[FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Posted on the FRC Blog, 12/12//16: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...g-registration

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

I was inspired to look into pre-qualified teams after reading this post. For those interested, Houston 1/2 Champs has 10 pre-qualified teams registered, while St. Louis 1/2 Champs has 21 pre-qualified teams registered. It also appears that 12 of 20 HoF teams will be attending St. Louis.

But, you know, I'm sure teams going to Houston will get the same quality CMP experience :rolleyes:

-Mike

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Dude

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

I think Mike's concern is that it would now require HoF teams to switch registrations to attend the other Championship. We already see 120, 175 and 365 in Houston, but the remainder of the St. Louis-area HoF teams and some of the Houston-area HoF teams* are registered for St. Louis.


*254, 359, 597

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Seemed to be worth pointing out :) To be fair, a majority of HoF teams have St. Louis as their home event. I was just surprised that "split" meant 12-6.

-Mike

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

FWIW, I counted 6 HOF teams in Houston:

16, 120, 175, 365, 987, 1538

And 12 in St. Louis:
27, 51, 67, 103, 111, 191, 236, 254, 341, 359, 597, 1114

A large number of the extra teams in St. Louis are Original and Sustaining, which makes sense geographically.

Still not very balanced, but not as bad as 3/4 vs 1/4...

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Ah, I cannot count. I will edit my post. Thanks Evan, I was doing quick glances.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

That, alongside the idea that HoF teams are our shining examples of teams who "get it" and stand out as inspirations to the rest of us, and now those at the Houston event will have less HoF role models to be inspired by (and oddly enough, some of our big name west-coast HoF teams are going to St. Louis [which they have every right to do], but what message does that give to the world about the Houston event?).

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

It has been an "even trade" so far (3 STL teams heading to Houston and vice-versa), so perhaps the HoF teams have to find willing partners to swap with? Can any HoF teams clarify?

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

We will be registering for Houston provided we do well this season* so you can probably add one more to the Houston count.


*We started turning down the pre qualification last year and will probably do it all the time now. Just seems to make the team and students more motivated during the season.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

I'm most excited about the dynamic room inventory levels. I have had nothing but bad experiences with Experient and I hope that Wave has a better experience trying to book this year and this looks to be a positive change.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Big question is, will the system work? Last year, the housing site thought I was trying to register an FLL team 4276, without showing an FRC team with that number.
And the company was very slow in responding to emails.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Gee, I wonder if some of the overload of HOF teams in St. Louis might have something to do with the timing of the Vex Worlds event? ;) Those of us 'staying home' at Houston will do our best to make the event as competitive as we can:D

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Does anyone know what amount your card is charged when creating the Block through Experient? It really seems like it is going to charge for either the first night all rooms, or the whole booking. It really doens't seem clear on the site, and I really don't want to pay thousands of dollars without knowing if we are going or not...

Edit: "Summary of charges" at the very last page seemed to indicate a charge of $0.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Well those rooms disappeared even faster than the regionals during first event registrations. Got our second choice, not quite enough rooms but it'll do I suppose. Hope everyone got at least a few rooms blocked that they needed.

Went smoothly besides rooms disappearing and having to go through what felt like endless forms before blocking rooms. Even with autofill it took a few minutes to get through to the actual booking. Hopefully next year they let us register in advance and then go for the blocks right at 1pm.
..or get rid of this ridiculous system all together; but I won't get into that.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

For everyone else in a similar boat: You can't remove room blocks yourself. You also can't call to remove the blocks.

You need to email support to get them to remove the blocks.

I'm not kidding.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Hey, me too!

(Seriously, just had the same conversation with phone support).

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Yep, all those people who would like to see some extra availability have to wait on email support clearing other blocks. Joy.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

My experience: I read through the instructions today prior to booking. By 1:04pm, I had the quantity and type of rooms we wanted, in the hotel we wanted, with absolutely no issues.

Overall a positive experience.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Heh, at 1:02 I finally gave up on the screen where I select my team number. I decided to search for my team number again and then the site let me select my team. Got some third choice rooms at a good rate, just not within walking distance.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Got the minimum number of rooms I wanted, at the cheapest hotel.
Tried to add a couple more a minute later... sold out.
Tried again just now, and there are plenty of rooms.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Logged in at 10:00 AM Pacific on the dot. It wasn't live, kept telling me to log in at 1:00 PM eastern (which it already was). Tried repeatedly well into the 10:01 minute, at which point I had to go back to work, because some of us actually have jobs and work during the day, and can't drop everything to compete with the other 3,000 teams over registering for things for FIRST.. I went back in around 1:00 PM Pacific this afternoon and got the Westin for Houston at $175/night. It's about 7 miles out. Not sure how others fared. I will say the website and process was cleaner than last year, despite the late opening. Does anyone know what time it actually opened this morning?

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

Logged on to the system to search at 8 pm. I requested a block of 14 rooms and the search only returned 6 hotels, all of which were at least 13 miles away. Only two or three had double bed rooms as an option. I must have 14 double bed rooms for a team size of 40 and we cannot stay in separate hotels. I had no problem reserving rooms well into January or February the last few years with more teams attending the event.

This system is broken. I tried calling hotels in person with no luck as well because FIRST has them all blocked. Hopefully some more will open up tomorrow.

Re: [FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration
 

There definitely is something a little strange going on with the hotels, and I'm guessing FIRST/Experient is holding some rooms back for later in the season.

In particular, our team was hoping to get into the Hilton by the Ballpark like we did last year, but when I logged in right when the system opened that hotel didn't show up at all.