Gen Con indy next year date.

[KenM]

I just read over on the news page that next years Gen Con dates are on the same weekend as the Brickyard 400, a major NASCAR race. They are doing a survey on if changing the date will affect you going.
Since I love both RPG's and NASCAR, I think they should keep the date with the Brickyard dates. having both things same weekend would be great IMO. Thoughts?

 

[Ghostwind]

Personally, I think Indy is capable of handling both events, but it means gamers will HAVE to pre-register and get their hotels as early as possible (no more waiting until the last minute unless you want to drive an hour or more every day to get to the convention). NASCAR will draw approximately 300,000 fans. That on top of the 30,000 Gen Con goers will make hotels and restaurants quite packed.

The real drawback to moving to the later proposed date is that many people are back in school (students and teachers) and could not attend, ultimately hurting overall attendance.

 

[Drawmack]

I live in a huge tourist area and believe me putting two big events on the same weekend is a very bad idea.

 

[shouit]

I agree with Drawmack. Besides who do you think the hotels and restaurants are going to cater to more, Nascar(300,000 attendance) or GenCon(30,000) in attendance. Just something to think about..

 

[der_kluge]

Ugh. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not be in Indy if there are 300,000 Nascar fans running around. LARPers are bad enough.

Milwaukee used to have this same problem with the Wisconsin state fair. It was on the same weekend as GenCon every year, and made getting a hotel space all the more difficult.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Bad idea.

If they're on the same weekend, I won't go. An event as big as the race will impact other events very negatively. Nothing can be done about it--it's just an event of that size (the race) will overpower everything else.

Let's see, we were told that Indy had double the hotel rooms that Milwaukee had. OK, so Milwaukee couldn't handle 30,000 GenCon attendees, but Indy could. Can Indy handle 330,000 guests at the same time? I doubt it--11 x the people won't fit in "double the hotel rooms."

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Unfortunately Gen Con is competeing with 2 major events for the begining of August. In addition to the Brickyard 400, the State Fair is also held durring this time frame as well. With 60,000 people a day and 100,000 on weekends the State Fair also competes for hotels and dwarfs Gen Con. As Gen Con is by far the smallest of the three it is the one that gets to be bumped. It doesn't help any when NASCAR decides to change its dates at the last minute.

After voting in the online poll later in August seems to be better for those who vote. While some may not be able to attend due to school if you look at the demographics of Gen Con most attendees are over 20 and have jobs instead of school. I would prefer the middle of August myself but that wont ever happen unless we are willing to suffer a lack of hotel space again. While you might be able to pull it off with the State Fair as a resident of Indy I strongly recomend against competeing with the races.

 

[Crothian]

I really hope he moved the date of this. Let's face it, many many people will not preregister and will make their plans a week in advance. After this years line problems, I think if there were moire problems because of the excessive number of people in Indy next year, Gen Con could be hurting.

 

[bolen]

I guess June is out. Remember not only kids have school then but so do teachers

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I guess June is out. Remember not only kids have school then but so do teachers

I should have been thinking. Doh! and I should know better since 2/8 of our judges are teachers.