[qhsscience]

Our team "grew up" on Nationals at Disney, and the last time we went to the championships was Houston...until this year. I will readily admit that as mentors, we were skeptical about the venue and event location, and had grown accustomed to smaller regional experiences. With those prefaces:

(1) The close proximity of hotels to the venue and the walk that funneled all the teams into the Georgia Dome was as nice as everyone on CD said it was. I had a great time just walking back and forth to the venue and seeing all the color and different teams.
(2) There was enough to do that was readily accessible to us through walking and the MARTA (unlike Houston). We took the MARTA from the airport to the hotel, walked to the Aquarium from our hotel, and took the MARTA to the Braves game on Friday night. The students were also able to go to the Underground on the way to the airport on Sunday to do some shopping. So generally speaking, the venue provided some good outside options to provide an experience for the team without needing to rent vehicles.
(3) There seemed to be a good FIRST effort on providing quality extras besides the competition and the pits...i.e. the scholarship/college section, the hall of fame team section, the vendor support row to walk past, and the FIRST store. While we could all probably "complain" about ways to make all of them better, the fact that they were there at all and accessible was a positive!
(4) Having the FVC and the FLL competitions there was nice as well. Having been away from the championships since Houston, it was important for our team to see how FIRST has continued to grow. I enjoyed hanging out in the FLL section and just watching the young kids work with their robots on the practice fields. I should admit I am easily inspired, but being able to see the Lego and VEX in action was nice.

There were other positives, but these are the ones that I can remember easily.