Championship 2007 - Atlanta - What Needs To Be Improved

[whytheheckme]

IMHO, pushing/pinning penalties were not called evenly on Galileo during the Eliminations. During Qualifying matches, there was 1 or 2 refs in particular that would be SCREAMING the count for how long one bot had been pinning another (which is fine... This is the rule.) Then, during the Eliminations, a bot would be pushing another one for 8 or 9 seconds, and the ref(s) had not even started the count. It would be up to 15 or 20 seconds before one bot let go of the other, which calls for a penalty according to the rules. Perhaps the refs were distracted with looking at other calls, but in my opinion, this is huge (BTW, I'm not complaining because my team got screwed by it (which we didn't), I'm just saying it doesn't seem fair.)

Other than that, I felt like the end of the Final Finals could have been a bit more exciting (confetti perhaps, although I have read all about the evil balloons), or perhaps fireworks, or something. But I've never attended champs, so I don't have anything to compare it to.

Having to walk to the GWCC from the floor to get up to the stands was annoying; Perhaps they could take a section on the side of the fields where no-one was sitting and open the stairs there. Seeing 1-3 hour breaks between matches, and our pit crew being able to handle our bot, it was annoying, not to mention tiring, for drivers to have to walk for half an hour each way to just sit with the team.

Perhaps color-coordinating the operator badges by division (and then FVC and FLL) would have been helpful. Not sure what difference this would have made, but when in the tunnel to get over to the dome, it would have been nice to know if a bot was in your division, so that you could pay a bit more attention to the design, drivers, etc.

Parking price reduction. Not sure how. But I had some friends in the ATL area (within an hour away) that were turned off by coming to simply watch the event because of parking prices. I think that offering some kind of compensation would increase outside spectator participation.

Covered already, but the LED displays were horrendous. It was painful to watch the screen, let alone tell what was being displayed on it.

Audio on fields. Seemed like the music on Newton was really loud (good in my opinion), while on Galileo, it was barely audible. There should be some kind of standard between the fields. Or play one song throughout the whole venue, really loudly.

Tube supply. Was really confused by this. Why were so many Keepers blown up ... Seemed to me that very few of these were popped/cut away, but it seemed like every time I was in queue, there was someone on one of the fields blowing Keepers up. Not really a complaint. Just confused.

Queueing time announcement. The people in the pits emphasized that we leave our pit AT LEAST 40 minutes prior to a match, and then when we got to the dome, the queuer looked at us funny because we were 6 matches early. And then we sat. I guess if you knew not to listen to the people at pit admin, you would have been OK, but as a rookie team, we followed this every time.

I know I shouldn't complain about this, but my sister was just bugging me about it. The Food. I will now quote her. "It tasted like someone threw it up, and they refried it, and served it to you in a cardboard box." That's all I'll say. I personally was not offended by this venue food (I have seen worse.)

That's about it for now. I know I started off saying that I didn't have too much to complain about, but I guess I really thought about it. I was EXTREMELY happy with the event. Just suggestions for improvement.

Jacob