[MasterMentor]

When my old team would schedule rooms for St. Louis, we did everything ourselves - the events agencies FIRST provides for teams to use has always been absolute garbage and had failed us multiple times previously. We would book rooms only to find the hotel fully booked, had reservations cancelled on us at the last minute, and a host of other issues. We eventually decided to rent two vans and do our own transportation, and did our own hotel reservations outside the city. We stayed about 30 minutes away, just over the Illinois border. It was a really easy commute, the rooms were cheaper and helped offset the cost of the van rental and fuel, and we had awesome parent help who did all of the chauffeuring. We were the only FIRST team at the hotel, so we even were allowed to use the hotel's meeting rooms (for free) for our scouting and team meetings. It was quite nice.

-George