[Carolyn Duncan]

It seemed that FIRST and Disney had come to terms with the fact that anymore than the 320ish would be too much. FIRST can't really staff any more fields and the cost of those fields is probably through the roof for Disney.
So like i said in the post on the GenForum: it was suggested that there be multiple 'nationals' or 'pre-nationals'... one for each coast. Then FIRST can pay (or yes, teams could pay) for the winners only to attend a 'final match' somewhere (Hey- maybe we should start going back to the White House with the winners.. they have a nice lawn to setup a field on ;-))

It seems to me that this is a contradiction. If FIRST can't staff the fields and Disney can't afford to have all the feilds how would this work? In order for Woody and Dean to be at both finals they would have to either have to be on different weekends or at times with enough interval for travel. This travel would cost money, thus an increase to FIRST. Also, this would still cost Disney as the fields would be greater in number and still be on Disney property. As for staffing the fields, volunteers are great. Find a college in the area with a comunity service club or engineering students guild and approach them to volunteer. The White House idea isn't that great due to security and the size of the robots now. Things could really get out of hand. I don't mean to sound pessimistic so please correct me if I'm wrong.