OK, boys and girls, T-minus 24 days, so let’s get our logistics on! I updated my little Google Spreadsheet with the latest info I could gather from the thread / Saturday’s meeting discussion, but please review and confirm / correct as needed: Matt’s Awesome PBF Logistics Spreadsheet (make sure you’re looking at the tab with 3/30 date)
Current attendee list: @bengood921, @randomdan, @paulamalu, @philmatt24, @timf, @team-holp, @hacim, @rbeideman, @JoshHall, @zemata, @kristen-s, @laura, @matthew-jeffory. All y’all, please take note of the comments below and respond accordingly. Thanks.
LODGING: At the moment, it looks like we have 13 people planning to attend (has everyone already registered, or was anyone holding out to maybe use Paula’s friend’s ticket?), and 4 hotel rooms booked (Josh, Paula, Rick, Tim) at three different hotels. I already know Josh was planning on sharing his room to cut costs. @matthew-jeffory – I’m pretty sure someone will be willing to let you share a room if you chip in to help with the costs. Within reason (i.e. – we won’t put all 13 in one room… I don’t like you guys that much), we’re all fans of spending as little money as possible on the trip (so we have more to spend on LEGO from the vendors!).
But I don’t want to speak for anyone else, so @rbeideman / @timf, can you confirm your intentions as far as sharing your rooms or not? I think you’re both using points, but we could probably work up estimates on fair shares for people crashing with you guys. If you prefer to be on your own, no worries; just want to confirm so we know whether we need to add a 5th room. @paulamalu – do you want to keep it to just you and Laura, or are you willing to take on other roommates? If you are willing, do you prefer ladies only? We made coed rooms work ok last year, but I don’t want to make assumptions or make anyone feel obligated to do that or to crowd the rooms if they’d rather not…
@paulamalu – just to confirm, your friend is definitely not going, right? I sent an email to Chris at PBF asking whether her ticket could be used by someone else; he says it’s ok, but they already printed brick badges so if someone does use it, they won’t get their own name on a PBF badge (but your friend could still have one, if she so desired.) Will you stay thru Sunday, now that your friend doesn’t have to drive back to Detroit? If so, have you modified your hotel reservation? If not, whomever else stays in your room could probably shift over to another room for Saturday night… we’ll figure it out; just trying to cover all our bases here… I believe the other three rooms are all booked for Thurs/Fri/Sat nights, and everyone is planning to drive home Sunday night after we tear down.
CARLOADS: We have three important things to transport – people, MOCs, and tables. It sounded on Saturday like there were a couple leads on trailers, but I forget if we had a final decision or just “I’ll look into it” from a few people. Obviously, that’s critical, because if we don’t get our custom tables out there, we have to redesign our layout to use the standard tables.
It sounds like Ben is driving on his own, but has plenty of room for MOCs (mostly his own, of course). I am figuring on driving and can handle a few passengers / some cargo (but not tables). I believe Evan, Tim, Paula, and Rick all indicated they’d be driving (or at least willing to); is that still true?
EXTRACURRICULARS (i.e. – activities outside of PBF and PBF-organized bowling excursions): As for Art of the Brick exhibit at the Franklin Institute, it sounds like PBF can get us some free tickets, but they’re not sure how many just yet. And I know Paula already bought 2 tix for Friday evening, but I don’t think anyone else got that far. So, I added a column in the spreadsheet to indicate interest in going to the exhibit so we can work that out. Hopefully, we can all (except Paula – sorry, Paula! Your enthusiasm and advance planning have conspired against you in this case) get freebies, but if not, maybe we can split the cost for any additional tickets we have to purchase, so it ends up being a discount for all. Chris’s suggestion was to NOT miss the evenings, and that Thursday afternoon would be the lightest as far as activities / seminars / whatever (which makes sense, since fewer people will have arrived), so I’m recommending we plan to go to the museum on Thursday afternoon. I wonder if you could call and request to switch your tickets, Paula? (hold off until we confirm our plans, though…)
Obviously, anyone who wants to get to a LEGO store can swing over to King of Prussia Mall at some point, but I don’t think we need to have a big plan for that… might also be good to do either on Thursday or on Friday morn before things get going full swing at the convention…
And I believe Josh suggested we do a LUG dinner. Friday was suggested, but that’s the bowling event and Micah said they won a good bit of LEGO for winning that… I could see doing Saturday night after the sessions close, but it’s possible there will be after hours AFOL shenanigans that night, too. No matter what, if you leave the convention floor you’ll probably miss something, so we’ll have to just pick a night and go for it.
BADGERING OUR FRIENDS INTO ATTENDING: Was anyone else planning to attend PBF? @solscud007? @juliamorley? @dacvak?
