Sneaking Pizza in
 

Anyone see us try to sneak the pizza into the stadium? We were so busted lol. Did anyone else know about the pizza place on the first day? We were the only team there on the first day and the day after we tried to sneak the pizza in, everyone was there. We had to wait in lines that were out the door >.<

The prices at the stadium were outrageous... nearly $6 for a slice of pizza and $3.50 just for a medium sized soda (or a bottle from the vending machines). At the pizza restaurant we could get a 2 liter bottle for $2.00. We successfully snuck those in -- not quite as obvious as 4 boxes of pizza.

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Pizza at VCU was $3 a slice and soft drinks were $3 with $1 refills. Then you could go to the other food stand and get fried chicken and sandwiches. The VCU security was good at stopping people from bringing stuff in. They stopped one girl and her mom for bringing in a bottle of water.

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I meant at the NJ Regionals in Trenton, NJ ;).

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Yes, I know you were talking about NJ. I was just saying that our prices were really high too.

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I guess all those rules about no sneaking food in, no noisemakers and no banners are actually being enforced by FIRST and the hosting facilities this year.
Oh well. The show must go on...

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last year at the bae competion they were realy stric about brining food in. one member on our team went in with a bag and they serched him. he had a bunch of board game boxes filled with drinks and food. the guy that searched him just gave him a funny look and let him in.

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heh.
That happened to me in Houston when I tried to sneak in some bottled water into Reliant Stadium and the lady spotted the water in my bag and rolled her eyes and gave me a look. She said she'd let me in if I gave her a bottled water.
If you can't beat 'em, bribe 'em. :D

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Normally I wouldn't mind buying from vendors at the competitions, but if prices are that outrageous, I'll definitely be bringing my own food when I can. I'm glad I'll be driving myself to SBPLI, cause it's about ten minutes from my house :-p.

The key is to find a nice little deli, and send team members out to the deli as time permits. Sandwiches are easy to sneak in, they're pretty small. Just make sure to send girls, because they can all bring those huge purses (I learn from my grandmother, who must have the biggest purse in the world, all the better to hide food in ;-)).

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I hate to encourage anyone to break the spirit of the rules for the regionals, but if you really want to bring food into the arenas to feed your team, there is one way you can do it

and I dont think it would technically be breaking the rules!

Ever see how a mother penguin feeds its chicks? :ahh:

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If you bring enough pizza for everyone I don't see it being an issue sneaking it in. :p :D

P.S. I would like cheese or bacon ;)

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Or eat outside the stadium, like our team will be doing in sunny Arizona :D

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Maybe if all of the teams did this to protest the high prices, FIRST, or at least the vendors FIRST uses, would realize that we're all either poor high school students, poor college students, or mentors who haven't actually worked for the past few months? :p

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our they might decide there is no money to be made hosting FIRST regionals, and will reject us, and we will end up in a high school gym somewhere instead?

usually facilities like these get a significant percentage of the income from sold tickets - since no tickets are sold at FIRST event.....???

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I remember last year during the St Louis Regionals they banned outside food from inside the stadium, but then they pushed it. Next rulling was no outside food in the parking lot. Basically they rulled you couldn't sit in your car and eat...which was TOTALLY bogus.

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it could be worse!

they could weigh you when you leave, and if you try to come back in after eating lunch somewhere else "SORRY! no outside food allowed inside you!"

wait, maybe we shouldnt give them ideas :c)

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814 isn't very much of a hungry team...We just usually wait till lunch time or after the day is over to eat...

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i understand why they say no outside food because they want the participating vendors to make money, but i mean my team brings food and go;s outside and eats. But for me a driver i usually never leave the pits i know last year i only made it outside to eat once. O well i guess jsut eat a big breakfast

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We found that rules were being enforced unequally in NJ.

Noisemakers: We left ours at home as we had decided to follow the rules. Imagine our disappointment when several other teams had noisemakers with them on Thursday? On Friday we asked if we could use our party noisemakers (it's our birthday year) and were told that small noisemakers were allowed but that loud ones would not be (Air horns, etc.). There were water bottle drums and air horns being used. By Saturday we had made some empty water bottles into noisemakers and used them.

Food: Prices were awfully high ($4.50 for a pretzel? C'mon!). The venue was VERY hot and dry and most of our team was in need of water. Thursday food was not being allowed. We had two cars with our team and took team members to McDonald's down the street. We made other arrangements for lunches on Friday and Saturday.

FIRST is in a bind because we all understand that they have to abide by the rules of the venue and the prices of the vendors. However, teams are having sponsors cut back on funding at the same time that travel costs are rising. We are holding fundraisers year-round but how many fundraisers can a town support (there are car washes, candy sales, etc. etc. every time you turn around)?

We have a large team and have not moved to the concept of a "travel team" because we want everyone to have the experience of a FIRST competition. But we also went around to our students and made sure they were eating by Saturday because we worried they didn't have enough money with them to be able to buy lunch and dinner!

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Huzzah for VCU students who were not searched on their way into the Siegel Center!

And for crowded pits, preventing the bossy lady from yelling at us for eating in the pits. We can eat KK fast. :D

Wetzel

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If they say that, then let the food out of your body right there and be on your merry way!

Hmm, should have loaded the crate with water and MREs...

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I don't know about your team; but we are definately not puting bottles of water in our crate with our robot!!!!

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MREs are nasty!! :ahh:

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One of our mentors is in the army and he brings MRE's everywhere. He says they taste really good too. I've never tasted them myself but I've heard they taste like crap from other people...

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It tastes better than the food served at Most Concession stands.

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Meals Rejected by Ethiopians

Never had one before, but I hear they improved them.

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Depends on how much ketchup you put on them! :D

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More like Dave's Total Insanity Sauce. :D

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guilty

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Haha, we ordered pizza to the parking lot on the first day (at NJ), till they made an announcement specifically stating that that wasn't allowed.... so for the rest of the time, we just snuck pizza and subs in for the pit crew and comp team and everyone else just ate pizza randomly on the sidewalk. I don't think I've ever been so happy to see mushy up pepperoni pizza in a paper bag :rolleyes:

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Me and 2 other friends missed alliance pickings @ NJ b/c first we had to do some walking b4 finding an actual place for food (thank god for chinese food). After orering the food we started heading back to the arena when security said that we were not allowed in the arena with food. thankfully I had big pockets and was able to suff the little bit of food i ordered in the pockets. Normally I would put food in a bookbag and just carry it in. This time I was fairly stupid in not doing so. I felt bad that I had to leave the 2 people I was with so they can eat peacfully due to the fact that security wouldn't let them in.

Maybe Rich Wong can get ahold of the Coordinators and work somethig out next year b/c It's entirely not fair to have to be forced to buy expensive food at the arena that you can eat by the field and your only other alternative is to walk a pretty far distance to a fast food place order and have to eat it outside with having no tables and small benches. :-( other wise the arena and how they situated the field and pits was cool and neatly spaced. :-)

MRE's are cool just add water and let it cook for maybe 5 minutes or so (no microwave or stove just pure nature doing the cooking) . I like when my uncle brought them up from georgia for me. However in some cases. different MRE's have different outcomes on the body. Some will make you wish you had a bathroom hitched to where your sitting. Others can leave you gassy :-(

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if you really get hungry bring some eggs
you can fry them on your drill motors after a match
and if security finds them in your bag, tell them
these aint for eating
they are for throwing! :ahh:

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lol@eggs

They never checked my backpack or big pockets once while I was going in and out. About chinese food, yeah well... there was nothing around except the pizza place, a dollar store and some rotisserie chicken place (which looked like a bad place so I really wasn't interested in eating there...(food poisoning isn't fun.))

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In Portland, at the end of Thursday (IIRC) they called each team's mentor and student leader onto the field at the end of the day and gave us a stern warning that anyone found bringing food or mass quantities of liquid (anything other than a bottle of water) into the arena would be ejected for the remainder of the day. They stated that they would eject an entire team if need be.

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LOL

In the future it might be wise to put pizzas in the crate with your robot before you ship it and if they see this at a comp and ask just tell them you were planning on adding them to your robot as "nonfunctional decorations" until you realized they were to good to let go to waste. :p :D

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Honestly, I don't remember them announcing things like that at our regional event. The only thing they announced (or even really enforced) was keep your safety glasses on when in the pit. It's really sad how they want $5000 just to participate and don't supply us with decently priced food. Now that I think about it, it must be the stadiums rule like "If you want to have a competition here, you must use our food." I guess I'd understand it if that were the case.

I spent nearly $60 in three days and I wasn't even buying stuff from the stadium for the most part... If I had bought from the stadium it would have been nearly $200 which is quite a bit for a 15 year old high school student to be carrying around. I guess they think we're rich since $200+ is pocket change for NASA rocket scientists.

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Yay for cold weather. Sneaking Wendy's in using jacket sleeves works.

:yikes:

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HAHAHA THAT WAS SO FUNNY WHEN THEY ANNOUNCED NOT TO GET DELIVERY!!! I would have died if someone got dijorno and be like "its not delivery... its dijorno!!!" hahahaha

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wanna make a bet? ;)

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hahah

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I felt happy enough just yelling out "MONOPOLY!!" when they made that announcement.

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hahahahahaha.... yes yes it is a monopoly! THE COMMUNISTS ARE EVERYWHERE!!! hahaha... I remember last year in NH I walked the mean streets of Manchester wearing my tie-dye shorts, shirt, socks, shoes, bandana, hat, and 256 buttons... I got a lot of funny looks... and one team had girls screaming my name... it was all for 1 slice of pizza and to save 5 bucks... hahahha

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Wow, it must suck to be you!! :rolleyes:

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I know... 15 beautiful girls screaming my name... hahaha I want to go back!!!! (I hope my girlfriend doesn't see this post) hahaha

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after all the complaining here on CD about lunch food at regionals - I have to say that the food at the Pittsburgh regional this years was EXCELLENT!

the event is held at the Pittsburgh university basketball arena, and you could get greats subs, pulled-pork barbecue, hot roast beef, good pizza, excellent hamburgers - and probabally other things I didnt even see, right there inside the building

and it was not expensive - I dont think I paid more that $5 for lunch including a large drink, and I had more food than I could eat

10 green boxes up to the food service at the Pittsburg regional - wonderful place to eat! :^)

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I signed up for food at the UTC Hartford regional next weekend. I got the $6 lunch consisting of a turkey sandwich, fruit, chips, cookie, and soda. I'll let everyone know how it is when I get back.

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:mad: It's crazy how they over charge for food. $6 bucks for a slice of pizza, and it's problay a small slice at that. Our coaches told us to bring our own water or snacks since they don't know how much the food is going to cost at WSU, cause they don't think that there going to check all of our bags.

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Oh yes...NJ's prices were way too high! I only bought there one day...and only because I wasn't aware that my team had bought pizza until AFTER I had eatten. It was ok though.

Though, I found it amusing that our Adult Leader is like.."Hide behind the cars." Um...hello...we're in BRIGHT NEON GREEN! There's no hiding us. Trust me.

I did however sneak in a lunch bag. I'm with the video team so I have alot of AV equipment with me usually. Well...the last day of NJ's competition I just grabbed my little lunch cooler thing and happily made my way inside.

Oh yes....later on...we saw a whole bag of cookies sitting on top of garbage can because apparentally...the guards hadn't let the people bring them. Not only did myself but a few other people too decided "Hey! Free Food!" and ate to our hearts content. I'm sorry but free cookies? Rock on!

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This is an update for my previous post. The food at UTC was excellent. The turkey sandwich was great, the sugar cookies (2) were good, I also got a 20 oz Poland Spring, an apple, and a bag of barbecue Lays potato chips for the $6. Also talking to other people there who had been at New Jersey they prefered UTC for better and cheaper food.

Jason

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Lucky... <ripoff alert> At the PNW Regional it was $8 for a hot dog and a large drink. </>

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I also had the same package deal, but tuna instead. I actually only spent 8 dollars for food each day, cause I bought a snapple in a (plastic :yikes: ) 20oz bottle each day.

I heard some complaints about the soda's that were being offered for sale there though.
The expiration dates for the contests on some of the bottles ranged from 2001-2003.
Iwww... Flat Mountain Dew!! Is there anything worse?

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I will agree, the food provided in the pre-ordered lunch packages was of good quality. Thursday's lunches arrived early and complete. Friday's lunches were on time, but the orders were incomplete. We asked about it and received extras! But still missing drinks. I'm not sure how Saturday's were. The concession stands offered decent prices for food - $2 for water, Snapple or soda; $2 for a pretzel. It was a nice change form the high prices in NJ. The soda WAS out of date (?) and flat, but they exchanged the bottle for a new one when I returned it. The organizers posted signs about not bringing food into the venue, but I didn't hear of anyone being checked or stopped with it.