So the complaints that I have been hearing have been the exact same since the first year of MCB with teams from Michigan. This past weekend I was able to experience MCB with an out of state team (NSG) and I can confidently say that the experience was completely different. Out of state teams definitely get better treatment than home teams.
The mixer was fun with all the games. Choosing show order with the dice was a cool way that I don't believe has been done before but was just very poorly executed. Food was very cold, appetizers and entrees. Also wasn't a fan of the fact that emcees talked in Punjabi the whole time. Once in a while is fine but since there are many teams with many people that don't speak punjabi, i think its best that you speak english so that everyone understands what is going on.
Post mixer practices ran smoothly. We were given the room for some extra time but the floor was not cleaned after the mixer so there was a mess on the floor which took up an easy 3-4 feet off the room. The first to years of MCB we (Furteelay) were rushed out of the room shortly after our practice time ended.
Tech time in the morning was easily an hour late for us. Before leaving the hotel i asked multiple liaisons on whether or not everything was on time and they all said it was running only 10min late. when we got there we weren't even given a proper spot to sit or stretch until we were on deck. we were just told to wait in a basement hallway. When our time was up, tech time ran much smother this year than any year Furteelay has competed. With Furteelay, organizers would talk and try to create conversation with dancers while we were trying to figure things out. This year, none of the committee members talked to dancers unless it was relevant to our performance.
After tech time is when the whole show order deal happened. this was a major disturbance for our captains. just because a team doesn't has their stuff together doesn't mean you can change the whole show order for them. we, NSG, offered to let them borrow our vests or not to wear them at all during the performance and just tell the judges not to dock points for that. We didn't get our saaps in on time for the performance so i asked RVD if we could borrow theirs and they were happy to let us use them (Thanks guys). After the team was moved to the end of the show, all music teams were moved up 2 spots rather than just having every team move up one.
Show seemed to run smoothly but there was little space for teams to get ready. Everyone had to share two rooms and small hallways. this also made it hard for people to practice before going on stage. it took me 20min just to find a decent amount of space to run the set and even then I had to stop for people to walk by. Same thing as the mixer, emcees talked in punjabi the whole time. I know a lot of people that didn't speak punjabi that were very confused as to what was going on during the show. sound system was a huge step up from the previous years. during the award ceremony, don't think it was right how you only called out RVD asking if they got second.
Going into the weekend i wasn't expecting much for the after party because of the past years. with the show ending a bit late and some of the team not making it back until 11-1130, no one made it to the after party before 1 and was quickly shut down.
Overall, this weekend seemed to be a step up mainly because i was part of an out of state team. the same issues have been occurring over the past years with hoe teams and it seems that nothing is being done to resolve them.
Also, it's a competitions duty to provide teams with water bottles up until at least the after party. this is the first competition where i was struggling to find a single water bottle during the competition. shout out to Jagga for getting me one. I understand that it's not right to waste water like some people do but that shouldn't be a reason for other not to have water. every person should be drinking roughly eight 8oz glasses of water a day. given that a water bottle is roughly 16oz this means each person on a normal day needs 4 water bottles. add an exercise like bhangra and you need much more than that everyday. Gary, you said you bought 1200 water bottles for 180 people for the weekend. that's only 6 water bottles per person for the entire weekend, if distributed correctly, which definitely isn't enough. and when we got to the venue on the day of the show, there were only 3 cases of water in the kitchen area.
I hope you take all this into consideration for the future and don't just play this off as "false accusations" like you have previously.
-Arun
