First time attendee “review”
I had posted a few weeks ago to get some advice. The advice I received was absolutely spot on. I figured I would drop this here for anyone else running a search on the same topic.
I went to the May 16 event with a group of 10 yr olds. We came from Bergen county NJ. The afternoon traffic added 30-40 minutes for us (about 1.5 hour total).
Parking: if you come from I-95 North, the apartment building will be the parking lot before the NHRL building in your right side. It’s super close. We had no problem running out to the car to drop stuff or get things. When we got there around 4pm, the lot was basically empty. It filled up closer to 7pm.
Arrival/building layout: you walk into a standard lobby. On the left is where you scan your tickets or purchase admission. On the right, you can see the control room for all of the video feeds. Just past that you’ll have 2 hands on experience areas in front of you with a shop to the right side and the main cages on the left. You can walk through the shop to get to the back area which has the bar, coloring, skee ball (free). The bathrooms are through the shop as well. The back area has a path to the main cages from the opposite direction. This was helpful to us so we didn’t have to walk in front of people to grab a seat by the cages early in the day. The back area leads out to the food trucks.
Hands on experience stuff: this is what you buy tokens for. Tokens are significantly cheaper online and in advance. It was $5/token in person. The one experience was 1 token. You could drive a small bot around a table and push a ball. The other experience was 4 tokens. You got to control a bot that had weapons and actually fight. Not sure it was worth $20, but it was certainly worth the roughly $12/$13 I spent in advance.
Seats: metal bleachers around the cages. We had sweatshirts that we folded into a cushion. There’s video screens everywhere in the building. In the back area, there’s chairs and whatnot so you could definitely get up and move around if the bleachers bothered you. Bleachers with yellow/black caution tape were required to get up when a fire bot was fighting.
Crowds: there was a decent amount of people, but it wasn’t crowded. We never waited long or felt like there were too many people.
Food: we did eat at the food trucks, but if we do this again- we are definitely finding a place to eat in town. There is a water bottle refiller by the bathroom.
Event: I have never watched the streams. I had no clue what I was walking into. I was not expecting that level of a production. Cameras everywhere, multiple staff directing things, changing lighting, etc. Video screens everywhere with the current match, upcoming matches, bracket, stats, etc. It was all very well done.
It was an absolute blast. We all had a great time. The kids conked out in the car on the way home.
TLDR: definitely recommend. It was fun and affordable. Getting there around 3-4pm, having dinner, then staying for prime time (starts at 7pm) is the way to go!
And for my personal opinion on what I saw: 3lb bots- Anubis is a fast fucker, I can’t believe the giant wheel design won, and holy shit that one ending up in the wall was nuts, 12lb bots- I wonder if the tally marks on robo-cat are indicative of how many prior robo-cats there have been, yikes that one team taking out bolts to make weight is crazy (or is that standard schtick?), 30lb bots- giant wheel didn’t work well here but it surprised me with being functional after a little fire and splitting in 2, and I don’t like firebots
TLDR: boo kazaa even youtube with unskippable ads is better than you