tom911

Well, I've purchased my tickets for Olympic Trials in Omaha, June 29-July 6, 2008, and now it's a matter of having all the other pieces fall into place (air, hotel, rental cars). I'll be coming with Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin's parents (Jim joins me as a retiree from the PD this week), who are long time friends. We'll probably be here for about 10 total nights. We did an FT event in Long Beach in 2004, and hopefully we can find a similar date that will work out in Omaha for dinner. Right now they are only selling tickets for the entire 8-day event (no individual ticket sales like they did in Long Beach).

Figured I'd start a thread now and ask questions as they come up. Too early to work on award/paid airline tickets or price hotels (though many hotels near the pool at Qwest center are already sold out to swim teams from across the U.S. under a system that allowed them to book first).

Let's start with this one:

Do any of the universities in the Omaha area offer summer guest housing? For instance, when I was in Victoria BC last summer, the University of Victoria offered single dorm rooms for about $40 a night during the summer when they were vacant. I've searched a bit and can't find any similar programs (so far) in the Omaha area. Do they exist?

cme2c

I don't think you'll have much luck with summer housing Tom. Creighton has the most housing, but in my experience they closed up most of the dorms in the summer. Here is their info.

http://www2.creighton.edu/studentser...sing/index.php

UNO is really the only other option and they mainly have apartments, but again I don't think they have much in the way of a decent summer program.

Here is the closest link I could find for that for students at the med center nearby.

http://www.unmc.edu/dept/summerresea...ID=10&CONREF=9


Omaha is really easy to get around in . I would recommend you try the extended stay hotels if you're going to be here a while. I'm not sure how many there are, but I know there is a Studio Plus around 90th street. I used to live near there and it would only be a 15 minute drive. You could stay downtown too, but as you said the hotels down there would be hard to come by and will be pricey I would suspect. You would have everything you need there, but otherwise you will want a car.

Any other questions people come up with just let me know. I will try to keep an eye on this thread or PM me.

Added:
For restaurants downtown (in FT spirit) check out the rewards dining program. Omaha Prime, The Flatiron Cafe, and the Passport are great restaurants in the downtown area within walking distance to the event. They are all in the AA dining program currently. Those 3 take advanced reservations, but I'm not sure how far out, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to check with them.

tom911

Creighton was one of the sites I looked at, and had the impression their housing was limited to students. Just in case, I have e-mailed both them and Clarkson College, as well as UNO. Thankyou for the links.

I looked at a couple of hotel sites yesterday near the airport and in Council Bluffs (these areas were not on the list sent out my the Omaha Convention and Visitor's office, so figure they might have better availability). It's just too early to book any of these, though. I think it's similar to the airlines in that you have to wait until 330 days.

When we did Long Beach in 2004 we stayed in Carson at a Hilton ($35 on priceline for 4 rooms for 8 nights, about 20-30 minutes out) but I'm not expecting this type of success again. If we narrow it down to a couple properties I'll be along to ask for suggestions. Thanks.

tom911

One problem with this is that there is no "fixed" time for the swimming events to get over. They generally go 2-3 hours, but you really can't pin an exact time on when you're going to be walking out. In Long Beach we got in the habit of sending one member of our group out about 15 mins before the evening's events broke to hold space for us somewhere, and this seemed to work. The night we did the FT event several people went directly to the restaurant, so they were there ready and waiting when we left the pool (a bunch of FTers were poolside, too).

As we get closer to next summer, restaurants are one of the topics I'll be asking for help with. I hope some single event tickets go on sale as we get closer to Trials, and some Omaha FTers can join us.

cme2c

Definitely don't see you being able to get rooms for $35 nearby. Omaha just doesn't have the capacity with a big event like that. I will be interested to see if they do sell individual day tickets. Omaha is a rabid sports town and I could easily see them selling all of the passes. That may be good for hotels if all the tickets are sold to locals, but we'll see.

Another thing to consider is coming early for the College World Series. I think it ends the 24th or 25th this year and is a great time for someone who has never been before.

Non-NonRev

Tom - will they be using a fixed pool, or bringing in a temporary, modular pool? (I think I remember you descrbing the 2004 Trials being held in an outdoor, modular pool).

tom911

They'll be building a temporary pool just like they did in Long Beach, except this one will be indoors in the Qwest Center (will be nice not to sit in the sun for 8 days). Here's the most current info on the USA Swimming web site: http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/V...=1577&mid=2943

cme2c

I'm gonna try to go check it out before hand to see how it is put together. It seems like such an expense to "build a pool". They are going to have a warmup pool in the convention center next door too.

tom911

In Melbourne they relocated both pools after the event to other parts of Australia, where they did become permanent pools. Try this video from the Melbourne 2007 site:
http://melbourne2007.com.au/_content...000011-src.wmv

Some construction photos of the 2004 Olympic Trials pool in Long Beach (pools also relocated to CA and NJ):
http://www.myrthapoolsusa.com/profil...rty&View=image

tom911

I heard back from Creighton today that the Omaha Convention and Visitor's Bureau has asked them to hold all rooms for swimmers for the time being. That may change as we get closer to event time.

Colorado Jen

Based on past experience, is it likely that Omaha will sell single event tickets? If so, are they expensive? We are a swim family - husband coaches a USA team, son is hoping to be in the 2012 trials and would love to attend, especially while it's drining distance from us! But I'm not sure I want to spend every day of our vacation sitting at a pool, even if we are "starstruck"! Can people who have been before give me some info? Thanks!

tom911

At Long Beach in 2004, several FTers joined me at the pool one night, as they sold individual tickets at that event (10,000 seats). I believe the seats there ranged from $30-50 for finals depending on where you sat.

Right now the tickets for Omaha 2008 are only being sold as 8 day passes, which is different than what was done in Long Beach. Hopefully, as the event gets closer, there will be individual seats left to sell. A good place to keep an eye on this would be the USA Swimming web site.
http://.www.usaswimming.org

I have a number of photos from Worlds in Melbourne linked below that you might want to view.

cme2c

Past experience is hard to go by in Omaha. Nebraskans are rabid about sports. I would not be surprised at all if they sold all of the tickets as 8 day passes. If you wanted to go to the earlier sessions, I'm sure you wouldn't find much difficulty selling the all session passes to someone for the later rounds.

tom911

We're down to the one year mark until the start of Olympic Trials, which start on June 29, 2008.

I drove down to Santa Clara to see Natalie swim today at the Santa Clara Invitational. Michael Phelps was also swimming, and his mother stopped by and said hello to all of us.

Photos from todays events are linked below.

Mastermind

If you are into gambling, there are several hotel/casinos on the Iowa side.