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Originally posted by mm1983:
Aside from the convention center for 2 days, if staying out in Vegas for a whole week is it better to take a taxi or to use the monorail service for 6-7 days? Would it just be better to just pay for a rental car for the whole week? What type of transportation would you use from the strip area to get to the convention center?

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Originally posted by Eatatjoes:

Where are you staying at on the strip?

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Originally posted by mm1983:
It is actually a few blocks off the strip I believe, just from what I can see on a map. It's called Platinum Hotel and Spa. It's within walking distance to the strip area. I can find a rental car for around an additional $150 total for the 6 days I will be out there so I was just wondering since I will be staying in Las Vegas area the whole time that would I be better off with a rental car or paying for monorail/taxi transportation for the 6 days?

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Originally posted by Eatatjoes:
Platinum is off of flamingo and koval. It's a nice place. From that location I would rent a car. A cab ride to the event site would be no less then 20$. Plus you still have to cab it back. Just make sure you lock up the rental car, edc is that weekend, and they have run out of rentals for events that were half the size of edc.

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
And for the love of god, put your valuables in the trunk of your car when you get to the event. It's getting sad to read the GP horror stories about some guy leaving thousands of dollars in cards in plain sight of an unattended car.

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Originally posted by dwiz:
His WERE in the trunk, weren't they?

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Originally posted by TimeBeing:
Yes but it was an inside job. Someone knew the stuff was there.

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My wife giving me hell about going.

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Originally posted by mm1983:
would I be better off with a rental car or paying for monorail/taxi transportation for the 6 days?

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IMHO, it's only worth it to rent a car in Vegas if you're planning on driving to locations that are off the strip (Outlet malls, gun ranges, etc). Strip traffic is insane the majority of the day and night, and I'm wary of theft from the self park garages.

When we drive to Vegas we typically leave the car at the valet for most of the weekend. My friends who fly from San Diego never rent a car because they spend all their time at the strip.

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
This thing is the biggest cluster**** of all time. Absurd wait times, every event is delayed by multiple hours, and they only had 1500 mats, 600 of which were reserved for VIP registration. So in addition to the registration cap BS, less than a quarter of the participants are getting a GP mat.

AND THIS ISNT EVEN DAY 1 YET. The cascade games TO is gonna be lynched by the end of this weekend. Complete incompetence.

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You do realize that they're nearly doubling the previous record attendance for a GP, right? No one anticipated nearly the kind of turnout that showed up, so yeah, things might not be super smooth. It's sad that people feel the need to whine and complain about something so unforeseen and unexpected.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
This thing is the biggest cluster**** of all time. Absurd wait times, every event is delayed by multiple hours, and they only had 1500 mats, 600 of which were reserved for VIP registration. So in addition to the registration cap BS, less than a quarter of the participants are getting a GP mat.

AND THIS ISNT EVEN DAY 1 YET. The cascade games TO is gonna be lynched by the end of this weekend. Complete incompetence.

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Yeah man, somebody posted the blog of the guy setting this sucker up. They got like almost all of the pre-registrations in 3 days. No way the guy could have accounted for that in advance.

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
Unexpected? Please, the hype of this event breaking records has been tossed around since the announcement of the event. They certainly haven't had shortage for the promo cards. But that's beside the point. The delays, the lack of information, the absurdly low amount of registration staff, etc. All speaks to a TO that was clearly unprepared for even the low end of expected volume.

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The only thing that is clear is that you have no idea what you're talking about. Hype is one thing, but no one with any knowledge of tournament organization could possibly reasonably have expected the kind of turnout that they got. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar, a fool or both.

Sure they have enough promo cards. They knew days ago that they would need 4500, not too difficult to have one of the many WotC employees who were going to be there make sure they had enough promos to go around. Other resources aren't nearly as easy to come up with at the last minute.

Be grumpy if you want, but calling the organizer incompetent for not having complete control over such an overwhelmingly record-breaking event is so far out of line it's ridiculous.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
This thing is the biggest cluster**** of all time. Absurd wait times, every event is delayed by multiple hours, and they only had 1500 mats, 600 of which were reserved for VIP registration. So in addition to the registration cap BS, less than a quarter of the participants are getting a GP mat.

AND THIS ISNT EVEN DAY 1 YET. The cascade games TO is gonna be lynched by the end of this weekend. Complete incompetence.

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What do you expect at 4500 people? Also, they announced 1500 playmats ages ago, so to complain because you didn't get one (?) is absurd.

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Originally posted by nderdog:
The only thing that is clear is that you have no idea what you're talking about. Hype is one thing, but no one with any knowledge of tournament organization could possibly reasonably have expected the kind of turnout that they got. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar, a fool or both.

Sure they have enough promo cards. They knew days ago that they would need 4500, not too difficult to have one of the many WotC employees who were going to be there make sure they had enough promos to go around. Other resources aren't nearly as easy to come up with at the last minute.

Be grumpy if you want, but calling the organizer incompetent for not having complete control over such an overwhelmingly record-breaking event is so far out of line it's ridiculous.

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WOTC can't afford to do market research regarding potential attendance for a special limited edition set GP? Get over the mats, I have. It was the entire day. Absurd delays, judges standing around doing nothing for the first 2 hours, the lack of information regarding pre-registration/check-ins/friday event sign-ups once we were on-site, etc.

Were you even there? For christ's sake, they had people waiting outside for 2-3 hours. It hit 100 degrees around 11am. That might have been excusable if the convention area was packed, but it wasn't - they were simply using the entrance of the convention as a choke point for maintaining the line for mini-masters and promo material check-ins.

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
WOTC can't afford to do market research regarding potential attendance for a special limited edition set GP? Get over the mats, I have. It was the entire day. Absurd delays, judges standing around doing nothing for the first 2 hours, the lack of information regarding pre-registration/check-ins/friday event sign-ups once we were on-site, etc.

Were you even there? For christ's sake, they had people waiting outside for 2-3 hours. It hit 100 degrees around 11am. That might have been excusable if the convention area was packed, but it wasn't - they were simply using the entrance of the convention as a choke point for maintaining the line for mini-masters and promo material check-ins.

All this "we didn't know how big it was gonna be" is a load of crap. God forbid WOTC or the TO contracts a market researcher to get a better ballpark estimate of attendance than "The biggest NA GP we've ever had was like 1500, so let's go with that". It's crappy service as a result of lazy planning, plain and simple. If anyone was trying to introduce someone to magic by taking them to a GP, I couldn't think of a better way to scare them away from card games for the rest of their lives. "Hey bud, come wait with me in line for hours (in vegas summer heat) so we can wait inside for hours so we can make sure we are signed up for that event tomorrow that we paid the price of a new video game for. Also, we might get the chance to play a single grinder event sometime before the sun goes down."

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The problem is when you only have experience with 1500 person events its hard to automatically know what the differences are for a 4500 person event.

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Originally posted by WeedIan:
The problem is when you only have experience with 1500 person events its hard to automatically know what the differences are for a 4500 person event.

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I accept that. I also accept that there are going to be logistical challenges unique to MM, largely for judging and fair play.

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
I accept that. I also accept that there are going to be logistical challenges unique to MM, largely for judging and fair play.

What I don't accept is the idea that "more than 1500 people" took the TO or WOTC by surprise. That's the incompetence coming into play.

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WoTC isn't the TO though, and I think that outside of SCG we don't have anyone who runs large events on a regular basis.

There will be plenty of lessons learns out of this.

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Originally posted by Zeckk:
I accept that. I also accept that there are going to be logistical challenges unique to MM, largely for judging and fair play.

What I don't accept is the idea that "more than 1500 people" took the TO or WOTC by surprise. That's the incompetence coming into play.

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It's not the more than 1500, that's manageable. It's that the numbers are so far above what anyone's ever seen that you're flat-out bat-crap insane if you think that anyone could have planned for the turnout and been ready for what actually happened.

We get it, you're cranky, but stop acting like this is some insidious plot or someone just overlooking a little something. How do you not comprehend just how far beyond uncharted territory this is?

edit: You need to let this "market research" BS drop. Market research shows that the largest GP attendance ever was 2672. There isn't any research in the world that's going to even suggest that someone should anticipate double that.
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quote:

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Originally posted by revenger:
Ugh, is it worth going to then? I'm not playing but I don't want to stand in a 4 hour line to just to get inside the building to trade/meet motlers, see the booths, etc.

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quote:

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Originally posted by WeedIan:
WoTC isn't the TO though, and I think that outside of SCG we don't have anyone who runs large events on a regular basis.

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this is all cascade games does is run events. Their events I've been at recently have run very smooth. GPs in this neck of the woods run 1500. Lets assume they expected this to be one of the largest tournaments ever then they could plan for about 2500. Most people guessing were in the 3k ballpark (well after pre-reg were busting past the 2500 mark). Question is, will this happen again or is 4500 a one shot deal?

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Originally posted by caquaa:
this is all cascade games does is run events. Their events I've been at recently have run very smooth. GPs in this neck of the woods run 1500. Lets assume they expected this to be one of the largest tournaments ever then they could plan for about 2500. Most people guessing were in the 3k ballpark (well after pre-reg were busting past the 2500 mark). Question is, will this happen again or is 4500 a one shot deal?

Wonder what these play mats are going to run, I kinda want one.

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They were being sold player to player for 140, vendors were buying in at 100 and flipping for 150.

And no, market research is not BS. Sorry, but there are people whose entire job at WOTC is to provide projections for their marquee event schedule - the proof of this is in the size of the artist licensing contract for the playmats. I was told by the TO himself (Jim@ cascade games) that their WOTC's contract with the artist for using the art on the GP playmat was for 1500.

The person responsible for those projections is inept. Most of the magic community had been speculating that GP Vegas was going to set attendance records, all the proof you need is to look at the MTGS announcement thread, along with numerous pros commenting on twitter or personal articles stating such.