Reading between the lines I see several key phrases in the FRC teams letter from this morning
1. we tried to work with Disney --- aka: tried and failed
2. we are looking to assure that the nationals will be the same quality event they have always been - aka we wouldn't be worrying about this if it was Disney and are looking to find something as good or better
Couple that with Dean's publicity yesterday on 60 Minutes on CBS and not on ABC (the Disney owned network) and I see Disney saying adios to FIRST. We haven't seen the supposed Disney movie either. So ideas that somehow this will move to another Disney venue are probably not realistic.
All this may be so much paranoia but here in the NJ area the word on the street is the Houston Astrodome and convention center. The source of this rumor is very high up and may be a deliberate deception to throw us all off. But the more we get strung along waiting for some news of the nationals the more I see stetsons in our future.
I would still like to see FIRST work with Disney but a rift there isn't the end of the world. FIRST is not the party- its the people. We can have a great competition no matter where we hold it. But they had better move quickly or the airfares will be going up. We have enough challenges building the machine and such that we don't need to deal with more uncertainty and last minute improvisations.
WC
