29 / 134
utes from the track. When we learned
that they would also be hosting a
major Corvette convention that week-
end, we saw the makings of an
unimaginable fiasco. Not only would
rooms be at a premium but the park-
ing would be a nightmare.
Before anyone was able to get too
lathered up about it, the landscape
shifted. The SVRA informed us that
they were given the opportunity to
move the date up one week and hold
their event in conjunction with
Pocono’s annual IndyCar weekend,
August 21-22. They would make the
change only if we agreed. We kicked it
around and decided that having the
convention a week later made sense. It
wouldn’t be the same date as Mon-
terey, we wouldn’t have to deal with
wall-to-wall Corvettes, and what car
freak wouldn’t like to see the current
crop of IndyCars on Pocono’s “Tricky
Triangle”?
We had already sent an eBlast ad-
vising everyone of the SAAC-40 dates
but we were able to send out another
one quickly to update everyone, so
there wasn’t too much damage done.
Pardee’s hotel investigation turned up
the Kalahari Resort and Convention
Center, which was only about twenty
minutes away from Pocono. It was
nearing completion and was expected
to be up and running by July 1st. They
had over 400 rooms, a huge water park
and a giant convention center. The
possibility of holding the concours in-
doors made us look very closely at this
facility. The company behind it already
had two other Kalahari Resorts in op-
eration, one in the Wisconsin Dells
and the other near Sandusky, Ohio. A
fourth was being built in the Dallas-
Fort Worth area. So it was not some
fly-by-night operation.
At first The Kalahari appeared to
be on the pricey side, with rooms going
for $200 a night on Wednesday and
Thursday and $300 on Friday. But dig-
ging a little deeper into the details,
each room consisted of two queen-
sized beds and a fold-out sofa that was
also queen-size. Creative convention-
eers who could put up with roommates
could bring that price down to a little
less than $50 bucks a night per per-
son.With so many members comment-
ing about the lack of activities for kids
at conventions, the water park and the
huge arcade appeared to address that.
There were a number of other hotels
in the immediate area, so those who
wanted less expensive accommoda-
tions didn’t have to look too far.
We scheduled a reconaissance of
the hotel for late June. To our un-
trained eye, it appeared they would
meet their grand opening on July 4th
target.We were awed by the huge ball-
room where we pictured the concours
being held. Air conditioning and wall-
to-wall carpeting certainly beat hold-
ing it under a tent out at the track.
Splitting the concours judging off from
the track activities and holding it back
at the hotel was a downside, but for
most concours people, it’s an either-or
proposition anyway. They tend to see
the goings-on at the track as some-
thing of a mild irritation.
We also had a tour of the track,
scouting locations and generally get-
ting the lay of the land. Sharing a fa-
cility like this with another group, by
definition, just about guarantees that
you won’t get everything you want.
Adding a third group means slicing
the pie into even smaller pieces. One
thing we had not counted on (and
maybe we should have, but you can’t
know everything) was that the Indy-
Cars were the eight-hundred pound
gorilla in the room. Things were not
divided up into thirds. Because of their
contract with the track, IndyCar got
pretty much what they wanted and
the leftovers were split between SVRA
and SAAC – and not necessarily
evenly. At this point there wasn’t
much use in complaining.
The major downside, as we saw it,
was that SAAC activities would be
spread around the track’s infield. Cer-
tain areas were off limits, reserved for
IndyCar and their cars wouldn’t begin
arriving until Friday. We recalled that
it would be much different from
SAAC-37 at Watkins Glen. At that
convention, SAAC was given it’s own
area inside the track and everything
was accessible to everyone. Pocono’s
infield was separated into different
areas by 10-foot high chain-link fences
with access gates at either end. It
make getting around like a rat’s maze.
It wasn’t the end of the world, but it
was unnerving at times.
Ticketing for the IndyCar event
was also another sore spot. Initially
we were led to believe that SAAC con-
vention attendees would receive tick-
ets to the IndyCar event as part of
their registration. SAAC had to pay
$10 each for these, which came out of
the $30 registration fee we were
charging. However, by the weekend of
the IndyCar event, things had
changed. We were informed that our
tickets were good for Friday and Sat-
urday only. If anyone wanted to stick
around for Sunday’s race they would
have to pay the regular spectator rate
of $40 per ticket. That would allow
them into the lower levels of the
grandstands on the front straight. If
someone wanted to get higher up in
the grandstands to get a better view,
they had to pay more. A paddock pass
was also additional. Also, they would
have to use the general parking and
general admission gate. The tunnel
entrance accessible to SAAC previ-
ously was now closed to us. All of this
would not prove to be much of a prob-
lem because not many conventioneers
decided to stick around for the race.
The SHELBY AMERICAN
272 Fall 2015