Prime, I was generally happier with the staff at the vendors this year compared with last year. They seemed much more willing to help out, and if you asked them to find you something, they wouldn't dismiss you out of hand and would actually try and look for somethings that might not have been out on the tables. I found a bunch of keychains and TFG stuff that weren't on the tables but were available for purchase. Cache even gave me a box of random junk to look through, and I found some pretty precious gems there. I was less happy with T&T as they only had TCG-related stuff and their staff seemed more disinterested than anything else. At least they weren't rude and understaffed like GG was last year. And both places had CREDIT CARD READERS that worked, which made things much easier for everybody involved.
A couple of things I somehow managed to forget.
The food vendors. It was nice to have several options inside the convention center, even if they were kinda expensive. But they all closed down before 8pm, which meant that I had to walk nearly a mile to the mall to get some food. It was nice that the skywalk existed to help me get there, but I felt like I might miss something if I went out. Luckily, I didn't. I think it would be VERY nice for PCI to get those food vendors to stick around until at least 10pm, if not later. I think they'd make a TON of money from those overnight players in the mutant and Charity events.
RA, I agree completely with your sound system suggestion. It's the main reason that I want the VGC in a different room from the TCG, at least during the Swiss rounds of TCG Nationals. There were a ton of times where the VGC MC had to cut short an announcement because of an announcement in the TCG area. I realize that the TCG is a massive entity, and it would take more than your normal sound system to properly dispense information over such an area, but it's quite doable, and I know that the players would like it better than what has happened the last couple of years. Having the overhead speakers would be fine for simple announcements like "pairings are up". But for complex or area-specific announcements like age division time calls and pre-tournament instructions, it would make things a lot easier to have a closed-circuit sound system specifically geared towards the TCG area, and probably for each age division so that information isn't missed or glossed over.
I guess I was just a touch upset that there was no official Pokemon hotel or special hotel rate for Pokemon players. I can probably understand why that didn't happen this year, but it'd've been nice to hear officially where the Regionals winners were staying so that the players could coordinate their room bookings and stay close to each other. I had a dozen players and a dozen more parents come from Champaign, and no two families stayed in the same hotel for various reasons that included price, location, and Regional winnings.
I can't comment on how the TCG Nationals or Modified side events were being run, cuz I was in the VGC area all weekend. It looked, though, like there was a LOOOOONG time between the first round pairings or player roster going up and the actual start of round 1. An hour or something like that? It should be possible to get through more than 2 or 3 rounds before the necessity of a lunch break, and 7 rounds shouldn't take 12 hours to complete, even with a crowd as large as 1336.
Dunno why, but Sunday felt like a bit of a letdown walking into the room and discovering that half of it had been blocked off. I can kinda understand why they did that, but it was a little deflating to see this beautiful, wide open space cut in half for Sunday. Why couldn't the Professor Cup had used the Jr/Sr area on Sunday for their tournament? I LOVE being part of the action, and I would've liked to have been at least visible and recognized for my efforts by the playing community. Again, I don't think putting the Cup in a separate room was a good idea.
Just asking a question here. What were the "official" side events that took place in the "official" Side Event area being run by "official" Nationals staff? About all that I saw were the 8-mans and two Modified events. Were there any Limited events? Alternate formats? I have no idea, I wasn't in the main TCG area for more than a few hours the entire weekend.
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