[FRC Blog] FIRST Championship Housing Registration

[Monochron]

Does anyone know what amount your card is charged when creating the Block through Experient? It really seems like it is going to charge for either the first night all rooms, or the whole booking. It really doens't seem clear on the site, and I really don't want to pay thousands of dollars without knowing if we are going or not...

Edit: "Summary of charges" at the very last page seemed to indicate a charge of $0.

[RoboTigers1796]

Well those rooms disappeared even faster than the regionals during first event registrations. Got our second choice, not quite enough rooms but it'll do I suppose. Hope everyone got at least a few rooms blocked that they needed.

Went smoothly besides rooms disappearing and having to go through what felt like endless forms before blocking rooms. Even with autofill it took a few minutes to get through to the actual booking. Hopefully next year they let us register in advance and then go for the blocks right at 1pm.
..or get rid of this ridiculous system all together; but I won't get into that.

[Bryan Herbst]

For everyone else in a similar boat: You can't remove room blocks yourself. You also can't call to remove the blocks.

You need to email support to get them to remove the blocks.

I'm not kidding.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Bryan Herbst

For everyone else in a similar boat: You can't remove room blocks yourself. You also can't call to remove the blocks.

You need to email support to get them to remove the blocks.

I'm not kidding.

Hey, me too!

(Seriously, just had the same conversation with phone support).

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Bryan Herbst

For everyone else in a similar boat: You can't remove room blocks yourself. You also can't call to remove the blocks.

You need to email support to get them to remove the blocks.

I'm not kidding.

Yep, all those people who would like to see some extra availability have to wait on email support clearing other blocks. Joy.

[Rick]

My experience: I read through the instructions today prior to booking. By 1:04pm, I had the quantity and type of rooms we wanted, in the hotel we wanted, with absolutely no issues.

Overall a positive experience.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Rick

My experience: I read through the instructions today prior to booking. By 1:04pm, I had the quantity and type of rooms we wanted, in the hotel we wanted, with absolutely no issues.

Overall a positive experience.

Heh, at 1:02 I finally gave up on the screen where I select my team number. I decided to search for my team number again and then the site let me select my team. Got some third choice rooms at a good rate, just not within walking distance.

[SenorZ]

Got the minimum number of rooms I wanted, at the cheapest hotel.
Tried to add a couple more a minute later... sold out.
Tried again just now, and there are plenty of rooms.

[sanddrag]

Logged in at 10:00 AM Pacific on the dot. It wasn't live, kept telling me to log in at 1:00 PM eastern (which it already was). Tried repeatedly well into the 10:01 minute, at which point I had to go back to work, because some of us actually have jobs and work during the day, and can't drop everything to compete with the other 3,000 teams over registering for things for FIRST.. I went back in around 1:00 PM Pacific this afternoon and got the Westin for Houston at $175/night. It's about 7 miles out. Not sure how others fared. I will say the website and process was cleaner than last year, despite the late opening. Does anyone know what time it actually opened this morning?

[E. Wood]

Logged on to the system to search at 8 pm. I requested a block of 14 rooms and the search only returned 6 hotels, all of which were at least 13 miles away. Only two or three had double bed rooms as an option. I must have 14 double bed rooms for a team size of 40 and we cannot stay in separate hotels. I had no problem reserving rooms well into January or February the last few years with more teams attending the event.

This system is broken. I tried calling hotels in person with no luck as well because FIRST has them all blocked. Hopefully some more will open up tomorrow.

[Bryan Herbst]

Originally Posted by E. Wood

Logged on to the system to search at 8 pm. I requested a block of 14 rooms and the search only returned 6 hotels, all of which were at least 13 miles away. Only two or three had double bed rooms as an option. I must have 14 double bed rooms for a team size of 40 and we cannot stay in separate hotels. I had no problem reserving rooms well into January or February the last few years with more teams attending the event.

This system is broken. I tried calling hotels in person with no luck as well because FIRST has them all blocked. Hopefully some more will open up tomorrow.

There definitely is something a little strange going on with the hotels, and I'm guessing FIRST/Experient is holding some rooms back for later in the season.

In particular, our team was hoping to get into the Hilton by the Ballpark like we did last year, but when I logged in right when the system opened that hotel didn't show up at all.