[Andrew]

The Good
1. Venue was out-standing. It was clean, bright, and well organized.

2. The Pits were very good. Good spacing, aisles generally clear, enough light to see.

3. The robot transport from the pits to the playing field was very good. It was relatively short and direct. Combined with the generally open aisles (compared to Disney in 2001 especially), it was very easy to get from the pit to the field and back again.

4. Good spacing for matches and good number of matches.

5. Field announcers were excellent (as usual).

6. Refs were very good.

7. The food situation in the World Congress Center was pretty good. There was selection and the prices weren't all that bad. OK, there were coffee and apples at reasonable prices. I don't know about anything else.

8. There were several things to do in WCC (such as the Hall of Fame, the Rover Mock Up, the FIRST store, the Conference). If you had a free moment and were tired of lurking in the pits, you weren't likely to get bored.

8. The practice field in the pits was wonderful. We only had an opportunity to use it for one practice, but that made up for the practice that we missed on the actual field.

The Bad
1. Load in was horrible. What an unpleasant surprise. When we arrived at 7:00 on Thursday, it took forever to find out which entrance FIRST had arranged for us to enter (no signs to speak of or confusing signs). When we entered, there was a looooooong line for the freight elevator. We ended up bypassing the freight elevator (at considerable physical effort) to finally get into the pit. I think we trimmed it down to :30. Still, there is no reason that we shouldn't have been into the venue and in our pit in :05.

2. The Load Out was not much better. Announcments wanted us to leave the pit by 5:00. However, the event ran past 5:00. So, if you wanted to beat the rush or make their deadline, you had to unload and repark to watch the rest of the event (there goes another $8).

3. The travel time between the pits and the venue to watch matches was both excessive and fatiguing for pit crew members. We lost valuable pit time when the pit crew went to watch our matches. So, we stopped going to watch matches in order to be ready to work on the robot. Perhaps in future years they can install a "pit crew lane" between pits and competition venue and give the three pit crew people expedited access to the arena just like the robot operators.

4. Pit announcments needed some work. With the "first call, second call, final call, final final call, no we really mean it this time call, GET YOUR ROBOT OUT HERE NOW call" there was a constant, annoying pit announcer buzz. If you actually responded to first call, you ended up standing at the playing field for a very long time. They need to get the timing between calling matches and playing matches refined.

5. The pit announcers stopped announcing "Team XXX needs a YYY part" in order to keep up the incessant match calls.

The Ugly
1. I had a vague, undefined, and undefinable feeling that this event was not "about the competitors" but about something else. For those of you who remember when FIRST pushed up the match times in 2000 in order to do "Good Morning America" you know what I mean.

2. I realized at some point over the weekend that I was at a robot competition. The message to "compete, compete, compete" was louder than the message to "inspire, inspire, inspire."