Favorite Worlds Venue

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC
1

Which venue for Worlds was your favorite?

2

Summing up the poll.
http://puu.sh/k63Ni.png

3

For general surroundings and culture: Louisville
For the convention centre itself: Louisville
For food: Louisville, by a mile
For travel costs: Anaheim.

For me, travel costs are more important than the other factors.

However, I liked having the opportunity to see more than one American city. Anaheim is easily the most soulless and fake place I have ever been. It’s hard to find a place to eat that isn’t a national chain serving food that you could get in Auckland only worse. Well done LA for popularising the hamburger as we know it, along with the rest of your cuisine, but you did it so well that I can get a better burger 2 minutes’ walk from my house in Auckland than I managed to get in Anaheim.

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4

Anaheim was far better, imo. I will admit Louisville was much cheaper and a good deal larger, which was nice. But I also feel like Anaheim gave more of a prestigious atmosphere to worlds. When people ask about VEX and VEX world’s, leading off with Louisville just doesn’t sound impressive.

For the VEX world’s experience, Anaheim.

For logistics and the venue, then Louisville.

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5

I seem to remember the food trucks just outside the convention center at the 2014 world championship not being from chains. Am I remembering wrong, or did you just not like their food? (Personally, I thought it was great.)

6

I voted Orlando because of all the other activities and lodging choices available there.

Louisville would be voted #2. I like it better than Anaheim due to choices that you generally don’t have to pay to park. :frowning:

However, in order to get a good feel of either place you really do need a car and travel a little ways from the venue. So this may be a bit limiting for those just in the bus routes to the convention center.

Advice number two. Use yelp or open table or trip advisor. These are awesome tools to get crowd sourced real reviews.

Two great places we ate at in Louisville and I am sure there are many more.

First one as a team (or set of teams)

And another great place we ate at as a family.
[http://www.yelp.com/biz/brick-house-tavern-tap-louisville

Unfortunately you have to explore beyond the convention center to get the real flavor of a place. And limiting yourself to not having independent transportation can make it harder. (I guess you could Uber but that is up to you)](http://www.yelp.com/biz/brick-house-tavern-tap-louisville)

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7

I wasn’t at Worlds in 2014 and I don’t remember any trucks outside when I was there in 2012. I assume you’re right, my information isn’t the most up to date.

8

I wasn’t going to vote on this, but now I see that JVN voted, why not.

I voted for Orlando, I just had so much fun on that trip (probably because it was the first time I attended worlds).

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9

So Orlando is actually the only Worlds I did not attend so I will put my opinions on the others.

**Dallas **was nice and centralized in the city so trains ran straight to the convention center from popular hotels so teams could compete without renting a car. The city was large and with public transportation we were able to travel around and go to different restaurants every night. Had really fun after parties that was almost definitely cheaper for VEX to host and still more fun then Louisvilles. Drinks were accessible from anywhere, lines were significantly shorter and inflatable games were a new experience for everyone compared to just another roller coaster. Also ARC ATTACK was super cool even after having already seen them.

Anaheim was a little more expensive onsite but traveling for most people was vastly cheaper because Anaheim has multiple airports that service it and is in a tourist spot. Hotels were not all packed to the brim and the hotels everyone stayed at were a lot closer to the event. People could walk around the convention center and the environment was far safer for everyone to move around at night. Families had restaurants and activities they could do that were non robotics related. The event organized the arena’s by age group so college teams were near some highschool teams but too far from others.

And finally Louisville.

  1. Location in the city was horrible. It was illegal to walk the half mile from the airport to the convention center because there were 0 side walks. The atmosphere around the convention center deteriorated very quickly to the point that groups of 19 year olds were nervous to walk around too late at night. Louisville has roughly double the murder rate compared to Anaheim and it was very evident. Most Hotels were a long annoyingly scheduled bus ride away and from those hotels nothing was in walking distance.
    2.Worlds cost more.
  2. The Venue wasn’t necessarily too big but all the space was wasted. Filling the high school pits with sponsors and games meant that the walk from HS pit to pit was almost comical. The walk to matches for HS teams was too much and the walk to visit any other competition was almost too long to fit into a schedule. An event volunteer walked from edge to edge of the convention center on Wednesday BEFORE the crowds were allowed in and timed it to be a 15 minute walk. 30 minutes for a VEXU team to watch a HS team they mentored only including travel time was impossible to fit into the schedule. The organization of the venue with all the long hallways connecting every section will inherently cause this issue.
  3. The whole smell thing. The convention center is inherently used for agriculture shows so no amount of promises about the smell will mean that the smell will ever be completely gone.
  4. The after party at Louisville had lines that were worse than any peak usage of an amusement park. After about 4 hours and 2 rides we just gave up on actually trying to ride anything and just sat around hanging out. The after party was designed with the idea that most people wouldn’t watch the finals so every participant was only given 1 time slot to eat. The first time slot to eat ended before the finals were over so it pressured people to leave the competition and penalized everyone who actually competed in the finals. By the time the finals finished the entire stadium was completely empty because of the after party starting at a time that was, in my opinion, a complete misunderstanding of priorities.
  5. Food in the convention center was not very good and most food in the area closed before teams could get to them after a day of competing because Louisville isn’t used to the type of crowd.

PROS (I made a pun)
The event looked grandiose to people visiting.
Some of the filler members on teams were able to throw sacks and play the sponsored games.
Practice areas(rather than being run properly) just had a ton of fields.(expect for VEXU but hopefully after everyone seeing the VEXU finals last year people will give it a little more credit)

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10

^ +1 (10 char)

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I voted for Louisville for many reasons. I really liked the change of scenery for one, also it doesn’t feel fake around the event in the way that Anaheim did. The biggest compliant that I have is that VEXU is totally isolated from VRC. Whenever I wanted to see my high school teams that I mentor it involved either a very long walk inside the arena, or a medium distance walk outside in the humidity. I almost always chose to run outside because I was balancing the VEXU schedule as well as the schedules for 4 other divisions on my back. Like Tabor said, after this past years finals people might actually have interest in VEXU so I hope this upcoming year we aren’t totally cut off from the rest of the tournament.

Also the after party was awesome! I was never around for the Dallas after parties and it was nice to be able to spend one more night together with my friends from all over the world and just enjoy ourselves.

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To be clear I personally only witnessed/committed a few murders in Louisville. :wink:

So in all seriousness I was just trying to make a comment about the child friendly atmosphere of Anaheim compared to Louisville.

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I removed four posts from this thread for being off topic.

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14

Haven’t been to Vegas then :rolleyes:

Agree with the travel being #1 priority in making the choice here. That and the footpaths in Anaheim aren’t all broken up. Funny how you can actually judge an entire city based on sidewalk quality.

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15

How DARE you. Las Vegas has like 3 of the 10 biggest convention centers in the country so it could fit worlds easy. Tons of hotel space and everything is easily within walking distance. The only issue would be the 10 year old being given call girl cards when walking around. Entertainment like magic shows are plentiful and traveling to Las Vegas has a lot more direct flights than Louisville.

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16

Figures I find out now that you were there. :slight_smile:

We went and had a great time. I liked the venue, I liked the housing choices. The transportation at the time was very good. We stayed in the Sports area, I could either walk (which I did in the morning since the weather was nice) or ride.

I didn’t do the left coast due to the cost. I was on a boat trip this spring so I missed Louisville, but willing to give it a chance. Louisville is doing lots of rebuilding, most of it should be done in 2016.

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