Inviting comments on Louisville and the Expo center. My take:
Venue (Expo Center) - 9/10 Plenty of space and parking. Freedom hall was great.
Shuttle buses - 6/10 - Nice having them but were impossible to get at peak times
Team Booths 8/10 - Nicely set up. Suggestion: PLEASE PLEASE group pit areas by division
Food at the Venue - 4/10 - Pretty pathetic food choices. Food trucks outside were a nice touch though
Food for vegetarians 0/10 - Heard this from many intl. teams as well
City of Lousiville - overall nice, but flights are very limited, most flights are regional jets with a limited capacity. Hard to reach for intl. teams
I think that the venue was fine, but the geographical location of the event could have been better. I was talking to some of the teams from New Zealand and a few other far off places and I found that they had a much longer commute to get to the competition. I felt that it was much better on the west coast because it was relatively easier commute for those who were far away and not that much longer for those on the east coast (like me).
Also: please make the pit areas closer to the division fields. I had to walk from the army’s setup to the math division (1/4 mile away).
My teams have been to the world Championships for the last 4 years, and this year I was disappointed with so many things!!
Flights getting into Louisville are very limited. Please find a location with a MAJOR airport. L.A. had 3 major airports and it was easy to get in and out.
Their is nothing around the convention center. So unless you want to walk a couple miles each day, dragging a robot and tools, you must rent multiple cars. The hotels are a ways off and there was an Arby’s a mile on the one side and a McDonalds and Taco Bell a mile on the other side. Everyone is trapped in the convention center.
The convention center had everyone so spread out that it was at least a 10 min. walk to get from my high school team matches to my Elementary team matches if I walked really fast. I understand people need room to move around, but this was so spread out that I barely saw half of what was there. We might as well been in different buildings. I liked Anaheim a lot better.
The horse/animal smell in the Middle School/ Elementary School divisions was overpowering! The kids felt like they were thrown in the ‘left over’ area and that they were not very important being stuck in there for 3 days.
As for the practice fields, they seemed more crowded here than the last few years. With it being a “bigger Venue” I expected there to be a better practice field area.
I do have 1 positive, the Army sections, College Booths, and industry booths were really nice! I think that added a really nice touch to the competitions. I hope we can get something like that each year.
I have nothing against Louisville, but I hope the World Championships are never held here again…
Hi, it appears that the championships will be in Louisville for the next 4 years since there was a post on vex’s Instagram with all of the worlds dates for the next 4 years.
As for pit locations, somebody mentioned wanting pits by divisions.
This would absolutely ruin Everything for our team. We have sent 2 teams to worlds for two years now and our team shares a programmer and engineers between both teams because we are simply too small of a team. We also share all out tools and parts. For us to be sprinting across a venue that large to get parts or team members to come fix a broken robot or work on an autonomous routine, etc, would make our life extremely hard and almost impossible.
What could work well for the future is giving single teams pits close to their division field, while giving groups with multiple teams pits in the same style they are currently given, keeping them together?
I think keeping the pits together may be the best solution.
Renting wagons/carts at the event may be a good solution. This way teams who fly in can have something to push their robot on versus carry their robot. What they do with 500 carts the rest of the time is probably a pain to manage.
Maybe UPS can help out? They’re local.
With the new game I can foresee lighter robots due to non-expansion. But future games are unknown for size and weight.
Louisville is a nice city. I didn’t get to see much of it like I had hoped though (not really VEX’s fault).
VEX U was just in an awful place. I work with several high school teams and out of the 6 that were there, I only saw 1 qualification match for 3 of them. Talking to some of the RECF members, they plan to move VEX U to the gym next year that was occupied by a basketball tournament this year.
I felt VEX IQ was basically a completely different competition. Even though I was close to them being in VEX U, I didn’t get to see a match of theirs until the end. I also feel the finals should have taken place in Freedom Hall so that everyone else could see the actual finals and not just a demo. Maybe it was done to cut down time but not really sure how that worked out seeing how there was a lot of down time (see #4).
I think Freedom Hall could have been utilized a little better. Instead of having it set up horizontally, I think vertically would have been better. This would have allowed for more seating. The only problem is I personally don’t know how they could do it vertically with how they had the fields set up this year and how big the stage is. Maybe shrink the stage since only about 1/8 of it was actually used.
Not sure why there was a period of down time after the round robin matches had been played. I think they were organizing things but it just felt off during that time.
Food: Not good for what you had to pay. I felt ripped off most of the time. The first day the vast majority of the venders were not even open till mid afternoon. This is my biggest gripe!
Location: Loved it being more Central in the US.
Smell: Livestock smell in the IQ, middle school VRC and VEX U was a little over-powering!
Logistics: I mean I liked how big it was, but it was a pain in the butt just to go see a match… come on!!! I got to see maybe 2 HS VRC matches since I was in IQ. It was a bit much. IT was especially much if you were 1/4 mile away from your arena.
Hotels: Good
Would I do it again: YES!!! I think Louisville is a good location especially since it can handle all the divisions and crowds.
Turns out the nasty farm smell was from a farm machinery event that took place at the place earlier this month. Hopefully won’t happen at the same time next year. I like how huge it sounds, definitely a great thing. Maybe teams could try renting golf cars or even those long golf carts. Food…well…maybe some teams could cater good food together. Overall, Louisville is great.
Maybe Vex could look into getting a golf cart style shuttle for next year, or people could bring a bike to worlds if they need to get back and forth between areas.
What about a tractor/wagon float for the alliances to ride into the Freedom Hall like Cleopatra on her barge?
Make a big production of parading the teams through the arena on a float. Put a big sign on each for each division. Maybe an LED sign to be programmed with each team on the sign. Indoor fireworks too.
jpearman can whip one up out of IQ parts.
This could become the teams’ “pits” for the round robin and finals.
Not sure there is enough room to drive about though. There’s a nice steep ramp entering Freedom hall too.
I liked the venue. I forget where the geographic center of VEX/IQ teams was, believe it’s somewhere near the center or closer east to the US. It got sort of tiring paying 2 arms and a leg out to California the entire time.
That smell was a negative. They could’ve gotten some febreeze or something. That’s a major concern from me.
I enjoyed the food there, and thought it was a lot better than what was offered in Anaheim.
I didn’t enjoy VEX U really being in a corner again, like it has been for the past few years. Maybe with the most exciting finals in recent memory (AURA vs QCC2 was an outstanding battle), VEX U might get a little more love.
Walking a country mile to get from division to division was a pain. I may bring a bike or like a cart to travel around. It’s way too inconvenient to see things here.
If I remember correctly, I thought staying in Anaheim would’ve made costs skyrocket, along with needing to rent extra exhibition halls there.
I understand your desire for this, but it is not ideal in my opinion. Imagine you bring 2 or 3 teams to Worlds. Now they are spread out ALL OVER the place. How do you get tools and parts, batteries and chargers, and advisors for them. When they go by number, all teams are next to each other…I hope they don’t change that. Yes the walk to your field can suck…but it’s the price to pay. You only have 3-5 matches per day usually, it shouldn’t be too big of a deal to walk there.
I had a great time at worlds this year overall! But… I was in the MS Competition and the middle school pits smelled really bad. One of my team members has a hay allergy and the hay smell was making her sneeze a lot so that wasn’t the most convenient It was kind of dim in my pit too because there were no lights directly above it and low ceilings. Also, I could never get a spot on the practice fields. I was in Opportunity Division, and for cueing we had to walk around Freedom Hall, go down the ramp on the Spirit side, walk across the entire floor of Freedom Hall to cue, and carry our robot and cart up an escalator after each match. That wasn’t so fun haha I really liked how spacious it was, but again it was hard to walk so much. Next year I will be in the highschool division so hopefully it will be a little bit better Great experience though! Tons of fun
Our team or 9551A(great pit partners) probably had the longest walks from our pits to the fields (We were in Technology and the were in Science with both of us being by Math). It was way to long of a walk to make our kids/grandparents have to take in order to see the matches. I hit the 15 mile mark on my smart watch on Thursday and we didn’t walk back and forth to hotels. I would say if nothing else move the food courts, display booths, and practice/ skills fields to the bottom half of the main hall and get rid of the “vex game”, or separate the pits by divisions while also giving the multi teams the option for a central pit location. Another point here is it really is an unfair advantage for multi teams due to the fact that they can bring their own field where single school teams do not get this luxury due to limited pit space. There was a lot of unused space in the main hall that could be filled with extra practice fields so this advantage can be negated. Also our part of the pits had a hard time hearing the announcements from pit admin not sure if that was the case in other parts. The food options seemed fine to me, but I grew up in the midwest. I was able to eat Pasta with a breadstick and have a waffle cone for under $15 on one day and our kids were fine with about $15 a day as well. The tshirt costs were high, $200 for four shirts with three graphics really. The REC/VEX store was very well ran and they had the parts we needed always in stock. The number of bathrooms were great as well. Inspection went quickly and queuing was great even though I couldn’t understand why some teams could bring their carts to the field but we couldn’t. As far as IQ/Middle/U goes the smell was noticeable and the fact that it seemed not to get better worried me about what was being done to try to help the issue. The seating capacity was nice in Freedom Hall, but VEX might want to go in the FRC route and have 2 representatives from each team available to sit field side for awards. I also would have liked to receive an email or have some notification that we had to pay for parking especially since our team didn’t have to Wednesday and Thursday.
Yeah, our team travelled Auckland → Sydney → Los Angeles → Atlanta → Louisville and back again. Granted, we went via Sydney because it was cheaper and Air New Zealand just announced flights direct from Auckland to Houston so it could become less of a problem in the future.
The VRC is fast becoming a truly international competition, with an increasing number of teams from all parts of the world including Europe and the Middle East, so some people are always going to have to travel far. The ideal situation would be to host the event in a “hub” city, such as Denver or Dallas so a lot of teams could at least save one connecting flight. However, Hub cities and available convention centres don’t always line up.
Sadly that’s true but a great idea. Hosting it in a place like Houston, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, even Chicago would be awesome for travel for international teams. Nothing quite as nice as LAX though.
For the teams traveling internationally I can see why it is more of a hassle than teams from US. I was one of the Refs in the Vex U division i heard complaints from not just your team about flying but from teams from mexico which makes up a large part of vex U. The thing you will have to remember is yes this is the first year here so it will get better for next year REC foundation is an amazing company that wants to give the best experience. I had the option to be able to drive down and not have to deal with flights and that is one of the better points of Louisville is that so many people will be able to drive there.
Overall I was very disappointed by the event being held in Louisville. We have been to Worlds three years in a row. We absolutely loved Anaheim. Beautiful location, anything and everything within walking distance, plenty of things to do around town in the evenings. Easy to travel to and from.
Louisville on the other hand. Almost nothing within walking distance, very little to do in terms of entertainment outside of the event, and overall just a poorly maintained town. I was shocked at how poor the city streets, sidewalks, and buildings were around the convention center. I felt like I was in a slum the whole time.
As far as the Expo Center itself, the high school side was great. I was perfectly happy with the actual robotics experience for high school. The “older” part of the building for IQ, middle school, and VEXU however, was in awful shape.
All I could think the whole time I was there was, “I am embarrassed that this is the ‘image’ we are giving to other visiting countries of the U.S.” I was very surprised when they announced they will be in Louisville for the next 4 years.
On the more positive note…In terms of running the event, I think it was awesome. My only complaints are things NOT related to the actual competition itself. I absolutely love the VEX competitions and hope to be back at World’s next year.
My message to Louisville: Clean up your town. Mow the grass. Pour some sidewalks for Pete’s sake. You couldn’t even walk to the convention center on sidewalks…why? Also, you had to jaywalk just to get into the convention center…again…why? Embarrassing. Sorry if you are from Louisville and this all sounds offensive, but travel to any other major cities convention center and it will look better than what Louisville is offering.
It was kind of dim in my pit too because there were no lights directly above it and low ceilings. Also, I could never get a spot on the practice fields. I was in Opportunity Division, and for cueing we had to walk around Freedom Hall, go down the ramp on the Spirit side, walk across the entire floor of Freedom Hall to cue, and carry our robot and cart up an escalator after each match. That wasn’t so fun haha