Is the 2nd floor lounge room 210? You do mean the big room on the 2nd floor, not the ballroom, yes?

Yes, that's what we mean. :)

Do we have the same rooms reserved this year? Is there only one room for royalty this year, or two?

Good news and bad news: The construction at the Illini Union is going slower than expected. I just got a call from Jennifer to say that we are losing all the rooms we had on the 4th floor. That's the bad news.

The good news is that they ARE ready to open up the rest of the second floor (except 210, the long room). So we are getting 4 rooms on the same floor as the rapier/ballroom - technically smaller and fewer rooms but more convenient for keeping more on the same floors. We are also getting the Federal room (the one in the basement next to the food court) and the Colonial Room, which we have never used before but it's on the first floor and holds up to 75 people.

I don't know how we'll want to assign these rooms, but I'm hoping we can turn it to our advantage.

Sofya, thanks for all the work so far. If we are going to have as many merchants, or more, than last year. There won't be enough room in one Illini Room to have the youth there. In previous years, we did all the youth combat in the 2nd floor ballroom. I suggest we set up three skinny but longer lists at one end of the ballroom, reserving one of them for C&T, youth, and pickup fights. That will open up more floor space to spectators up there.

To make sure I understand correctly, you're suggesting that we move the youth combat to the 2nd floor ballroom? Or do you want the three skinny lists in Illini ABC? I think I'll need a visual with square footage factored in to make sure we're not overlapping spaces in our plans, but tentatively it might work. I'm trying to remember what was the reason in previous years why we couldn't have the youth fighting in with the rapier.

We haven't had youth fighting on the first floor for two years. They've been upstairs with rapier.

On the note of merchants, I highly recommend that you limit the number of merchants to 10 to make sure that there's enough room for all of them.

The Colonial room is as-is only. Jennifer says no one is allowed to move the tables and chairs anymore because someone decided the furniture is getting too old for that. So, no more dancing / kids and teens in there. Dancing will be in 211, kids and teens in 217. Jennifer also said the Pine Lounge could be reserved for another $160 (RSO price). It's even bigger and more conveniently located, but I'm not sure we'll need it badly enough to justify the added expense.

Jennifer also said that we can tell people to bring outside food to the basement if they are just bringing their own lunch, but they draw the line at bringing in food to share with other people. So if people want to take their picnics into the food court they can. She didn't mention any leniency about food in reserved rooms, though -- those rooms are to be catered only. I didn't want to ask for specific scenarios in case she were to point-blank say we can't let people bring food for the vigils. I don't know if we can keep it secret from the site managers, though. I'm ready for the site to be consistent in the information they tell people...:-P

About Lost-n-Found: Jennifer refused to have lost and found items taken to Illini ABC, saying they have to be taken to the hotel because they can't assume it's our stuff. She also said there are no guarantees about safe-keeping people's stuff overnight in ABC. Even if all the doors are locked, at least 50 people have keys to that room, yada yada yada...boo no soup for you.

The draft with A&S classes looks good -- we certainly have a lot to go on at this event! If I have one suggestion, it might be that a lot of things all seem to happen at the same time while other hours have not much at all. Would it make sense to move the 3rd floor classes to the empty slots on the 2nd floor?

In the past we've had people complain about people not going to classes on the 3rd floor when most everything else is on 2nd. If there's enough space and time to put them all on the same floor that might bring in attendance...though I don't know what complications the instructors have given in terms of what times they're available to teach, etc.

The schedule looks good to me. I'm sure it will be fine. Thanks for doing it, Tomaris!

Looks like this page needs to be updated with 2014 rooms that we have reserved. Has any decision been made regarding room assignments for merchants, A&S classes, etc. at this time?

Since we have the 4th floor again, that might be the most logical choice for royalty, shire room, and scribal, and then put merchants on the 3rd, classes on the 2nd. Just an idea if ideas are sought. :-)

Do we have a list of which rooms we have available for 2015 yet?