[Kevin Ray]

The possible solution has been touched upon by several posters above and it seems that it is not unrealistic- except potentially, the DCMP (what ever they'll call it). LI contains enough teams locally to easily have a local district event, so too does NYC. If you made them just a bit smaller there could be one in Suffolk County (East end for you out of staters), one in Nassau County (Middle of LI) and one in the city (Manhattan, again for you out of staters).
That would enable teams to select two districts that were within a daily commuting distance for all of the Island and NYC teams. The up state teams could have one to replace the Tech Valley and another for the Finger Lakes region and a third elsewhere in the state.
This gives most teams a choice of 2 out of three events to choose from within commuting distance. This eliminates hotels and other associated costs. Having the DCMP in Albany would be somewhat equidistant for all teams.

Those parents in NYC who forbade their children to go would also forbid them to go to St. Louis, I presume. There will have to be compromises no matter how you look at it.
At the SBPLI regional for the past two years we have been in dire straights financially. FIRST had to directly bail us out last year and who knows how we're paying for it this year. The district model IS cheaper and we have to be realistic about moving towards it--at least on LI. The School to Business Partnership of Long Island (SBPLI) was one of, if not the only outside entity to completely pay for it's own regional for all the years that we had one on LI and it was thought for a while that that was the model that most if not all regionals would move to. --Until the district model emerged. I know that the discussions in this thread have all been had by the "powers that be" and I'm sure that we'll start hearing about those conversations soon. Another problem is that this isn't just a "Let's do it next year" kind of thing. From speaking to several who have helped run districts, it takes years to organize. If that is the direction that we're going to go in, then we'll need to know soon.

But for now...Let's have fun in St. Louis!!!!!!