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I have only been to the last two nationals, so I do not know what the smaller nationals were like, but I think that it is far better for the entire FIRST community that FIRST allow as many teams as possible. In my opinion, the size of nationals is one of the things that makes it so great -- there are so many teams to meet from so many places, so many robots to see and so many different ways of accomplishing a goal. However, let's put my personal opinion aside and assume that large nationals somehow decreases the quality of the event. In this case, each person at nationals may not have quite as positive as an experience. However, even with this small change, there would be twice as many people at a larger nationals. Therefore, a large event generates more net energy and enthusiasm than a smaller nationals would.
That's just my opinion, and FIRST and/or Disney may not be able to handle any more teams. On a slightly different topic, I think FIRST should use the same system next year as this year for deciding who gets a spot at nats: first-come-first-serve. As others have mentioned, you simply need to know well in advance in order to plan a trip to Orlando for an entire team.
Patrick
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