Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanB
New England also struggles with the Boston Marathon and school trips to Washington, DC and elsewhere during the month of April really puts a limit on the available buses for teams. Last year there was nothing available and somewhere between 20-30 teams traveled to St. Louis. This year we have 51 teams qualified from New England.
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This is a huge part of the problem. We started looking at buses a few months ago. We had a decent quote, but couldn't pull the trigger fast enough to get a deposit down (i.e. in about a day from when we got the quote to when it was no longer available). We ended up deciding to fly and ship our pit stuff. The Boston Marathon just sucks up buses all over New England. There are probably teams who are able to secure buses, but either they got lucky or are really good at planning ahead. In the future, it seems to me that either NEFIRST needs to reserve a handful of buses in early fall (September/October) for the following year (if it's possible), or teams need to assume they are going to WCMP and start planning early. That might even mean trying to reserve a bus in the fall. Even if they don't use it, there will probably be a team nearby that could take it off their hands.