[FRC Blog] Championship Badging and Housing Registration Opening

[Mark McLeod]

358 has appeared

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

358 has appeared

Same for 2052.

[sanddrag]

I already got the registration e-mail with the results of the hotel "lottery." I got my #3 pick, and have reserved the block with a card.

Does anyone know if I need to register individual team members and reserve individual rooms now, or can I wait until March on that?

Now, to qualify for champs...

[RoboTigers1796]

I've had nothing but bad experiences with the experient company, website, their policies, and customer service. No surprise, they let me down again.

Our team wasn't showing in the database, so I called.
Representative informed me she cant do anything over the phone and I need to send an email explaining the problem (which seems to be what I am told for EVERY problem I call them with. Why even have a phone number?)
Sent the email mid afternoon, have yet to hear a response all day.

So while the room blocks disappear I'm here twiddling my thumbs for a second straight year.

[Rick]

The only way to make this better for future years is, unfortunately, to complain to FIRST and Experient. Someone in FIRST HQ should be on top of Experient to make sure the team database is up to date and ready to go when open registration hits.

PS: We eventually got into their system and got assigned our top hotel pick.

Explanation and apology from Frank: http://www.firstinspires.org/robotic...ation-Problems

[Libby K]

Adventures on my end:

-The site took 15 minutes to load.
-I can't create my new account, because 'your password must contain alphabetic(a-z) and numeric (0-9) characters only'. I tried dumbing the password down to things like aaa111 and I'm still getting this error message.
-Emailed Experient, still no response.

This system is absolutely terrible. It was last year, and I have no idea why FIRST continues to work with them. It's shoddy work on top of bad customer service...

[GreyingJay]

So... here's a dumb question: why use them?

You can just book your own hotel reservations right?

[Rick]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

So... here's a dumb question: why use them?

You can just book your own hotel reservations right?

Experient blocks off just about all of the prime hotels. Finding a large block of rooms, within walking distance, outside of Experient, between now and champs is impossible. You would have to book the rooms in May/June to have any chance of a prime hotel. I have heard of teams that have multi-year contracts with hotels. But again, right now, Experient seems to be the only option.

If someone has additional info on booking outside of Experient, please share.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by Rick

Experient blocks off just about all of the prime hotels. Finding a large block of rooms, within walking distance, outside of Experient, between now and champs is impossible.

I'd probably just forego "walking distance" and be prepared to bus or drive from wherever we stay to the stadium

Last year my team actually had the great fortune of making the waitlist for Worlds, but the best place we could find was the rental of a large vacation home from a site like HomeAway. It was fun to have all of us in one big house instead of multiple hotel rooms.

[Christopher149]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

I'd probably just forego "walking distance" and be prepared to bus or drive from wherever we stay to the stadium

Last year my team actually had the great fortune of making the waitlist for Worlds, but the best place we could find was the rental of a large vacation home from a site like HomeAway. It was fun to have all of us in one big house instead of multiple hotel rooms.

Since we take a bus to St Louis anyway, we've been staying in O'Fallon, IL. Someone last year put together a map of hotels based on CD responses, and everyone was like right next to the dome, or in a ring at least 10 miles in radius with no one in between.

[Hallry]

Frank Merrick has since written a new FRC Blog addressing the housing registration issues: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...hreadid=140351

[JB987]

To my knowledge, all of the nearest hotels have signed on with Experient for Champs. Even the Holiday Inn Convention center, immediately west of the venue that was previously independent and allowed us to book on our own a year ahead went over to the "dark side' and we had to take our chances yesterday. FIRST gobbles up huge blocks for volunteers at the closest hotels like the Embassy, Renaissance and the Drury. Add 30 teams pre-qualified for Champs with a week head start and we considered ourselves lucky to return to the Holiday Inn CC...

Not happy that Western teams had to sign up at 6am (3 am for Hawaiian teams other than 359) and I think it is totally unacceptable that many teams had to wait even longer for their chance to sign up due to "internal communication errors" at FIRST...Let's hope they all get their act together for the next Champs...

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by JB987

Let's hope they all get their act together for the next Split-Champs...

Fixed that for you