Also, I'm a bit late, but I just posted the dates for F2F 2005 in press, May 20-22.

IIRC, Juliana, the hotels were $89/night in Evanston, between $109 and $129 in LA (depending on which hotel), and $139 in DC.

In LA it depended on which hotel. Most people stayed at the Safari, and paid less. The details for the LA F2F are here:

Allyson "Sunnydale Press" Apr 11, 2003 3:25:17 pm PDT

Safari Inn King or double bed size rooms: $83 per night Suite: $109 per night, for 2 people. $10 each additional person

Anabelle Hotel King or double bed size rooms:$109 per night Suite: $139 per night, for two people. $10 each additional person

Thanks, everyone. Sorry if I sounded a bit snippy last night.

The data is much appreciated.

Not problematic in Jamaica.

Hmmm. Jamaica's in the center of the country, right?

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Damn.

ETA: I like St. Louis. I also like New Orleans (mmm... booze... and foodz...). But St. Louis is pretty in May (in my limited experience) whereas New Orleans is pretty much consistently Ten Degrees Too Warm to Walk Where You Want To Go.

t /warm-natured opinion

First, I volunteer to count votes for F2F cities.

NOLA is hot, but A/C will be a given anywhere we want to go. IOW, if we go to NOLA, we should assume an indoor F2F.

Twin Cities should be lovely.

Chicago is easy to get to, but I'm not sure we want to set a precedent of repeating a city in two consecutive regional F2Fs.

Nothing else really jumps out at me. Though the folks that pushed Nashville upthread got my interest.

Where in Florida was that, Laura?

Sandpiper which is about an hour north of me in Port St. Lucie. If that was the one you went to and your bitching got them to change their tune I thank you ever so much!

I had a great time and the boys did too. Brendon not so much, but he was in the middle of a nasty project and had 6 laptops set up in the room to complete. I think the staff thought we were spies or something. Also, since I am half asleep and rambling I should mention that had a circus setup where they taught people trapeze flying and so forth. They were so awesome to watch wearing nothing but itty bitty tight shorts practicing and teaching. Alas, my horror of the thought of climbing up the ladder to the wire would not allow me to try.

The comedy portion of said circus act had my face covered in tears and my whole body aching from laughing so hard.

On topic: Woo! I see that we have a date. We have been discussing New Orleans for some time so I somewhat prefer that. Denver would be tough for me because I suffer horribly for about 3 days when I hit altitude. Stupid aclimation to sea level.

I don't know what ours was called -- it was a work trip, so free. It was very disappointing to not be able to get hammered on the company dime, but we got hammered anyway. And played midnight volleyball, and snarked at everyone. It was force-fun, and horrible. The staff we ended up bonding with hated this part of their resort rotation, because it was all golf-loving newlyweds, so they didn't get much attention, and more importantly, no one was buying them drinks.

Plus you had to drive to the beach.

There was trapeze, and I did leave with a crush on the trapeze teacher, who'd run away from grad school to join the circus. Mmmm.

Fred, thanks for the volunteering.

I did leave with a crush on the trapeze teacher, who'd run away from grad school to join the circus.

I have a crush on anyone who runs away from grad school to join the circus.

Also? I want to learn trapeze. As long as there's a net.

I would vote for Minneapolis with Kansas City as my second choice of the cities suggested so far. What are some of the other choices?

I love NOLA, but not the heat, and I suspect it would be more expensive than either of the other cities.

It must have been Sandpiper because it is the only Florida Club Med. I was there last October. Maybe they had some serious policy changes. Of course they had golf, but I didn't see the course. The overwhelming majority of guests were European. It was particulary fun for me to watch my 11 yo son playing pool volley ball with a group of Italians. The women were all in string bikini's and hugging the embarrased boy like crazy. They were delighted to have the child join their team because of his height advantage.

I sat soaking up the sun and drinking vodka tonics, because free booze. Also, on mini-vacation. Trapeze guys were seriously drool worthy. Also, funny and snarky with the adults and endlessly patient with the children. edit to note that the only way off the trapeze was to fall into the net unless you knew what you were doing. Basically they taught you a couple moves and dropping to the net back first.

On topic. I have been to NOLA a couple times, but not any of the other mentioned cities. Nashville, Kansas City, Minneapolis. I'd love to visit any of them. I can't really pimp any of them because they are all far away and foreign locations to me.