It's possble to walk out of the gate without getting 'out' on the scan status. If you do the next scan reads "already inside" and they will not honor it. We had to warn people leaving the gate to board the "around the track shuttle".... You can burn up your ticket without realizing it. (Of course then you go back in a scannerless Delivery Gate, and you are back on the 'right side' of the fence, and the scan system!)
But you can get back in at another gate either way. Scanned out or not. Doesn't matter. There's also the flaw of not scanning out people who get on a shuttle out, from say...the paddock, which takes them to the parking lot. They never get scanned out, but it doesn't matter on re-entry thru any gate.
That's what we thought too until we left the property with no out-scan and re-entered with no problem. Multiple times. Never been a problem. I always assumed the out-scan was to keep people from passing a ticket out through the fence to another person, but it just doesn't seem to matter at all....which is curious imho. They also seem to have a lot of trouble with the scanners, and the gate personnel are always complaining that they seem to work fine one minute and then not at all the next minute. Some people I've talked to think maybe they're counting every entry as a person in attendance rather than only counting each unique ticket number that's scanned (for METF reasons). I have no idea, but it seems to be a shaky system at best.
UBS package up for auction today. I forgot about that and bought a Ferrari F1 package. I bid $11,000 last year I am already at that when I add car and room. Darn
ON board again, for the Volunteer Squad.....it opened for last year's veterans this week. To anyone wanting to work it, look for Public Access to registration next week.
Volunteer | Circuit of The Americas - Home of the Formula 1 US Grand Prix | Nov. 16-18, 2012 | Austin TX
Looking for a ‪#‎USGP‬ or Texas Football hotel room in Austin? KAYAK.com shows lots of them still available, from $119/nt in Austin, $86 in San Marcos, & $95 in Cedar Park. All prices based on weekend stays from 11/15-11/18, 11/14-11/17, or 11/14-11/18. San Antonio is wide open with rooms starting at $36 over that weekend. $54 for Best Western. $74 for La Quinta Sea World. Homewood Suites Riverwalk $161. Riverwalk Plaza $165. Also, in case you might want Main Grandstand tickets, they seem to be going relatively cheap on the aftermarket (compared to COTA prices). Here are a few PSL seats. $525 total each seat for all 3 days...well below face value. F1 Main Grandstand Seats (2 or 3) Amazing view of Turn 1 $150 (Austin) |Austin tickets
I'm not the op but thanks for all the info folks! The GF and I will be flying into Austin on the 12th and out on the 21st. This'll be my first race and I stoked! We went the airbnb route and rented an apartment in Austin for $70/night. I refused to pay the jacked up hotel rates. We've had great success in the past with airbnb and we doubt we'll be disappointed. We splurged though and bought Turn 15 High tix from f1.com Up till now we'd been planning on taking the shuttle from downtown for all three days for the race, but we'll have a car for our time in austin. Is the parking pass worth it? How long does the shuttle take from pickup to the track? Is it going to be a horrendous time sink? If anyone's got any ideas for must see things to do or places to eat I'm all ears. We've got some time to go exploring and I'd love to do just that! Any suggestion is great, either on the beaten path or off
You can ONLY buy on site parking passes with your ticket order as I understand it.....there's several Lots nearby that are outlaw but run shuttles, if you want to avoid the COTA shuttles.
Going "in" early, not so much,...... going "out" at end of the event, more so of a delay.. Spend some time wandering the Track, drinking beers out back until SODEXO closes down, better idea! We have to stay until 6PM.
Thanks Steve, I'm all thumbs with that LINK jazz......it's a fun weekend to work! I ended up catering, in a VIP Suite Turn 2.
A quick note on lodging: Has anyone been able to actually book at these reasonable rates? Each time I tried (3), I would get an error or (for the fourth one) it "booked" but then I got a phone call the next day saying it was F1 weekend and the new prices were four times what was advertised. I finally gave up and am staying with a friend, but wanted to know if/where people were finding current/confirmed rooms for under $200/night in Austin. Thanks in advance! FastJoh
We are booked and confirmed with Airbnb. I would encourage you to take a look with both them and homeaway. Both of them have lots of places available. Yes you are staying in someones home, but we've had a fantastic experience with it. For the week we're down in Austin we booked a house for $70 a night 10 miles from the airport and 12 miles from the track. On our Europe trip in March we stayed exclusively with Airbnb places, and had a great experience with it. We had a private place to retreat too (as you can either rent a private guest room in someones place, or the entire place), saved on average ~30 euro/night over hotels, stayed in great locations (a private villa in Aulla for 70 Euro!, two blocks from the beach in Nice, right in the centre of old town Modena), and met really interesting people! The other benefit is when you book on homeaway/airbnb you pay the company with a credit card, who turns around and pays the host after you leave. They have incentive to provide good service and if something goes wrong you deal with Airbnb who acts as escrow. Bottom line is: do your due diligence, read the reviews and you probably won't have a problem https://www.airbnb.ca/s/Austin--TX?checkin=14-11-2013&checkout=18-11-2013&guests=2&locale=en&room_types%5B%5D=Entire+home%2Fapt&price_max=150
At very fan-friendly Indianapolis USGP we could buy individual day tickets & go anywhere in the stands, but I see that COTA requires us to buy tix for all 3 days. However, on StubHub, I can find tickets for individual days, so I guess we can overcome that barrier. Can anyone tell me if buying a General Admission ticket allows us to go into any of the grandstands to watch P3 & Qualifying? Of course, if someone having a dedicated ticket to the seats comes along, we'd have to relocate, no problem. Secondly, what are the best parking options? Does it really cost $60 to park at the facility? From some of the posts here, it looks like buying lunch is difficult, much unlike the Indy venue. Any suggestions, other than just to take food & water along? Have there been any improvements to the infrastructure for this year? I'd like to attend & probably will with a group of at least 6 people driving up from a relative's house near Houston, but COTA does seem on the surface to be less fan friendly than Indy, Monza or Spa. Any constructive advice would be appreciated. Thanks
You can bring in sealed water. If you can sneak in some granola bars at the bottom of your bag, that can be your food. Getting food from vendors isn't a problem. The prices are high but the lines do move. Like any other venue, go off peak times, like during races (which is not ideal) and there will be a few people getting food at that time. The venues are spread out and some are the same, some are unique. Unfortunately, COTA has had a lackluster performance in identifying where certain food is. At previous races, there's always a little map up in T1 near Lot P. That's it. I hope they share more about where certain vendors are located because some of the food is more desirable than others, but it isn't all bad. I've had most of the food at COTA or from the vendors at other food truck parks around town. Parking is that cheap?! What? Parking passes are a few hundred bucks for the three days. Depends where you want to park. And it depends where you wish to sit. Getting a GA ticket will get your butt planted almost anywhere, but come raceday, you'll be in the grass or dirt on a hill somewhere. Sitting down with a GA ticket on Fri shouldn't be a problem. It really depends on the people checking the tickets for the stands and when they are enforced as more and more people flood the stands to their assigned seats. I'll say that during F1 qual and race, you are probably going to be prohibited from sitting in the stands with a GA ticket. Other races shouldn't be a problem.
Thanks for the info. My questions were specifically related to Qualifying day only, so I hope they have a 1 day parking pass available. If not, where is parking recommended for the Sat only? When I called COTA today, they said that on site parking was $60 for the day. At Indy, I could sit in the grandstands across from the pits or wherever a ticket holder wasn't already sitting or move if one showed up, but there were always lots of seats available just about anywhere. Perhaps that was due to being at a much larger facility.
It varies. I'll tell you the main grandstand will not be open. They've slowly clamped down to non MG ticket holders wandering in there. Other corners, it depends. Finding a seated spot in T12/T15 might be difficult during qualifying. T1, equally so.
Minus F1, it's been pretty much wide open for every race I've been to there, which is all of them. Is there the occasional usher checking tickets? Sure, but it's easy to enter, esp for P & Q days. It was even wide open on Friday for F1.
On F1 weekend, don't expect to be able to freely roam the GSs with a GA ticket. Can it be done, as I mentioned above? Sure. Friday in 2012 was fairly easy, and Saturday was doable, but the GSs started to really fill up during Qualifying. Parking is $200 for all 3 days. There is no cash parking during F1. At least there wasn't last year and none has been announced for this year. Buying lunch isn't all that difficult, but it's time consuming (very long lines) and very expensive, to the point of absurdity (an example would be $12 for a very small personal pizza). As Schatten said, you can bring your own water provided the seal isn't broken, and depending on who does your bag search, you can usually get snacks, etc, in the gate. Other suggestions? Other than advising you to eat a good breakfast, there's not much of an alternative, sadly. Despite COTA's statements before the 2012 USGP that construction crews would remain on-site for the next year finishing out the site, that hasn't happened. No significant infrastructure improvements have been made, so we can expect the same fan experience in terms of on-site mobility, access, etc. There has been talk of reducing the numbers of buses, though I can't imagine why.
I just looked up the $60 single day parking & found that the Ticketmaster site does show $60 parking in Lot Q, but it doesn't indicate 3-day, 1-day, or anything. I'll have to check into this. The only lot available at that price is Lot Q, which is an off-site lot (a few miles away) that requires a shuttle ride to the circuit. There are privately owned parking alternatives surrounding the circuit. One of those might be a viable option, especially for just one day. Indy does have a LOT more seats than COTA...like 3-4x as much seating as COTA has for the USGP.
I just tried on Kayak.com without actually committing to the purchase. Didn't appear to be any problem, but as Schatten said, there are lots of local homes for rent & sites like AirBNB & VRBO are always good options. His $70/night house rental and a $70 rental of an apartment I recently heard of tell me that these rental prices have reall dropped for this year, despite there being a Texas Football game on the Saturday of USGP weekend.
Friends thank you very much for the help. It looks like my year long plans to attend are not going to work out with the restrictions & problems that COTA throws up. I wanted a really great fan experience like I had at Indy, Spa & Monza, but it looks like COTA just isn't all that fan-friendly. Too bad, because I was eager to see F1 return to the US.
I'm terribly sorry to hear that. The last thing I want is for our local track and GP to be thought of as "unfriendly" to the fans. Sadly, its operation thus far leads to that perception, whether in terms of dealing with the surrounding neighbors & agencies, the "fan experience", the racer's experience (SCCAs), or that of the racing series themselves. As I stated in the COTA thread, the good thing is that the facilities are good, the track is fantastic, and it's not going anywhere. Anything else is subject to change, one way or another.
