Overview: Nationals

[Mike Hendricks]

Being our first nationals .. I dont have much to base this on. There were some things that stood out -

- Awful video and sound in the pits and in the dome. Whoever put up the LCDs and screens, must of not realized the light between the two. The entire screen was washed out. There was countless times in the pits where feedback killed your ears. Also, the Einstin field's sound during the FLL, outperformed most of the matches in the dome.

- That walk, sucked. Thankfully (well .. kinda) our team captain lost his voice, and asked me to take over. He regained it on Saturday afternoon, but by then, I had a "Team Support" sticker for the finals. Our team timed the walk from the pits to the Curie field, something like 8 minutes I believe.

- The food. It wasnt bad, but the prices were past ridiculious. Aside from the fact they jacked up the prices on the second day, $4 for a 32oz coke that was 3/4 full of ice .. that was just lame. And $3 for a bottle of water that is found in most coke machines for $1.

- Security. This might be going back to the walk thing, but those people were everywhere .. and god forbid you needed something in your pits. Walk briskly .. and get yelled at. I know running might be a safety hazard, but if you need something .. they should be somewhat understanding.

- Entering and Exiting the dome. Right after the alliances got picked, the teams ran back to the pits. Well, tried to at least. The line at the door, only because they wanted people to go thru those little counter thingies, filled up most of that area under the second floor inside the area. Same thing with all the esclators.

- Poorly trained refs. I know you cant argue with them, but we had numerous flags thrown on us, for entering the ball chute (which .. from my view on the floor 5 feet away, we didnt) They heard our bot hit that aluminum "L", jumped over as the bot was driving away, and threw a flag. They should of had a ref at each box, watching only the chute, or some sort of camera system. There was also alot of restarts, because the balls didnt drop in auton (if the 10pt was hit) or even at the 45 sec.


Geez .. I think this is the longest post in here

[KTBSPASonya858]

Likes:
Hearing one of my fave songs on Sat.
The Seats
All the people who came to the Hall of Fame Booth

Dislikes:
Food Prices
The walk from the stands to the Hall of Fame area
The escaltor kept breaking down
Some of the music in Curie before the matches started wasn't loud enough

[abeD]

Originally Posted by KTBSPASonya858

The escaltor kept breaking down

escalators don't break....They're just temporarily stairs

[Pin Man]

It was a great time... Yeah there were minor problems but those can be fixed... I still say my favorite nationals was Epcot 3 years ago but it was still close none the less... I can't wait till next year!!!

[KTBSPASonya858]

Originally Posted by PhatMike

- The food. It wasnt bad, but the prices were past ridiculious. Aside from the fact they jacked up the prices on the second day, $4 for a 32oz coke that was 3/4 full of ice .. that was just lame. And $3 for a bottle of water that is found in most coke machines for $1.

When you get pop you have to tell them no ice cause the'll give you more ice then pop. Even though your drink won't be cold fro long it's better having that then a cup of ice.

Originally Posted by abeD

escalators don't break....They're just temporarily stairs

LOL

[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by abeD

escalators don't break....They're just temporarily stairs

That happens to be a joke that comedian Mitch Hedburg(sp?) has done..."Escalators can never be broken - they can only become stairrrrrssss"..... He's hilarious in case anyone was wondering.

The walk for the robots was obviously much better than Houston, as everyone stated. Hopefully Atlanta has a decent plan and facility capability to help the spectators long walk. The traffic flow was the major obstacle in that long walk.

I didn't have to take the long walk too much, but one of the few times I did, the outside down escalator wasn't working... And you know what? I was happy! Because it meant that people had to move themselves down the escalator, which meant that people traffic flowed a little quicker!! (never saw if the Up was broken)
If I had any complaints about the escalators and time of travel between pit and field, it would be that people consistently stood on ALL "downs" to the pits (instead of using one as walking and one as standing since there were usually 2 down). But there were stairs down the hall, so no big deal.

That distance is a big problem for any pit crew that wants to watch the matches their robot is in. They cannot feasibly make it in time (esp in Archimedes being the opposite corner of the entrance!). It would be nice to have some allowance for "Team Support", or 3 extra field passes to pit team members for all matches (not just finals). The "white" space in the arena is so large that I don't think it'd cause a problem having 12 extra team members on the sidelines during matches. This could also allow them to take the robot back to the pits, while the driveteam could go straight to their seats to watch matches.

And yeah.. the food prices seemed ridiculous... I don't know what else you can say about that... especially for those without the coupons.

I must commend the queuing staff. The organization and operation of that process seemed to go quite smooth and much improved since regionals. All of the refs and volunteer staff are greatly appreciated. With this years game being so involved, with so many possible penalties (locations and types of penalties) and all the functions, they did the best they could. I think there were roughly 6 refs on each field (?) and may have been beneficial to have a couple more due to the complexity of the game... but they may not have been obtainable.

Overall, having only been to Houston, I'd say the positives outweigh the negatives in all respects so far and we look forward to Atlanta next year.

[Swan217]

Originally Posted by Stephen Kowski

The field on the other hand....I hated the fact the crowd just sat around like lumps...no animation other than when their team was on the field....if that was FIRST's goal with the no noisemakers etc rule they got EXACTLY that....

Bring back the fun to the national competition PLEASE....

I don't know what you're talking about - Curie Division was ROCKIN' Of course, we had some of the most spirited teams in FIRST (Chief Delphi, 461 Westside Boiler Invasion), not to meantion a CRAZY announcer and MC pumpin' people up!

[Pin Man]

88 got going on Friday because Thursdays are scouting... Saturday no other team was up and going so we kind of just died down... If you want the true side of TJ then its best to have other teams going crazy with us... You should have seen us at NJ with MOE!!! OH BOY!!! Or in Long Island!!! WE WENT COMPLETELY NUTS!!!

After the pickings though we decided to head to Einstein because we were really down about not getting picked... We finally got our robot rocking being seeded #5 at the end of day 1 (going 4-0-1) but then on day two we droped to 16 (going 0-1-1) because we went to the bar too late...

[KTBSPASonya858]

I heard that Nationals are going to be in Atlanta for the next 3 years or so is that true?

[Mike Hendricks]

Originally Posted by KTBSPASonya858

I heard that Nationals are going to be in Atlanta for the next 3 years or so is that true?

I heard that also. Someone from FIRST asked our head mentor if he could change one thing about the ATL championship .. what it would be. He said the walk from the pits to the dome. But yea, I heard that it'll be there for 3 more years also.

[Crash852]

Originally Posted by KTBSPASonya858

I heard that Nationals are going to be in Atlanta for the next 3 years or so is that true?

yaeh, i heard that too. Someone told me that FIRST signed a 3 year contract with the Georgia dome folks, so the championship will be there for 3 years.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by KTBSPASonya858

I heard that Nationals are going to be in Atlanta for the next 3 years or so is that true?

Yes, it's true.
That's a good thing.

[TD78]

I thought that Atlanta was an excellent site for The Championship Competition. The GWCC is a HUGE building that could easily hold 1000+ teams (there were at least three more staging areas just like the one we were in and from what I recall all were bigger!). The Georgia Dome wasn't too big nor was it too small (Epcot perhaps a wee bit too small and Reliant Stadium a wee bit too big). I agree the walk was at times a nuisance, but I never really minded it. There were some fantastic shortcuts but most weren't available during competition. I never even saw Building C but if that building has access to the Dome the walk for everyone might be easier.

On a non-competition note I thought the venue was perfectly situated around the downtown area. Access from our hotel (the Days Inn) was only a 10 minute walk and I enjoyed every bit of it (I went through Centennial Park every morning and evening and it was awesome). There are lots to do and most are within walking distance. We even found a bowling alley (although its 15 minutes away by bus ).

All in all Atlanta is the place to be come Championship weekend. The people I met, the competition I saw, everything was awesome. Hopefully I'll be able to see it all next year!

-Tom

[OneAngryDaisy]

Overall, I loved everything about Atlanta except for the spectator walk. Being a booth member in Galileo, I kinda got spoiled and only made the long walk once. The food was years better than Houston, but I never eat breakfast so I would load up on lunch... It was akward going through the single doors, fortunately we were able to move our robot's arm on the fly. I pity those teams (469, etc) that had to lug their robot through the doors every time. I would also reccomend that next year teams stay at the Omni hotel- we would wake up and literally walk downstairs to the pits, it was amazingly close and conveinent, trips to the hotel midday were realistic and even common. Nothing comes close to Epcot, but I'd like to thank FIRST for finding an awesome site....

[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

The only team that had any real consitent enthusiasm on Newton was 547 F.E.A.R. and people were telling them to sit down and shut up. All they wanted to do was have fun and alot of people were just acting plain nasty to them. Way to show the spirit.

Well if they were blocking anyone's view of the game then that was rude. You can't block anyone's view of the game even if they are sitting down. I remeber two guys in front of me in the Newton field were politely telling other teams that they were blocking their view. It was getting kind of annoying.