Official Announcement: Championship Location & Date

[Alfred Thompson]

All the people who complained about the cost of Disney tickets that they never used should be happy about this. As should all the random Disney haters we seem to attract in FIRST.
I spent very little time in the parks last year. Except for eating. I will miss the food at Disney. I have a friend in Houston and I am hoping that he can tell me where to good places to eat are. I am not happy about the idea of typical stadium food for 3 days.

[Johca_Gaorl]

Originally posted by Ricky Q.
If your team happens to qualify for The Championship at one of the regionals 1 Week before the event, its going to be really difficult to get all your logistics figured out and get there.

You'd have one week to first, find $4000, then book your travel and lodging, get your robot there by whatever deadline they set and manage to not go insane, because your regional would end on a Saturday

I thought this seemed really early too, but I guess it's what they worked out. (And I wanted to be 18 by Nats too)

One week is not much planning time at all...

Oh, and btw guys, I am pretty sure coaster history will not impress the ladies.

[purplehaze357]

cant wait to return to texas.....y'all were awesome....and the venue is huge

[Joe Matt]

[quote]Originally posted by Elgin Clock
[b]

Originally posted by JosephM


SixFlagsHuston.com

Read my post on that site's Graffitti Wall, the warning is there!!!

We are taking over!!!

All your parks are belong to us!

[Jon K.]

Originally posted by team222badbrad


So does this mean all teams can go?? That wan't anyway?

I dont think will be attending unless we drop a regional and they let all the teams come

BadBrad

No it just means that they are givng the infor for all of the teams that might qualify for the championships throughout the regionals.

If you get time, take a trip to the Johnson Space Center Visitors Center, and take the tram to the viewing area to see mission control in action.

When I went there wasnt anything for the control guys to do, so I watched the Flight Control play chess on his pc against the Flight Communications guy who was sitting accross the room

Nice to know that NASA is always hard at work

[Ashley Weed]

acckk this sucks... I will be leaving home on April 2nd to go to New Brunswick, NJ for Regionals... then after the closing ceremony on the 5th, I will head to Houston to arrive in time for sleep before the 10th. Acckkkk...

[Soukup]

Originally posted by jk2005


No it just means that they are givng the infor for all of the teams that might qualify for the championships throughout the regionals.

hey but... disney limited the number of teams that could go, which is the whole reason for the qualifcation system in the first place. dat's what I thought? But now might more teams be going because it is Houston?

[Joe Matt]

Originally posted by TEAM_74


hey but... disney limited the number of teams that could go, which is the whole reason for the qualifcation system in the first place. dat's what I thought? But now might more teams be going because it is Houston?

Disney can (and is) expanding to hold more teams. Pop Century. This hotel would have been the FIRST HQ. Anyway, Huston is at the breaking point when FIRST comes. Tansportation, entertainment, food, etc. I predict a HUGE catastrophy when it comes to all of those.

[Joe3]

Disney can (and is) expanding to hold more teams. Pop Century. This hotel would have been the FIRST HQ. Anyway, Huston is at the breaking point when FIRST comes. Tansportation, entertainment, food, etc. I predict a HUGE catastrophy when it comes to all of those.

Man...Calm down. Dean and all of the other people who have been working hard to set this up aren't exactly morons. I'm sure they have checked out all of these potential problems, and taken the necessary steps to prevent them. FIRST chose Houston for a reason I'm sure, and Nationals will be just as great as usual, if not better.

[Alfred Thompson]

It does not matter what Disney CAN do if they cannot do it in a way the FIRST can afford. FIRST has run enough of these now that I am fairly confident they covered all the bases for this new venue. In fact making sure it would be ok is probably what took so long.

[Chris Nowak]

Jeez, while don't think the location is bad at all, probably quite good. However, if our team qualifies at West Mich, which is 4/3 to 4/5, there isnt gonna be much time for all the legal crap that we have to do to fly our entire team to Houston. Not to mention that airfare rates are gonna suck and hotels will be mostly full. Even if we qualify at Midwest, that only gives us two weeks, and the week following the Midwest one is spring break, so lots of people are gonna be on vacation and not able to fill out any forms and stuff. Jeez, guess oour chances of going to nats are much more limited than I imagined.

[Jnadke]

Originally posted by JosephM

Disney can (and is) expanding to hold more teams. Pop Century. This hotel would have been the FIRST HQ. Anyway, Huston is at the breaking point when FIRST comes. Tansportation, entertainment, food, etc. I predict a HUGE catastrophy when it comes to all of those.

Your capacity for common sense is at its breaking point. I don't see how you arrived at that conclusion.

The Houston Texans have almost 70,000 attendees. "2002 The Show's concert finale featuring George Strait on March 3, 2002, breaks the all-time paid attendance record for any event in the Relant Astrodome with 68,266 spectators."

FIRST pales in comparison to this. Last year was only 20,000 according to the FIRST site (which still sounds high -- that's 70 people per team -- I thought during the speeches they said 14,000). Keep in mind that a lot of the teams are based on the east coast and in Florida. More teams will have to make an investment to attend Houston, so the number will barely be any larger.

[Amanda Morrison]

Maybe after having this year in Houston, Disney will lower their prices and open the new Pop Century. Maybe FIRST is just a bunch of shrewd bargainers calling Disney's bluff (which I suspect they are, and doing a good job of it) by holding it somewhere else. My prediction is that it will again be at Disney, sometime in the future.

p.s.- The Great Carnack is rarely wrong.

[Joe Matt]

Thanks for calling me a complete moron.

Now to why Disney can hold more than Huston.

Lets look at the two major factors that everyone can agree on:

Transportation
Lodgeing

Transportation

The capactiy for approx. each Disney bus is around 35 people. Each bus runs at intervals of 5 mins on most days durring closing and such. 60 mins/ 5 min intervals= 16 buses and hour. Times 35 and 16 you get 560 people per hour on buses to each hotel. FIRST had around 5 hotels they used. 5 X 560= 2800 people per hour out of the FIRST stadium. Around 20,000 people were there last year, leaving at varaying hours. Each hotel was less than 20 miles from Epcot. This allows for people to easily get to and get out of FNC (FIRST Nationals Center, my little name for the competition location) and get to their hotels FAST.

Lodgeing

There were around 5 on and off site hotels that held FIRST kids. I don't want to look up nor find the occupancy of each room and how many rooms were reserved by FIRST teams. But with two cheep places to stay (All Stars and the new Pop Century), many teams won't spend more than $60 per nite in a good room.

Lets not get into entertainment. Each park can hold anywhere from 50,000-90,000 each.