Pit Admin told me volunteers will only get tickets if they’re left over after teams get theirs.
This seriously disincentivizes alumni (w/o active teams) from volunteering. Me and my friends are spending more than 15 hours volunteering to not only help the program we love, but participate in the excitement and Robotics Spirit. Seriously, the robotics sprit, game reveal, and “Water Game” chant is the only reason we have a sophomore spending her two days resetting fields and getting back pain instead of doing literally anything else.
Someone really needs to solve this ASAP: why would I ever volunteer in the future if I don’t even get to participate in the whole event?
Whilst I understand your frustration, I’d be interested to hear what you would propose as a solution. Obviously a bigger dome if the venue allowed but since this doesn’t seem to be possible at Dallas, what would you propose instead?
There are 9816 seats in the arena/dome, which would be roughly 12 seats per team if every seat was given to a team. So even if we gave half of the total seats to teams that would still be 6 seats per team, leaving 4908 seats for volunteers and staff. The issue seems to be with other spectators such as parents and coaches who are taking up more of those remaining seats and not leaving enough for all of the volunteers and students.
This of course is only my opinion, but I think the best solution would be to have 4 tickets guaranteed to each team, which is 3240 tickets. Any extra tickets from smaller teams can be added back into the larger pool of the remaining 6576 tickets. After all volunteers and staff get their tickets spectators and teams with more than 4 people could go get any of the remaining tickets on a first come first serve basis.
Is that the Worlds capacity, or the maximum capacity when empty? You cant use all 360 degrees of seating at Worlds. There is a big stage a screen blocking a large part. Be interesting to see what the capacity in Worlds configuration is.
If you look at the Facebook groups you will find lots of people (especially in elem IQ) that are very upset that they are only getting 9-10 tickets per team… The new dome is pretty problematic… But there just aren’t large arenas attached to large convention centers… Kentucky was really the best for this.
I know that at an individual level all the REC Foundation staff and even Dan Mantz (who I talked to briefly) are very nice and appreciative of volunteers. Forgetting that volunteers might not be associated with an active team is probably just organizational oversight. I’ll ping them after worlds and hopefully they’ll fix it before next year.
However, that is not my problem. I am simply stating that unless they fix this, I am not coming back next year. We asked around teams from my region and luckily traded fast passes for tickets, but I don’t wanna jump through these hoops again.
I wish I had known this when we bumped into eachother. We had an extra ticket.
I will note there were many open seats around our team and generally around the arena. There were many open seats on the floor as well.
The entry into the arena was very problematic, with a concerning crush at the front while staff delayed entry for about 15 minutes and crowd anxiety created forward pressure.
This whole transition day arena use (MS opening and HS closing) is logistically complicated, and needs to be improved.
What I saw from the HS side was a need to uses more points of entry over a longer period of time to avoid bad crowd outcomes. It felt dangerous at the front portion of the line with the entire mass of attendance pushing through a single ~12’ opening.
And for the OP issue, it would be good to issue a note with the tickets to teams that any extras can be turned in to pit admin to be re-distributed on some rational basis that includes volunteers and large teams.
No matter what “n” is, it will always be problematic for some teams. Maybe finals tickets could be assigned based on how many team members are registered? Maybe n could be solved by something like #of registered team members + 2 or something. At least every team has a base amount to cover everyone plus a coach or parent or two. Then the “extras on a first come, first served” basis could be fought over.
I don’t know about other divisions, but in Design there was only one off-hand announcement (that I heard, admittedly) that the Dome was also going to be streamed at all of the division fields. We had some parents who gladly took that offer instead of participating in the Crush. Maybe that information could be more prominent somehow?
In the picture below. I recommend the following changes for the 2024 WC:
Shrink the height of the LED screen wall by a couple feet.
The three [unlit] sections behind the LED screen wall (That I assume were closed) should be available for General Admission.
Reduce VIP seating on the balcony (I’ve seen a lot of those seats not occupied)
Take away one VRC field and two VIQC to add more General Admission seating. (The reason is emcees (Tyler and Bobby) talk between finals matches and play a lot of sponsorship ads)
Widen the LED screen wall to the edge of the balcony seats. (And add sliding doors at the two exits)
Add more seats in the floor level until they reach the wall. (The big camera rig might have less room to move)
Personally, I do not want to see another new game coming down from the ceiling again. They did this three times. I don’t think they have a choice of how they will unveil 2025 VRC game.
I know it sounds unappreciative… but just trying to make the experience better for the future worlds.
The front row(s) seats allocated to those teams that made it to the dome - it was really bad placement.
The only way those sitting there can catch the actions on the fields was by looking at the bog screen. And the big screen was almost directly above our heads. So imagine the neck aches after the marches…
Sorry for the late response . The REC Foundation recognizes that not all of our volunteers are associated with teams and that we need to do a much, much better job of making sure there is seating in the Dome for all of our volunteers. We also received feedback from our post VEX Worlds survey and will be making other changes to better support and recognize our volunteers.
We know that we could not run the World’s largest robotics competition without the selfless support from the hundreds of daily volunteers.
I apologize for the issues we had this past year and promise on behalf of the REC Foundation team that we will do better next year.
Again, thank you to everyone that volunteered at VEX Worlds or any event this past season.
