I'm in seeing as the goldrush is out for me this year.

 

Sounds good. Finalized details should be posted up no later than next week.

 

Oh good, because this is the "drive" for me this year

 

Excellent. Everyone who has expressed interest in this thread will receive a pm as soon as the new thread is created.

It has been set for July 9th, 10th, and 11th.

 

I'll take a dbl dbl animal style and a diet Coke to balance out the orgy.
I work in the Silicon Valley weekly and get all I want, when I want, but I do love their burgers. Maybe we'll go for some in-and-out in Vegas this week

—Vic

 

double post my bad.

 

Sounds like a fun time. Having planned multi-day events in the past when I owned my previous car your off to a good start. Planning is everything in making a fun run for everyone involved. Here are a few things I have learned the hard/fun way in the past in my misguided youth.

Getting a Casino usually works best for most people as they can accommodate larger crowds and are more willing to give discounts. The very nature that they run 24/7 helps with all the night owls also. I would suggest a bond fire at night if possible. You would be surprised how fun they are when everyone is chatting around the fire into the evening. You usually need a local that can acquire enough wood for this or bring wood yourself to make it work. Takes alot of wood to keep that fire raging for hours. If you call ahead of time enough the casino can help with this item or pre-order wood from a store and have it delivered in time.

Sponsership or gift prizes regardless of monitary value add to the experience substantially. Try to get a few companies to offer discount tickets etc.. Goody bags things of that nature. Prizes for person that drove longest to get there, biggest murphy moment, funniest radio comment etc.. are always fun.

Show and shine's without the pretext of trophy's are very fun if you can secure a venue at the destination point. Do you know if there is a large enough parking lot to support everyone that shows up as well as the onlookers that will obviously show up? For the most part you don't have to get a permit for this unless you intend on having more then 40 cars (learned the hard way). Just make sure you talk to the land owner well in advanced. Most people wont care about this but it's a good thing to do.

Food the ever looming challenge. When you show up with 80 plus people in a small sleepy town it scares the crap out of any restaurant. This is usually a point where you tend to lose people the most. Finding a place that can handle that many people is the hardest part. In the past I have found that pizza restaurants are the ones most capable to even come close to handling such a large crowd on short notice.

How are you going to keep people in line without getting lost/control? In the past whenever there where more then 30 cars it has proved to be a challenge. I strongly endorse the use of 2 way radios. Their effective range on a drive isn't very far though as they realistically are only good as long as you maintain line of sight with the other cars. Still better then using cell phones as more people can hear one message or being in an area where you don't have service. I don't know why but even when you provide a turn by turn set of directions, map, etc.. you still have people getting lost.

Selecting several people as drive principles strategically placed throughout the run group helps greatly. In the past I found that for every 8 cars you should have 1 person leading. Lastly finding the most important task of the brave soul to be in the very back to pick up stranglers usually is the hardest part. Few people seem to want to be the very last car.

Good luck and have fun if you need any more input let me know. Old hat different set of shoes for me in setting something like this up.

 

This sounds like a blast. I would love to join.

 

thread closed at op's request