Location Suggestion for 2010 Championship

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by Nawaid Ladak

aye: lets go back to DISNEY if it's possible...

Amen to that. From the point of a coach who arranges the trip and needs to occupy and account for the students in the off hours Disney was the ideal "family" location. I know of NUMEROUS other coaches who agree with this. Is anybody listening?

WC

[R.C.]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

Amen to that. From the point of a coach who arranges the trip and needs to occupy and account for the students in the off hours Disney was the ideal "family" location. I know of NUMEROUS other coaches who agree with this. Is anybody listening?

WC

I think that everyone would like to go, but i heard the tents were the problem. So how do we fix that.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by rc_cola1323

I think that everyone would like to go, but i heard the tents were the problem. So how do we fix that.

limit the number of people who go to the championship. If you consider the Michigan structure the way FIRST is gonging I think there is no reason the championship has to have almost 400 teams. If you reduced the number of teams to 200ish where you actually had to qualify to attend, Disney might be a realistic option.

Personally I think that atlanta is fine, but many of the new dome stadiums would be good options, Lucas Oil stadium comes to mind, as Indy would be a good place IMO.

[GaryVoshol]

Except that under current rules, approximately 250 teams qualify directly. Plus another 30 or so that pre-qualify - HoF, past winners, etc. To cut it down to 200, you'd have to eliminate some qualifiers, and not allow any "buy-in" teams. That would mean some teams would never get to Champs; the current structure was designed so that every HS student would be eligible to go to Champs sometime in a 4-year FIRST career.

And, in the thread Andy Baker started with old videos, I believe I heard one statement of 74 teams at Disney. That's a far cry from 200.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Except that under current rules, approximately 250 teams qualify directly. Plus another 30 or so that pre-qualify - HoF, past winners, etc. To cut it down to 200, you'd have to eliminate some qualifiers, and not allow any "buy-in" teams. That would mean some teams would never get to Champs; the current structure was designed so that every HS student would be eligible to go to Champs sometime in a 4-year FIRST career.

And, in the thread Andy Baker started with old videos, I believe I heard one statement of 74 teams at Disney. That's a far cry from 200.

The 2002 Championship -- the last at Walt Disney World -- hosted nearly as many FRC teams as competed in Atlanta last year. There were five fields and everyone was in the same pit tent. It was not much different in organization -- only in atmosphere.

The challenge -- and certainly not something that cannot be overcome -- is in accomodating the FLL and FTC events that are held concurrently with the FRC Championship. Those programs were not represented in Walt Disney World, to my knowledge. FTC, of course, didn't exist, but FLL may have had a small presence.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Madison

Those programs were not represented in Walt Disney World, to my knowledge. FTC, of course, didn't exist, but FLL may have had a small presence.

At least in 2000, FLL had a demo area in one of the side tents. That's about it.

The Championship is now bigger, with a full FLL event and full FTC event. I don't foresee returning to tents.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Laaba 80

Im not sure I understand where you are coming from here. Atlanta isnt even close to the middle of the country. Do you mean the middle of the FIRST community?
Joey

I mean the vertical corridor you would make if you drew a vertical line on the western border of Illinois and a corresponding line through Atlanta. So no, not the actual middle of the country, but portions of the midwest/south. Essentially the "middle" of the FIRST population. Anything west of that eliminates the ability of most teams to be able to drive to the event. Someone did a breakdown and right now a very large percentage of teams are within 10 hours driving distance, or something like that.

Originally Posted by DarkFlame145

But also I think that somewhere in Cali would be nice, like MacAfee Stadium (go RAIDERS). Since they always have to come to the east coast.

I can't think of a WORSE place for the event. Oakland is a terrible city. It's crime riddled, and has zero infrastructure needed to host the Championship

[DarkFlame145]

Originally Posted by Cory

I can't think of a WORSE place for the event. Oakland is a terrible city. It's crime riddled, and has zero infrastructure needed to host the Championship

MacAfee field is closer to San Fransisco and Oakland has really cleaned up, not to say there aren't bad areas. But MacAfee is right off the freeway outside of San Fransisco. It was more of a joke idea anyways, cause I'm a Raiders fan.

[AmyPrib]

Originally Posted by Cory

I mean the vertical corridor you would make if you drew a vertical line on the western border of Illinois and a corresponding line through Atlanta. So no, not the actual middle of the country, but portions of the midwest/south. Essentially the "middle" of the FIRST population. Anything west of that eliminates the ability of most teams to be able to drive to the event. Someone did a breakdown and right now a very large percentage of teams are within 10 hours driving distance, or something like that.

I did the breakdown a few years ago, and it was a breakdown for driving distance to Indy, not atlanta. I took all the teams that attended Atlanta that year and figured out how far they would have been from Indy had it been there. A huge percentage of them would have been able to drive within 10hrs of Indy, whereas it was much longer or flying to Atlanta. It was merely to show Indy as a more "central" location to a higher population of teams who could potentially reduce traveling costs/times.

[qwertyuiop[]\]

just throwing this out there:

FIRST should invest a whole bunch of money and build their own megacomplex that doubles as a FIRST college for people who want to be engineers or scientists.

[alectronic]

Originally Posted by qwertyuiop[]\

just throwing this out there:

FIRST should invest a whole bunch of money and build their own megacomplex that doubles as a FIRST college for people who want to be engineers or scientists.

that would be awesome, but i think they are already running "in overdrive" you could say to run what they currently have. boy, what i would do to see that though!

[qwertyuiop[]\]

Has any one ever been to the DC convention center? If you have you will know that the thing is HUGE. If FIRST were to rent the whole thing out there would definetly be enough space. It also is right on the DC metro, which seemed to boggle a group of tourists i saw trying to go in through the out gate. Did i mention how it would also be in the nations capital? the only downside to having nationals there would be that Dulles(the main airport) is far away, but maybe once the metro is extended to it this will be a plausible site.Also i would wait and see how the DC regional goes this year.

Also, most cities that have hosted the Olympics seem suitable for the championships (ie they have lots of hotels, a big stadium and a transport system of some sort). so maybe there could be one in LA or Chicago(after the 2016 olympics)

[EricH]

Originally Posted by qwertyuiop[]\

Also, most cities that have hosted the Olympics seem suitable for the championships (ie they have lots of hotels, a big stadium and a transport system of some sort). so maybe there could be one in LA or Chicago(after the 2016 olympics)

L.A. would be very hard. No covered football stadiums. Hotels aren't exactly close...

You might be able to at the current site of the L.A. Regional, but a lot of airlines don't fly into the nearest airport, meaning that you have to add at least an hour's travel time.

The only other option would be Staples Center and the L.A. Convention Center, but the odds of getting the former are slim.

L.A.'s transport system, the Metro, is not exactly convenient.

[Michelle Celio]

Originally Posted by Wayne C.

Amen to that. From the point of a coach who arranges the trip and needs to occupy and account for the students in the off hours Disney was the ideal "family" location. I know of NUMEROUS other coaches who agree with this. Is anybody listening?

WC

Being from the Greater Orlando Area, I can try to put a perspective on this.

There are two venues in the state of Florida, in the Orlando area, that could possibly be able to house the Championship.

There is one venue in the Kissimmee, The Silver Spurs Arena, that would be perfect, it would have less of a walk from the pits to the fields but we run into a lack of hotels for the teams in that area. However, as previously mentioned in the thread, when the consideration about hosting it in TX came up, we run into the same problem. Which is the lack of hotels. But, in the Kissimme and Orlando area, there is the Linx Bus System that is fairly inexpensive, and they do have 1-week passes available, the only thing is that they aren't heavily reliable and possibly could not handel the amount of traffic produced by the Championship.

Again, as mentioned earlier in the thread is the Orange County Convention Center. This place is HUGE. I High School, we went on a tour of just part of it, but I have not been able to see the entire place. There is defiantly enough room for the pits, and whatever FIRST wants to do that is convention style but I'm not exactly sure if they have a "stadium" of sorts where the field and spectators could easily view the matches. But, according to google maps, if you search "Orange County Convention Center" and "Hotels" and narrow it down to a "1 mile" radius, it says there are 717 hotels. That number seems a bit outrageous to me but the Orlando area is heavily populated with hotels.

Now, as for "Family Location". Have we looked at Disney Prices lately? They are not exactly family friendly. A base ticket, with expiration costs 79.88 for a one day ticket, and does not include park hopping. I'm sure they offer some sort of deal for large groups, but it probably won't be that much lower.


But hey, there is always the 2009 Florida Regional - and Disney is giving a free ticket to everyone in 2009, as long as it is your birthday.

[M. Mellott]

I know in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Convention Center was part of the RCA dome. Plenty of hotels were directly connected to the building, and the CC could handle the pits easily (hey, it handled 2 world-wide Star Wars conventions without a problem).

However, now that the Colts have moved to their new stadium next door, I don't know if the new stadium has a similar setup, or what the plan is for the CC at the old RCA dome. Anyone from IN know?