Back from Cooperstown - Tips & Advice

A number of good points...

I'll add a few;

Be sure to buy the pictures there, you can't purchase them later.

Review the site map and let friends and relatives know which lot to park in, will make a big difference in walk time. Also CDP will provide shuttles for those unable to walk that far, all you have to do is ask.

Send an electric fan and extension cord with your player, he will need it.

Be ready to talk endlessly with your player about all his new "best time of his or her life" experiences once its over. Surprisingly it won't all be about baseball. And don't even try to engage them during the week, let them come to you.

Friday night arrival is a must for all serious "pin traders"

Be prepared, if this place doesn't bring out your emotions you don't have a pulse.

Some additional observations...

Take your own camera. Another dad and I took a lot more and better digital pics than what you'll get from CDP. We took about 700 shots each during the week and put together a DVD for each family.

Definitely stay close if you can. We stayed at a Best Western Inn and Suites just North of the park. There's a Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and a Grocery store in the same complex as the BW. There's also a Holiday Inn Express just a few hundred yards further north of the Best Western. It looks really new. Just South of the park is a brand new Howard Johnsons which looks really nice. It's so new it's not even on Yahoo or Google maps at this point. But book really, really early. We were the only family from our team to stay nearby. Some of them stayed as far away as Utica or Albany. That's a haul early in the morning for an 8am game or late after a long day.

Check your game schedule before the week starts and plot out your parking accordingly. The schedule lists the fields for each game and you can figure out whether to park in lots A, B or C.

The food in the parks is pretty good and reasonably priced, which is good since you're in the freakin middle of nowhere.

If you need to gas up your car early in the morning or late at night, you're SOL. One of our dads staying in Utica didn't have enough gas to get there after our 8pm game and no gas stations were open at 10:15pm. So he slept in his car until the gas station opened at 7am.

Same with ATMs, they're hard to come by so keep plenty of cash on you.

There are almost no chain restaurants in the area, only the Pizza Hut and McDonalds. There are several good restaurants up in Cooperstown, one in particular was really good but I'm drawing a blank on the name. They have a menu out front and all I remember is they serve Omelettes all day. If you find that place, stop and eat. It's on the South side of Main St. about half way down the strip to the Hall of Fame.

I don't have many complaints but I'll say this...I don't like the way they wall off all the fields because "it's for the kids, not the parents". Well it sucks because you have only one angle from which to watch the game and for big games, it's impossible to see. The week we were there Roger Clemens' son was playing and hundreds of people were trying to crowd in there and see the Longhorns play. It was so crowded even some of that team's parents couldn't really see. It's ridiculous to block off the entire field. Ok, block off behind the plate, but give us the rest.

I don't really care for the uniforms. It's too hard to find your team in the complex because everybody's wearing the same dang colors.

$700 per kid is a litle too much. After hotel, food, gas, souvenirs, and the $700 fee, it's a $3,000 trip easy. Great memories but a little expensive. Hope you weren't planning to go to the beach this year.

If you have little brothers or sister coming along (say ages 5-10), order extra pins for them to trade. There were so many little kids trading pins (for themselves not for the players) it was insane. There were even a few adults trading them too. There's a word for those people...odd.

That's all I can think of for now.

Later.
Jon

we have been sending a team from town to the dreams park for about 7 years.back when it was 46 or 48 teams.
we allways get 1000 pins for the kids with 90 plus teams they will need them.if you can't pack a fan and it gets HOT there is a walmart open all night in oneonta right off the highway.if you ask sometimes they have them at the dreamspark.the only hotels that have a pool are the ones mentioned above.plan early.there is a beutiful state park with a beach at the lake worth a trip.we buy a dozen balls and have the kids sign them nice momento.small bath towels with the team logo are handy to keep pins on.
i have been to cooperstown many times every time gets better.it reminds me of mayberry instead of floyd sitting on the bench you'll see clete boyer .don't care for the yankees but he's worth talking with.tell him his brother was a better player and sit and listen.

We were in Cooperstown the week of the monsoons. We had days of games cancelled and some families had to be moved because their rental was flooded. We stayed in town and our 1/4 of a home had leaks in the living room with ceiling tiles falling while sleeping. I would say, not my best experience. It was an expensive trip with airfare, my rental, his room/board, car rental and the money we ended up spending on things to do when it rained.
It's a nice atmosphere, you get a nice ring and play teams from all over. The Hall of Fame was nice and we even had a dad spend the entire day in there.
Our week was unusual with the rain so our experience was not as good as maybe others. It all depends on what you want from a tourney. Great atmosphere, a lot of hoopla, your son being taken care of by coaches, decent competition, money is not a concern, country area, then I'd say it's for you. Great competition, low cost, you could probably find a better alternative. Living in Texas, we don't have to go very far to find great competition so money is at a minimal. With three boys playing and one off to college next year, I need to keep spending to a minimum.