Of note, George Brown Convention Center in Houston is roughly the same size as Anaheim, so if Vex World’s is going to stay in Texas while Kay Bailey is out of commission, it seems like the format may need to change.
So, realistically, not many candidates. Add in date availability issues, cost, locality for Vex staff, etc. and its not really an easy problem.
I didn’t get to fly to Dallas this year, so I can’t compare between Dallas and Louisville.
But I should be totally qualified to talk about this statement though.
Ideally no domestic leg(s) please. I can’t imagine any international teams like the domestic flights in USA. Additional checks, missing/delayed luggages (which only didn’t happened to us in 1 out of all the years in Louisville), etc.
it is a real pain to have add a domestic flight after > 20hrs of flights. And then coupled with the anxiety and hassle of trying to find out where are all the missing luggage, it is no joke.
budgeted for it doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do. That usd500 per pax extra for domestic flights could be put into much better use.
Following up on this. Interestingly one of the biggest youth soccer tournaments in the country is hosted in las Vegas fixed link
Hundreds of soccer teams from out of state travel to Las Vegas for a single tournament. And soccer teams are much bigger than vex teams.
So it’s not like youth events are unheard of in Vegas.
My guess is McCormick will top most lists on most metrics.
10k seat WinTrust Arena. Lots of hotels by skybridge. Two major airports.
The Second City has lots of cultural attractions nearby, fantastic food, great music. My hometown.
That said, about the only thing that will pull Worlds out of Texas at this point is Kay Bailey’s impending demolition. Dallas is less than an hour from Vex HQ. Houston is 4 hours, New Orleans 7 by road. My guess would be Houston while Dallas revamps their center
I would want to go to Las Vegas but the flight costs to go to Vegas is way too expensive and long for the east coast. I think keeping it in Dallas is the best option cause it is in the middle and everyone can go there in equal price except for the international people.
If you haven’t seen the plans for the new Dallas convention center, you should really look it up. Although quite a bit of the footprint is going where the current building is and will still be connected to the Omni through the same skybridge, a lot of it is going where surface parking and an abandoned garage is currently as well as cantilevered over the freeway. The construction plan does not disturb the current facility use. The arena will be left at the end as a free standing building. It seems that some of the current halls where the HS pits were may be preserved while the rest of the building will be torn down after the new facility opens. You can read more about the adopted plan 3C here: https://bit.ly/3Jj8pJ8
Do we know the breakdown of when IQ ES, IQ MS, etc are going to be next May? I know the dates for the entire thing are set, but is it broken down by division anywhere yet?
Just to make a point about Vegas, the reality of how bad/not bad it is doesn’t matter. All that matters is optics, and Vegas has a (deserved or not is irrelevant) bad reputation. It’s hard enough to convince some school districts to let people leave the state, tell them you want to take a group of elementary school students to Vegas and… That would not go well for a decent number of districts.
From the district’s perspective, they’re just thinking “if something goes wrong somehow and it happened in Vegas there’s going to be a local news article and a mob of angry parents is going to storm the next school board meeting”
School is politics, politics is optics, Vegas has terrible optics. Reality is irrelevant.
I’m seeing 300$ round trip from Las Vegas to Boston (first east coast city I thought of). Also the hotel savings are huge, like a hundred dollars cheaper per night per room …
I would expect that it will be similar to this year, if not exactly the same. I’ve heard that they intend to keep JROTC nationals as part of VEX Worlds. VRC will most certainly take place before IQ as it is much easier to tear down VRC and setup IQ in one night than the other way around.
Nevada has a growing state supported robotics initiative. VIQC, VRC, and FLL state championships were all in Las Vegas along with the FRC Las Vegas regional this past season. Although the FRC regional attracts mostly Nevada, Arizona, and SoCal teams it does bring in international teams with it’s ease of direct flights. Things have changed, but in the late 90’s early 00’s Las Vegas was marketed as a family destination. Resorts are bringing more shopping and entertainment in constantly now that gambling is legal in so much of the US and the old Vegas draw just isn’t there for so many. That said, travel would still be less convenient. Fewer people could drive in and the airport, despite plenty of flights, is not the best on heavy convention traffic days.
I’ll throw the Philly hat into the ring. There is lots to do after hours, flights into Philly, Baltimore and Newark are less than 90 mins from downtown. Excellent light rail lets you pick places to stay that don’t require driving to the event.
Also of note: FRC worlds is held in the George R. Brown convention center.
While I am not 100% sure how these two events compare in size, from personal experience of being at both in a span of a month, I would say that VEX worlds could be held in a building of that size. However, I don’t think it has a “Freedom Hall” or “Dome” equivalent, but I’m not sure about the Anaheim one.
Only options for a separate “dome” would be to do what FIRST did previously and go two blocks over to Minute Maid (logistical nightmare) or across the street to Toyota Center (not significantly easier)
Not just logistical craze beforehand, but also from a team’s point of view on the day of. I have made that walk twice as part of a team on Einstein, and their “robot parade” was a total nightmare. Their lack of staff directing us as well as the lack of someone in charge of the operation were some of the main things I remember. It was also a very long walk to roll our 5,000lb. pit modules. We mostly ended up just blocking up the street and worsening everyone’s already long and stressful day. The heat just made it 10 times worse. The fireworks were cool though.
But I digress. I’m just agreeing with you with a story from personal experience.
Our school district required itemized receipts for all card use. So when our parents/students came down and couldn’t use cash, the district card was also almost unusable as how do you prove what you spent it on? The solution for our coaches was to buy visa cards at the store. This was very inconvenient and surely added stress unnecessarily.
I am sure they had a good reason for most of the decisions but this one was a surprise.
