Going to the World Festival is an experience of a life time and an honor to meet all the best teams from around the world.  It is also a bit daunting to travel afar with a bunch of energetic pre-teen kids.

In April 2008, Landroids as a first-year rookie attended the FLL “Power Puzzle” World Festival held in Atlanta, GA. Talk about being green and inexperience! Someone walked up to us after the State Championship tournament and said “Congratulations! Hurry up and book your hotels”.  It turned out to be a very wise advise since all the FTC and FRC teams will be at the World Festival during the same time.  But what’s next? Where do we begin to plan for this trip? In the end, aside from a bit of nervous anticipation on the Georgia Dome repair after the tornado damage, and some local airline strikes just before the World Festival, everything went smoothly. We had a great time!

For that, a lot of thanks to Chief Delphi’s tips, and the Tighwadder’s guide on money saving ideas. Documents like these were invaluable to the first time World Festival attendees. Our experience in preparing for the World Festival were added as NOTES to the Chief Delphi’s tip guide.  Hopefully, this combined document could evolve like a ”Wikipedia” page on Chief Delphi’s website to include other veteren team’s input and ideas.

Below are some of the helpful links and 2008 World Festival archive information.

GOOD LUCK and HAVE FUN !

Trip Planning:

FIRST LEGO League World Festival (lots of info embedded in this link)

Hotel Reservation through Steele Meetings (room includes FIRST Fianle tickets for # of occupants; check out local maps and hotel options)

Transportation: Order MARTA (subway) tickets (Pre order for 15 people or more, call 404-848-4184), MARTA rail map, GWCC Stations, Ground Transporation

Tips for attending World Festival: from Chiefdelphi.com and A Tightwadder’s Guide

Maps: Downtown Atlanta Map; GWCC Campus Map; Enlarged Georgia Dome/GWCC Map

Food: Pre-order team lunches (very expensive and inconvenient to buy food at GWCC and Dome)

World Festival Finale ticket ($40-$50 each, can be purchased at Steele Meeting booth at GWCC during the World Festival, quantity may be limited)

Sightseeing

World Festival Finale: Saturday 6:30 pm – 9:30 PM

2008 FLL World Festival Archived Information:

2008 “Power Puzzle” World Festival archives: Team List, Day 1 Schedule, Day 2 Schedule, Robot Scores, Awards

2008 “Power Puzzle” World Festival archives: Winners & Websites

2008 FLL World Festival 2008 NASA Webcast Robot Performance Archive

Landroids’ World Festival Robot Performance video

Landroids’ photo gallery on 2008 World Festival competition (An inside look of our trip and the judging sessions)

Landroids’ photo gallery on 2008 World Festival Fun (the most important part of the event)