Nationals Location "Pool"

[Tim Allen]

Well, the pool's kind of pointless now.
http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/chevents.htm

[Joe Ross]

I don't think there will be nationals next year

[Brandon Martus]

Originally posted by Tim Allen
Well, the pool's kind of pointless now.
http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/chevents.htm

Nice try ...
/me points out the @ in the URL.

What kind of fool did that?

[Johca_Gaorl]

Championship Information

Many of you may have heard that FIRST will not be holding The Championship at Epcot in 2003. FIRST and Walt Disney World worked diligently to come up with a date that would allow us to return to Epcot but several factors simply worked against us.

We fully intended to announce the date and location of the 2003 Championship today and open registration on Friday, November 15, 2002. Although we have been working diligently to complete arrangements and obtain the very best possible pricing for teams, we have not yet finalized all the details.

We thank you for your continued patience as we complete this process. Our objective is to create an event that meets the high standards achieved in the past. We hope to have the arrangements finalized within two weeks and open registration for The Championship at that time. If it is necessary to extend the registration period for The Championship to give teams sufficient time to register, we will do so.

If you have questions, please e-mail frcteams@usfirst.org.

Respectfully,

Robert Hammond
Director, Robotics Competition

Well, I guess it's not at WDW...

[Joe Matt]

Originally posted by Johca_Gaorl


Well, I guess it's not at WDW...

It said no EPCOT. Very differnt situation. We still have the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland California.

[Johca_Gaorl]

Originally posted by JosephM
It said no EPCOT. Very differnt situation. We still have the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland California.

Hmmm...True. However the fact that they say they couldn't work out anything with WDW to return to Epcot seems to imply to me it's gonna be somewhere else.

[Jnadke]

The fact that they are trying to make hotel arrangements and food arrangements says outright that it will not be at WDW/MGM/Epcot at all. If it were, they would have us stay at the hotels that Disney provides.

Houston sounds nice, but Houston already has a regional. Isn't that a little redundant?

[Wayne C.]

Reading between the lines I see several key phrases in the FRC teams letter from this morning

1. we tried to work with Disney --- aka: tried and failed

2. we are looking to assure that the nationals will be the same quality event they have always been - aka we wouldn't be worrying about this if it was Disney and are looking to find something as good or better

Couple that with Dean's publicity yesterday on 60 Minutes on CBS and not on ABC (the Disney owned network) and I see Disney saying adios to FIRST. We haven't seen the supposed Disney movie either. So ideas that somehow this will move to another Disney venue are probably not realistic.

All this may be so much paranoia but here in the NJ area the word on the street is the Houston Astrodome and convention center. The source of this rumor is very high up and may be a deliberate deception to throw us all off. But the more we get strung along waiting for some news of the nationals the more I see stetsons in our future.

I would still like to see FIRST work with Disney but a rift there isn't the end of the world. FIRST is not the party- its the people. We can have a great competition no matter where we hold it. But they had better move quickly or the airfares will be going up. We have enough challenges building the machine and such that we don't need to deal with more uncertainty and last minute improvisations.

WC

[Kevin Sevcik]

Redundant? How the heck can nationals be redundant? I mean, I could understand how having more than one regional in a city could be redundant.. but it's nationals for Heaven's sake. One of a kind, original, only comes once per year. I don't think it can be redundant.

I think you'd just be jealous if it came to Houston cause then we'd have two events...

[evulish]

Technically...it never said it wouldn't be in Epcot. It just said that we 'heard' it won't be there. They didn't really say it was definitly not in Epcot (Hey...ya never know)

[Andrew Rudolph]

I'm going with atlanta georgia, prolly the olympic areas.

[Joe Matt]

Originally posted by Andrew Rudolph
I'm going with atlanta georgia, prolly the olympic areas.

Or that they were the first city to adopt Segways.

[Koko Ed]

Originally posted by JosephM


Or that they were the first city to adopt Segways.

That makes perfectly good sense!

[Wetzel]

Originally posted by evulish
Technically...it never said it wouldn't be in Epcot. It just said that we 'heard' it won't be there. They didn't really say it was definitly not in Epcot (Hey...ya never know)

Yes they did.

"Many of you may have heard that FIRST will not be holding The Championship at Epcot in 2003. FIRST and Walt Disney World worked diligently to come up with a date that would allow us to return to Epcot but several factors simply worked against us."

http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/CMPannouncement.htm

Wetzel
~~~~~~~~~~~
/me knows where everything is...