What: Genesis - A Three Day Brawl and Melee tournament - The biggest event in Smash history - Est. $10,000+ Pot
Where: Antioch, California
When: July 10th, 11th, and 12th. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Who: Brought to you by D.B.R.
Why: Quite possibly the largest event in Smash history across the entire globe. With six months left until actual tournament time there are over 250 people registered including participants from NY, FL, VA, MI, WA, TX, Mexico, Japan, Europe, Canada, and more. It would be ridiculous not to attend.
How: With dedication and organization.
Mode of Transportation: There are three methods of transportation to be considered. The first, flying. The second, the Smash Bus. The third, driving which I will cover in the "Gas" section.
Flying - I've done a fair amount of research on this and I can say that this isn't going to happen. I was able to locate some fairly cheap round trip flights around $200. However, after using five different airline sites and looking at three different airports, anything within that price range has already been sold out. Everything else is $300 or more.
Smash Bus - For those of you who don't know what the Smash Bus is it is a bus starting up in New York that is going to travel south into Florida and then head west through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona into Antioch, California. Tickets are somewhere around $200-$250 and other than that not many more details are available other than that free food and drink are provided on the bus along with several setups for friendlies during the entire bus ride. Two issues. There are a limited number of tickets and unless they decide to take multiple buses the occupancy cap. on the bus is fifty persons. This coupled with how close New Mexico is to Antioch, I believe, make this option obsolete. However, I wouldn't entirely rule it out.
Gas: Driving - Classic. I mentioned in an earlier post about purchasing gas here early and placing them in gas cans for use of the trip. After doing some mild research I discovered that at cheapest within the last 48 hours gas prices in California range from $1.80 to $1.90. However, average and highest gas prices found within the last 36 hours yield an average gas price of about $2.30 or higher. It is basically the same in Arizona. Also, the higher gas prices tend to be from the more popular gas stations such as Chevron, Shell, and Texaco, or in otherwords, the more readily available and easy to find gas stations. I think we will save a lot of money by buying as much gas as we can here.
Round trip is aproximately 2,200 miles with 16 hours to get there and 16 hours to get back. Quite a road trip if I do say so myself. As I've stated several times before I think we should take two vans or three cars. Regardless of how many vehicles we do take, gas should be split individually per vehicle, so I will figure gas for a van and a car.
I believe Steven's car gets about 42 MPG on the highway and mine somewhere around 38. I'm going to be not-so-generous and estimate miles per gallon on a car at 35. If anything that should also account for the small amount of in town driving. I will assume gas prices at $2.00 a gallon. With these numbers it would take about 63 gallons of gas to get there and back, so we will round that to $130 in gas. Hmm... that doesn't seem right. Someone correct me if it isn't. Anyways, so per individual (assuming five persons a vehicle) it would cost about $30 for gas. Much better than a $200 plane ticket...
For a van it would all be the same, except I'm going to assume that the van would get, oh, five miles per gallon lesson? That would be 30 MPG. That comes out to about 74 gallons of gas which is $150. How many people would vit in a van? Seven? Eight? We'll say seven so that would be roughly $25 per individual in a seven person van. The plus side about a van is the extra space provided and the possibility of having a setup in the vehicle as we travel with which to play on. Plus, it reduces the number of vehicles we have to worry about.
I think that driving is the best choice here. I'm listening to opinions and other options, though. Now, assuming we go with the driving option, there is the problem of the sixteen hour drive? Do we do that in one shot or do we want to stop somewhere? I want to hear some opinions on this before I do any research. One shot could save us money, however I bet we could probably find housing at some half way point. Though if we do decide to stop that will extend our five day trip already into a seven day trip or so. I'm thinking we could do half way on the way to Antioch and find housing and then on the return trip suck it up and go it all in one day. Again, I think this really needs passenger and participant input on this. What are your thoughts on this?
Housing: I think finding housing at this large of a tournament will be next to impossible for several reasons. The first being how close we are located to California. NY, FL, and out of nation players will be given priority over us. Basically, our priority is low. This is also coupled with the finite amount of housing space avaliable. I think we'll have to look into a motel/hotel on this one. Before I do any extensive research on prices, though, I'd like to hear your opinions.
Food: Well, food can be expensive. Really, I think any extra expenses should fall into this category. The basic amount necessary to survive without being hungry all the time would be $10 a day, I would think. A more comfortable amount would be $20. We could also plan on bringing some food with us if we have extra space in the vans/cars.
Tournament Expenses: Assuming you wanted to enter every raffle, attend every tournament, and obtain every priviledge or memorbilia, it would cost anywhere from $75-$100. $75 is to enter every tournament and if you get that package everything else basically comes free with that.
So, this (not including hotel fees) puts this trip at roughly (assuming $100 for five days of food [which is not necessary]) at $200. Comfort zone would probably be $250. Again, this is without housing costs.
Tournament thread for more information:
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=211141
tl;dr (did I do that right?) READ THE WHOLE **** POST!
I call shotgun on the one right here on Coors and Paseo XP
