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Maximus said:
Buses weren't the issue. hotels were. Oklahoma/Clemson play two days earlier in same stadium...plus holiday vacationers.
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There are plenty of hotels outside the heart of Orlando. They don't need to stay right by the stadium.
 

Maximus said:
Buses weren't the issue. hotels were. Oklahoma/Clemson play two days earlier in same stadium...plus holiday vacationers.
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Orlando has the most hotels, and the second largest number of hotel rooms in the country (after Las Vegas)
 

Maximus said:
Buses weren't the issue. hotels were. Oklahoma/Clemson play two days earlier in same stadium...plus holiday vacationers.
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Looks like about over 800 hotels are available...and as low as $45 for 3 stars, looks like we should fill up 20 buses if there's a demand! Hotels.jpg
 

Johnny Olson said:
Little Northern Illinois filled 29 buses when they went to the Orange Bowl.
The University needs to think larger!!
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They filled 26 and they charged $150.

http://www.niutoday.info/2012/12/30...eer-on-huskies-in-jan-1-discover-orange-bowl/

In an effort to make sure Orange Bowl fans see Huskie red, the university offered travel packages for $150 each. That includes the bus transportation, hotel accommodations and a game ticket.

The initial 500 seats sold out in nine minutes.

More bus packages were added, thanks to the NIU Alumni Association, NIU Foundation and Executive Leadership Forum, which worked together to make the fantastic deal possible.

Joseph Matty, executive director of the NIU Alumni Association, said alumni really stepped up, contributing more than $35,000 to reduce the costs of travel packages.
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I tried to order at noon and they were sold out, called about two minutes later and waited on hold for around 10 or 15 minutes only to be told they were sold out. The poor guy on the other line sounded like he'd been through a lot of unhappy people, so I'm feeling like there must have been a ton of people who called. Hopefully they add a bunch of buses and get us waitlisted people on!

I do know last year that they added more buses, and I got on through the waitlist, so I'm hopeful. I can't seem to remember if we stayed at the team hotel or not, but I'm sure we students wouldn't be against sleeping at any hotel.
 

OGMO said:
I tried to order at noon and they were sold out, called about two minutes later and waited on hold for around 10 or 15 minutes only to be told they were sold out. The poor guy on the other line sounded like he'd been through a lot of unhappy people, so I'm feeling like there must have been a ton of people who called. Hopefully they add a bunch of buses and get us waitlisted people on!

I do know last year that they added more buses, and I got on through the waitlist, so I'm hopeful. I can't seem to remember if we stayed at the team hotel or not, but I'm sure we students wouldn't be against sleeping at any hotel.
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If anyone is forced to stay home that wanted to go = BIG fail by the U. They really underestimated the students if tix were sold out in 10 minutes.
 

Obviously hoping that the U of M adds a few buses, and I think they will. The real question is how many? My guess would be that they add 2-3 more buses and end up with 150-200 students total.

Hopefully those students who don't make it on the bus consider pricing in out and driving themselves. Based on the numbers I have run a car-full of 4 people could go for less than $1000 total, under $250 per person.
 

Hollinsanity said:
Obviously hoping that the U of M adds a few buses, and I think they will. The real question is how many? My guess would be that they add 2-3 more buses and end up with 150-200 students total.

Hopefully those students who don't make it on the bus consider pricing in out and driving themselves. Based on the numbers I have run a car-full of 4 people could go for less than $1000 total, under $250 per person.
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Does that include season tickets for next year?
 



The Denver Omelet said:
I'm sure there's a complaint coming from a law student that wanted to purchase the travel package, but didn't want to be forced to purchase 2015 football season tickets.

I'm sure some openings will be forced by the Governor real soon.
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Bravo! Mark Dayton......what a dink.
 

Hollinsanity said:
Obviously hoping that the U of M adds a few buses, and I think they will. The real question is how many? My guess would be that they add 2-3 more buses and end up with 150-200 students total.

Hopefully those students who don't make it on the bus consider pricing in out and driving themselves. Based on the numbers I have run a car-full of 4 people could go for less than $1000 total, under $250 per person.
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Ya. You can easily get gas, tickets, and decent hotel for 5 nights (2 in Nashville and 3in Orlando) for about $280 a person. You don't get season tickets, but still a solid price.
 

Jeshurun said:
If anyone is forced to stay home that wanted to go = BIG fail by the U. They really underestimated the students if tix were sold out in 10 minutes.
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The proper response should be "We're getting more buses." There are plenty of charter bus companies eager for the business. There needs to be someone in the athletic department who can make the call to add more buses.
 

Hollinsanity said:
Obviously hoping that the U of M adds a few buses, and I think they will. The real question is how many? My guess would be that they add 2-3 more buses and end up with 150-200 students total.

Hopefully those students who don't make it on the bus consider pricing in out and driving themselves. Based on the numbers I have run a car-full of 4 people could go for less than $1000 total, under $250 per person.
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When they sell out that quickly, my guess would be they could fill up another 5-10 buses. Check out https://twitter.com/MyGopherSports, looks like a lot of people wanted tix but couldn't get through or were too late.

Seems like they could have started with a few more buses easily. They filled, what 3 buses last year? Why wouldn't they think the demand would be much higher this year?
 



Hollinsanity said:
Obviously hoping that the U of M adds a few buses, and I think they will. The real question is how many? My guess would be that they add 2-3 more buses and end up with 150-200 students total.

Hopefully those students who don't make it on the bus consider pricing in out and driving themselves. Based on the numbers I have run a car-full of 4 people could go for less than $1000 total, under $250 per person.
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Wanted to chime in. Unless I am mistaken it appears you are working under a purely personal assumption they only started with one bus. I get some on here like to always assume (not saying you personally, but am referring more so to some other posters) there are nothing but fools running Gopher marketing/tickets sales, but I highly doubt that was the case. My guess is they likely started with more buses than just one and the final number of students will be more than 150-200 students total.

That said, great response students. Keep it up. Ski-U-Mah!
 

GophersInIowa said:
When they sell out that quickly, my guess would be they could fill up another 5-10 buses. Check out https://twitter.com/MyGopherSports, looks like a lot of people wanted tix but couldn't get through or were too late.

Seems like they could have started with a few more buses easily. They filled, what 3 buses last year? Why wouldn't they think the demand would be much higher this year?
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Do we actually know how many buses they started with or is that pure speculation? Who's to say we haven't already filled 5 buses with more on the wait list?
 

Jeshurun said:
Do we actually know how many buses they started with or is that pure speculation? Who's to say we haven't already filled 5 buses with more on the wait list?
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It's speculation at the moment
 

If you look on Twitter their response is that there is extremely high demand. That says to me we are way past adding a few additional buses.
 

GophersInIowa said:
When they sell out that quickly, my guess would be they could fill up another 5-10 buses. Check out https://twitter.com/MyGopherSports, looks like a lot of people wanted tix but couldn't get through or were too late.

Seems like they could have started with a few more buses easily. They filled, what 3 buses last year? Why wouldn't they think the demand would be much higher this year?
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Either absolute incompetence or ignorance from the ticketing office/athletic department. In another thread I predicted 300-500 students would be interested, and at this point I think 300 students is a conservative estimate for sure. FWIW my buddy was # 67 on the waiting list at around 12:35 PM, which means 147 students inquired in the first 40 minutes.
 

Some quick numbers I put together that include a rental car in case no one wanted to put 3,000 miles on their car:

Screen Shot 2014-12-12 at 1.32.40 PM.jpg
 

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afurry91 said:
Ya. You can easily get gas, tickets, and decent hotel for 5 nights (2 in Nashville and 3in Orlando) for about $280 a person. You don't get season tickets, but still a solid price.
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And if staying in Nashville, which is a great halfway point coming from someone who has made many drives from MPLS to Orlando, plan on partying with LSU and Notre Dame fans after their Music City Bowl game on the 30th. This could make for some very unforgettable memories for some college kids.
 

OGMO said:
I tried to order at noon and they were sold out, called about two minutes later and waited on hold for around 10 or 15 minutes only to be told they were sold out. The poor guy on the other line sounded like he'd been through a lot of unhappy people, so I'm feeling like there must have been a ton of people who called. Hopefully they add a bunch of buses and get us waitlisted people on!

I do know last year that they added more buses, and I got on through the waitlist, so I'm hopeful. I can't seem to remember if we stayed at the team hotel or not, but I'm sure we students wouldn't be against sleeping at any hotel.
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I have a very strong inkling that they will be adding more buses for as many additional students who want to go as they can take with, but didn't get in the mix the first time around.

Importantly, people harping on the U about the process need to remember that they probably only have so many student tickets/student seats available to them in the stadium through the Citrus Bowl host committee that they can even sell. So it probably isn't fair to say they can just sell tickets to students infinitely and charter buses infinitely and not go about it with a wait list approach. Again, there is probably a set number of game tickets they have even had made available to them to sell to students.
 

supadupafly said:
I have a very strong inkling that they will be adding more buses for the additional students who want to go, but didn't get in the mix the first time around.
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I'm sure they will like last year. I'm wondering if one of the issues with adding more buses is getting employees to volunteer to make the trip - I believe last year people in Gopher Sports had to volunteer to be a bus leader and had to pay to go.
 


GophersInIowa said:
I thought it was posted that they started with 80 tickets which we would assumed would be two buses? If that is incorrect, I apologize.
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Someone said when they logged in there were 80 spots available .. Could've been that 100 spots had already been filled by then, and those 80 were all that was left.
 

Gopher07 said:
Someone said when they logged in there were 80 spots available .. Could've been that 100 spots had already been filled by then, and those 80 were all that was left.
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Gotcha, my bad.
 


As mentioned all ready there was a wait list last year and more capacity was added. However, the fact that you have to call to be waitlisted, instead of being able to sign up for the waitlist online, also seems shortsighted. Long hold times leads to much higher frustration. I would assume most students that want to go would deal with that but who knows, there may be some that give up because it appears sold-out online and they don't check twitter.
 

A friend said when they logged in it only showed 80 spots total and they were all sold already. The waitlist is going to be long
 

fraternity2017 said:
A friend said when they logged in it only showed 80 spots total and they were all sold already. The waitlist is going to be long
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Thanks for the clarification. Seems really ridiculous to only get 80 spots lined up. They had to assume there would be a lot more demand than that? I get that it is tough to get hotel rooms, but maybe split the group up .... two buses at one hotel, two at another ... something to help this happen.

The only other thing I can think is that they need a lot more donated tickets for students to subsidize the price, and weren't willing to open up more tickets unless more donations came through...
 

This trip costs more than $300. I assume the number of spots is dependant largely on the generosity of others rather than the University's ability to order a bus or book a hotel room.
 

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