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.

[nuggetsyl]

Universal studios in Orlando can handle us and there more teen friendly. I have been In there sound stages, there def. big enough.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

...sound stages...

That's an idea I haven't heard before. Way to think outside the box!

Instead of looking for roofed stadiums for the fields with nearby convention space for pits, look for idle movie studio space. The stands would have to be brought in for the event, but Disney managed that fine for years.

[dangerousdave]

Atlanta has been scheduled for the Championship event in 2010 Apr 14-17 at least as far back as April, 2008.

There have been several other threads on this discussion in the past few years.

[nuggetsyl]

I just do not get it. Why would first make another deal to put teams in a place they do not want to be?

[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!