Pre-registration is a terrible idea.
Jimmy
Jimmy, I think I was unclear on my meaning of pre-registration. I meant like in the terms of nats, the night before where deck lists are collected.
I am all for 2 day regionals where attendance is so great the day ends after midnight for older players or 9pm for the younger ones. It is my preferred solution.
The other option is to start the events earlier, if it starts early enough there could be pre-registration the night before, like nats. Since an early start will have more people drive the Friday, and staying the night, registration that night works and speeds up the following day, therefor allowing an earlier start, therefor a decent ending time for the drive home that same day.
Or, a two day event. Drive there the morning it starts (registration could end at noon or so), play day one, make top-cut and play day two, then drive home that night.
Either way I spend one night away from home. The difference is in a 2-day event there is less stress! Will I make top cut? Heck no, Not even if I did play. But other people do.
Or the current situation, wake up at 4-5am, leave for the drive, arrive at your regionals, register, start the event at noon or so, play until well after midnight, maybe one or two. Then what? take the four hour drive home? Spend the night? OK, this is worse than the other two scenarios.
And before you talk about Juniors, note that I am not a player, I am a parent of a Junior. I am a huge advocate of Juniors entering the game and think selfishly in regards to the game being tailored to them, not to the college students who can and will adapt to any schedule. We were not going to nats in 2010 because I heard too much about nightmarishly late nights of years past, they made it three days and we made reservations within a week.