before, but the process last year didn't seem pleasant.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Nothing about badging? I got excited when I saw the title, hoping that something is being done about the abomination that was the check-in line this year.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I hope they drop the whole team ID badge thing. It caused so much trouble for us volunteers down on the field as so many spectators assumed they had the right to come down to the field. All it did was make our jobs that much harder for what was already a monumental task. FIRST please do you hardworking, dedicated volunteering staff a favor and dump the team ID badges.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Ed, I'm sure from a queuing perspective it was a nightmare, but from a referee standpoint, it was kind of nice to be able to have a conversation and know who you were talking to. Maybe find a better way to denote who's who. Have the pocketed lanyard badge holders for x group and the normal volunteer ones for y group.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I was very frustrated when a friend living in the greater St Louis area came to the championships last year to see everything, but couldn't make it until Saturday afternoon due to a somewhat long drive and a work during the week. The badge desk had just closed and I was not able to show them the pits because the event staff would not let us through. Needless to say, not so inspirational. What is the purpose of this?

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Can someone clarify if registration on the 15th involves just setting up for a later specific request period or if a team must register every team member, parents, etc likely to need rooms and then immediately proceed to hotel selection priorities? If so, how fair is the process for a huge team needing to type in all the relevant data before hotel selection process occurs?

So instead of fasted mouse wins, the fasted typist wins?

Edit: contacted Experient and found out that block request with hotel priority list occurs first and you wait to hear back from them before you have to fill in all of the names of team members, etc...so fastest mouse wins again in some cases.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

No inside information but I can't imagine it's anything other than a CYA to satisfy FIRST's lawyers/insurance policy.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Understood, but why close the badging desk before / during the biggest part of the show?

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Because of spectators walking through the pits?

Nobody seems to have a problem with this at a normal regional...

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Off the top of my head I could see a lawyer thinking this would help reduce the odds of a kid getting abducted/assaulted at the event, if they have to sign everyone in first.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I see that the 30 teams prequalified for Champs managed to take up all of the prime hotels in Experient's block of hotels nearest the venue again...talk about incentive to qualify early for Champs :) Hopefully we have luck with our number one priority...

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Its also gives FIRST more exact numbers on how many individuals attended the Championship and their involvement: students, mentors, sponsors, spectators, etc.

I can only imagine the reason they closed up shop early was to begin the process of getting the venue packed up and didn't think there would be much of a need for registration.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Is anyone else unable to find their FRC team in the system? Am I doing something wrong? :confused:

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

2052 shows up as being the "Lil' Peeps," an FLL Jr. team. Even if you search for "KnightKrawler."

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Perhaps you are using leading zeros? (0078 for instance?)

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

See attachment for results when searching "78".

078, 0078, 00078 all return nothing.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

same problem, we called FIRSt and they said they didn't have the teams loaded yet... still waiting

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Thanks for posting Joe. I totally forgot this opened at 9AM Eastern unlike everything else for FIRST that opened at 9AM Pacific. I logged in at 45 minutes after opening, and there were still a number of hotels within walking distance available for selection. It took me about a half an hour to put my list of 8 together and submit.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

So this is frustrating. We are registered and paid with FIRST. We are on the championship waitlist, yet we do not show. However, seeing 696 and 987 able to register had me check other numbers around them. It appears that all teams from ~558 through ~1002 show up in the system.

#thisreallygrindsmygears

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

For what its worth, I emailed FIRSTteams@experient-inc.com and got this response:

I see a number of other FRC teams around our number, location, and qualifying status already in there, so I'm suspicious of them "not being loaded."

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Did you try just 78? When I tried this you guys came up ok.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I'm seeing the same thing that Rick is when I search 78- just the HydraBeasts FLL team.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

358 isn't appearing either.
Just FLL & FTC teams

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Oops, was in hurry and didn't notice FLL identifier. Attention to detail really is important, huh?:)

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Latest from support:

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

It has now been approximately 4 to 5 hours and still cannot find our team.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I read a post that all downtown hotels were taken? I was able to getthrough on the telephone and experient states no teams have been entered today into the website. "Sorry for the delay"

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

358 has appeared

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Same for 2052.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I already got the registration e-mail with the results of the hotel "lottery." I got my #3 pick, and have reserved the block with a card.

Does anyone know if I need to register individual team members and reserve individual rooms now, or can I wait until March on that?

Now, to qualify for champs...

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I've had nothing but bad experiences with the experient company, website, their policies, and customer service. No surprise, they let me down again.

Our team wasn't showing in the database, so I called.
Representative informed me she cant do anything over the phone and I need to send an email explaining the problem (which seems to be what I am told for EVERY problem I call them with. Why even have a phone number?)
Sent the email mid afternoon, have yet to hear a response all day.

So while the room blocks disappear I'm here twiddling my thumbs for a second straight year.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

The only way to make this better for future years is, unfortunately, to complain to FIRST and Experient. Someone in FIRST HQ should be on top of Experient to make sure the team database is up to date and ready to go when open registration hits.

PS: We eventually got into their system and got assigned our top hotel pick.

Explanation and apology from Frank: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...ation-Problems

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Adventures on my end:

-The site took 15 minutes to load.
-I can't create my new account, because 'your password must contain alphabetic(a-z) and numeric (0-9) characters only'. I tried dumbing the password down to things like aaa111 and I'm still getting this error message.
-Emailed Experient, still no response.

This system is absolutely terrible. It was last year, and I have no idea why FIRST continues to work with them. It's shoddy work on top of bad customer service...

:mad: :mad: :mad:

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

So... here's a dumb question: why use them?

You can just book your own hotel reservations right?

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Experient blocks off just about all of the prime hotels. Finding a large block of rooms, within walking distance, outside of Experient, between now and champs is impossible. You would have to book the rooms in May/June to have any chance of a prime hotel. I have heard of teams that have multi-year contracts with hotels. But again, right now, Experient seems to be the only option.

If someone has additional info on booking outside of Experient, please share.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

I'd probably just forego "walking distance" and be prepared to bus or drive from wherever we stay to the stadium :P

Last year my team actually had the great fortune of making the waitlist for Worlds, but the best place we could find was the rental of a large vacation home from a site like HomeAway. It was fun to have all of us in one big house instead of multiple hotel rooms.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

To my knowledge, all of the nearest hotels have signed on with Experient for Champs. Even the Holiday Inn Convention center, immediately west of the venue that was previously independent and allowed us to book on our own a year ahead went over to the "dark side' and we had to take our chances yesterday. FIRST gobbles up huge blocks for volunteers at the closest hotels like the Embassy, Renaissance and the Drury. Add 30 teams pre-qualified for Champs with a week head start and we considered ourselves lucky to return to the Holiday Inn CC...

Not happy that Western teams had to sign up at 6am (3 am for Hawaiian teams other than 359) and I think it is totally unacceptable that many teams had to wait even longer for their chance to sign up due to "internal communication errors" at FIRST...Let's hope they all get their act together for the next Champs...

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Fixed that for you :(

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Since we take a bus to St Louis anyway, we've been staying in O'Fallon, IL. Someone last year put together a map of hotels based on CD responses, and everyone was like right next to the dome, or in a ring at least 10 miles in radius with no one in between.

Re: [FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening
 

Frank Merrick has since written a new FRC Blog addressing the housing registration issues: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=140351