After being a mentor for 2386 and having travelled with the team for the past 4 years to New Hampshire, Virginia, Tennessee and now Maine here are few tips.
1. Passports or Nexus Cards: These are very helpful getting them back and forth across the boarder however we always have that one student who doesn't have a passport and of course we don't figure this out until the day of the trip and they have brought their Ontario Health card (with no photo) and birth certificate (fun times!). I wouldn't suggest this as it could hold you up at the boarder and with driver time constraints this could be for bad timing. Also know exactly how many people in total are travelling (including the bus driver).
2. Visa Students: Not everyone may be born in the country you are travelling from. The customs officers like to know which students specifically are travelling with visas. In past years just the students that had visas would exit the bus and go through the customs office. However recently we have all had to get off the bus and go through the customs office.
3. Trip Forms: This is to cover the school and teacher's butt that you are on a trip with 30+ students and that you have their parents permission to take them out of the country. We have brought them but never had to show them to the customs officers.
4. Robot: Pretty sure there are specific forms to declare the robot at the boarder (I'm unsure as to what these are called). This can't be over a certain amount of money as well or else you won't get across. Usually depending of which boarder crossing you are going through most of the customs officers have heard of FIRST Robotics because other teams have travelled through them before in weeks prior etc.
5. Lastly always make sure that the students have their passports ready to show the customs officers and that they are polite and well behaved (no stupid remarks or they could get into trouble). We usually give our students a pep talk prior to arriving at the boarder. We check the passports before we leave the school and remind them again when we arrive to the boarder to get them out.
Have fun and happy crossing!
