FL State Rally 2/16-2/21/2010

[airdreamers]

Anyone going to the rally? Don't see any discussions or interest like other rallies??

Airdreamers

[RickDavis]

We will be there, parked in vintage

[MrRivet]

MsRivit and I are arriving mid day Friday. See you there!

[Levon]

We also will be there, parked in Vintage.


Levon

[arcamedies]

Originally Posted by airdreamers

Anyone going to the rally? Don't see any discussions or interest like other rallies??

Airdreamers

What Rally, didn't see one listed in the Rally catagory, searched dates, not there, or under discussions as you say. Where is it being held, planning on being down and around Florida for 2 weeks.

[dieseleagle]

We'll also be there and parked in vintage. Because of that pesky making a living thing we won't be arriving until Friday afternoon.

[Boondocker]

First I have heard of it.

[wkerfoot]

Originally Posted by arcamedies

What Rally, didn't see one listed in the Rally catagory, searched dates, not there, or under discussions as you say. Where is it being held, planning on being down and around Florida for 2 weeks.

This is the annual Florida State Rally: Home Page

This is the 37th annual rally. It is advertised in the Blue Beret, but not much anywhere else.

Bill

[airdreamers]

My wife and I are going on Friday for the weekend. It will be held in Sarasota at the fairgrounds. Go to the WBCCI web site under rallies. I don't know why there is no info here. I guess if you are a WBCCI member the info is more forthcoming.

I understand through the grapevine it's going to be great.


We intend to join at the rally.

[wingfoot321]

Wingfoot will be there on Tuesday pm. We are over in Melbourne at Land Yacht Harbor for the week. This place has more airstreams than anything except maybe the florida state rally or international.

I would guess at 250-275 out of 304 sites. You can walk and look at airstreams all day. Except when it is raining.

My trailer is only 23 years old. Do I qualify for vintage???

[wkerfoot]

Originally Posted by wingfoot321

Wingfoot will be there on Tuesday pm. We are over in Melbourne at Land Yacht Harbor for the week. This place has more airstreams than anything except maybe the florida state rally or international.

I would guess at 250-275 out of 304 sites. You can walk and look at airstreams all day. Except when it is raining.

My trailer is only 23 years old. Do I qualify for vintage???

Two more years to be a full VAC member, but any WBCCI member can join as an affiliate. We did that in 2002 when we purchased our 1979 Safari.

Bill

[airdreamers]

Wingfoot321

I wish you could qualify but as I understand, no. Nothing personal but it's the magic number 25 in age. We are new to all this since 9/2010.

Please note our AIRDREAMER just matured into the Vintage Class last month!!

Hope to see you next week!

[dustyroads]

New to rallyies- are they commonly this expensive? we just wanted to stop through for a day and maybe get a little bit of advice on some repair we were going to do ourselves...
So almost $200 even if we arent eating the planned meals or participating in activities? It's steep for our travel budget, an unplanned expense since we just heard about it, but we want to see other Airsteams!

got a '59, any vintage discounts? we'll be out West in California in a month or so- any free rallies out there? We were hoping to get this advice before the 3000 miles between destinations...

[wkerfoot]

Originally Posted by dustyroads

New to rallyies- are they commonly this expensive? we just wanted to stop through for a day and maybe get a little bit of advice on some repair we were going to do ourselves...
So almost $200 even if we arent eating the planned meals or participating in activities? It's steep for our travel budget, an unplanned expense since we just heard about it, but we want to see other Airsteams!

got a '59, any vintage discounts? we'll be out West in California in a month or so- any free rallies out there? We were hoping to get this advice before the 3000 miles between destinations...

If you are just looking for advise and want to see the vintage units, then stop by for the vintage open house. There has never been a charge at the rallies I have attended to just walk through.

Regarding cost, the Hobo Rally we attended two weeks ago was $210 for seven days, with two dinners, professional entertainment two nights and light breakfast every morning.

Bill

[RickDavis]

My impressions of the Florida State rally 2010

Attendance was down, Last number heard was 359
I would guess Vintage had about 20
A long way from the days of 1200 or so attendees

Number of Vendors is noticeably down. The only ones I saw that I would consider truly Airstream related were Dexter Axle and Fantastic Vent.. The rest were clothes, badges, insurance etc.
I did not see any representation from Shurflo, Reese,Dometic, etc
A couple years ago the Airstream factory stopped sending their crew and an “arrangement” was made with camping world. ( Also at Madison in 2009) To try to fill in the gap.
Camping world had nothing specifically Airstream related and a pretty poor stock in general. I suspect that some used to come to get things on the trailer fixed but now that opportunity is pretty well gone except for brake work (Dexter) and fan repair..
The number of seminars seemed to be down.

The Saturday night dinner was down to one sitting instead of the usual two. I would prefer to see this dinner as an extra cost option as I don’t care to deal with that big a crowd, but they did get every one in and seated fairly smoothly

The entertainment was better than average. I actually stayed for all of it 3 nights. That has never happened before

From what I was hearing the finances to break even will be pretty close


The weather was cold and windy until the last couple days

I think Frank and his crew have done a good job with this rally and much of what is happening is nothing they can control..

We will most likely be back next year, assuming we renew our membership.

[wheel interested]

Thanks for the recap. Did you take pictures? What was the entertainment? Was Hunter from the Airstream Yahoo e-mail list there?

[dieseleagle]

We were also able to attend and because we didn't arrive until Friday the weather was starting to warm up. It was good to be able to spend a little more time meeting the members of our unit as the only other time had been the Christmas party. We saw Mr and Mrs Rivet and Levon was parked with us in the vintage section. I had a chance to taste some of his special elixir and was invigorated the rest of the weekend.

On the last day of the rally they have an assembly line set up to provide dumping service for the holding tanks with teams set up manning four stations. Guess who drew poop duty? With teamwork and a healthy dose of humor, in four and half hours we provided this vital service to almost every attendee. This picture was taken as we were packing up and shows a small slice. Our next door neighbor had already pulled out.

[Levon]

After reading Rick Davis comments about this rally, no need to repeat....I agree with his observations.
Here are a few photos of the Vintage Area...mostly the back end of trailers...TV blocked most of the fronts.

Levon