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Jeff Elliott and I stopped by LLCA this morning on the way to Day 63 of the
SCLTC display at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in order to see what was
going on at the master builder competition.
The event got underway very promptly at 10:00 as advertised. We arrived at 10:20
or so and missed the beginning. The event was held on what used to be the Fun
Town stage (there no longer is a stage) which is the area immediately outside
the LEGO Club House where PAB is located. It’s also the same site (sans stage)
where the LEGO Star Wars Galatic Challenge world finals were held.
LEGOLAND had set up a row of tents housing LEGO displays and event sponsors.
There were massive LEGO banners set up to make backgrounds for photographers.
There was a hired video crew. The crowd was sparse and consisted mostly of
people supporting the contestants or LEGOLAND employees. One of the park
employees spotted our LTC shirts and struck up a conversation. He brought us up
to date on developments:
Because one current builder was expected to leave soon, they would choose a
replacement for him/her and because the park was expanding, they would go with
three instead of just one. He related that the contestants were told last night
that the theme would be LEGOLAND itself. The Modelshop guys were given input
into what bricks the contestants would use and upped the count from 2000 to 4000
bricks, which still fit in a single tub. In addition, each contestant was
allowed to fill a bag at PAB this morning.
The bricks supplied forced the contestants to use them as sculpting material
rather than to build things in the style of the LEGO sets. In other words, it
was Miniland style construction instead of Minifig construction, but without the
access to large quantities of any single thing. There were basic bricks and very
few specialty parts. Near zero Technics, no gears, no motors and very little in
the way of swivels/turntables or even hinges.
Each contestant was given a table with a marker giving his or her name and
city/state. Someone had thoughtfully arranged all the chairs so that no one had
the morning sun in their eyes. Contestants were already well at work. We spotted
Derek Schin right away and he was making good progress. We said hello, but while
Derek was willing to talk I refused to take away more than a few seconds of his
time even though Derek had made it plain he was there for the experience and
would not leave his current job. We spotted Nathan (who I do not personally
know) at the opposite end of the table array. We stayed until about 11:00 (we
need to get to SDMRRM to start up the RCX animation and talk to visitors). It
was hard to judge how things were going, but it seemed clear that the judges
were going to have a lot of high quality entries. Jeff and I agreed that the
person who had already done two beautiful dragons for the Dragon coaster was in
very good position. I neglected to note that builder’s name.
Having been to three national championships and two world finals, it was
interesting to note the differences. Setup wise, this event compared most to the
1992 LEGO World Cup where contestants had their own tables, name cards, and a
single bucket (those contestants also had “bar service”, country flags, and were
isolated in 4 separate rooms away from spectators). As I mentioned before, it
had some things in common with the 2000 LSGC world champtionship: same park,
same spot, but the 27 builders here had more than twice the room that the 36
builders had 4 years ago. Those kids had to build in spots as small as 2 square
meters including room for their feet (or butts), stacks of LEGO sets in the
original boxes, and their models. And this time the LEGO people remembered the
lesson from the 2000 national championship where TV crews were allowed to poke
their lenses in so close during construction that one finalist had his model
smashed at the last minute (he was not allowed to rebuild it).
One thing that I felt in common with all the other competitions was a personal
sense of nervousness -- and I had no personal stake in this outcome! I remember
at the first national event that I attended the construction ended at noon, LEGO
took us all to lunch at a nice restaurant. The kids all kicked back and enjoyed
each other. I was not alone among the parents who could hardly eat for
nervousness. I hope it was better for this group.
-Ted
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