You'll notice that we no longer take over the picnic area for registration. We have a picnic on Saturday in which we do some of that stuff, but on Sunday morning we have official tables in the Esplanade from which to do sign-in.

The only reason sign-in was done from the picnic area last time was because the event people had not set up the Esplanade tables in time.

The long and the short of it is that the (very expensive) venue rental is the toll we have to pay to make sure that we won't get shut down during the game.

There are a half-dozen alternatives to renting Festival Arena for the awards ceremony (including, as we've considered, not having one at all and just mailing out prizes) but they're all pointless if the end result is that the game doesn't happen at all.

Aww, we're missing Mad Scramble. I do love learning things about DCA, and it's less crowded there....

But I'm still happy with our decision. :cheers:

I'd actually rather everyone pays the same than have the dinner thing. It was a bit annoying being one of the people that showed up later. Kind of an uncomfortable situation, if you ask me. Even if the $50 is a lot. Which it is.

Alex, do they charge per person at the Festival Arena?

No, they charge by time and then whatever services you want. We've kept the plusses as low as possible but it is still expensive.

Did you know that if you rent one of the spaces and Disneyland and then ask to have a soda fountain available they charge almost $5/drink served? Needless to say, we passed on that.

Not sure if I have to work, So it looks like I am out this year :(

I swear I'm going to make it down for one of these one day. :(

I'm fine with upping the fee to pay for the venue. I felt a little guilty before because we opted out of dinner and basically the dinner people were paying for the venue. And it's over $10 to go to the movies so I don't think the fee for an all event is that outrageous. And divided by 4 it's only $12ish.

We just registered for the long event.

I haven't played a Mad Scamble yet. Is it possible to time out of it like it was possible to time out of the Invitational?

Yes. Since it is time based, we do need to have a cut-off point or some teams would finish sometime Wednesday morning.

We do try to make sure that most teams will be able to finish (which means it may be a relatively short event for the fastest teams) but there is no guarantee.