Hi all! Once again, the Sunrise Drive is returing to MOTD. The drive so nice we will run it TWICE! Now we will offer the drive for 60 people on Thursday morning and another 40 people on Saturday morning. To get the Saturday morning folks back for the Panoramic pic, we will leave PROMPTLY AT 6AM! We will keep the photo/gas stops brief, so be ready to drive! The Thursday offering filled up in 30 hours and the Saturday offerinf is 2/3 full after 2 days. Pretty impressive for a drive that starts at 6am on your vacation! Thursday: MINIs On The Dragon - Sunrise Drive Thru the Smokies Saturday: http://www.minisonthedragon.com/2011_Sunrise-Saturday.php For MOTD 2006, I worked with a bunch of folks from Texas to plan and lead 60+ cars (in 3 different groups) on a scenic drive around the Smoky Mountains. We had a lot of fun on that drive (I think I'm still finding mud in the suspension from an off-road experience ), but the real adventure happened the day before. It was my first MOTD, so I wanted to squeeze in as many events as I could, but I needed to pre-drive the route to make sure that everything was OK and my instructions were good. To reduce my time away from Fontana, I took off very early one morning... crossing the Dragon in the dark and watching the sun rise as I headed north, up the Foothills Parkway. I made it into Smoky Mountain park before all of the leaf peepers (imagine hundreds of slow moving mini-vans and tour busses) got out of bed, so I had the place all to myself. I had the windows down, the sunroof open, the heat on high and the seat heaters cranking. I was shivering from the cold, but it was simply the best driving experience of my life. There were white water rapids on the left, dense forests on the right and a beautifully twisty road under the tires. The road was my playground! In 2008 and again in 2009, I recreated this sunrise drive with as many people as I could bring along... usually 20 or so cars of crazy people joining me. In 2010, I couldn't make it, but Phil, Janet and Mike picked up the reins for a modified version of the drive (rock slides are bad!). For 2011 we are joining forces for the largest Sunrise drive yet! We will meet up at 6am near the Fontana General Store and will split up into 3 groups so we don't have a HUGE number of cars in one line. We will divide the cars into driving styles (scenic, medium and spirited) and will take off from there for our driving adventure. Our route will take us west to Deal's Gap, across the Dragon and up the Foothills parkway, where we will stop for a photo break (you will learn there why they call them the Smoky Mountains). On the north side of the Smokys, we will stop at a gas station with a small grocery store attached (good sausage biscuits at a hot-breakfast deli). Once we get back on the road, we will dive into the Smoky Mountain park and go down Little River Road, that made Reader's Digest top 10 most scenic roads in the USA. We will stop one more time on our way down the mountain for some pics and will then return to Fontana via the Hellbender. Here are the route instructions. If you have a color printer at home, you may wish to bring a copy of your own. I'll have 20 or so black and white copies with me, but they look a LOT better in color. http://www.minisonthedragon.com/files/Sunrise_Smoky_Mountain_Drive_2011.pdf Thanks all. We can't wait to see you at Fontana!
From the 2009 run: And one from 2006, from when I went mud bogging in an MCS (who needs a Countryman! ) when I pulled over to let some cars at the back of the caravan catch up.
Sounds like a great drive but I have a 9am appt with Way and co. to get my first mods (SO EXCITED!!!!) and I'm working registration that morning as well. Look forward to seeing photos, though!
Looking forward to the drive. I actually took the last spot by adding my dad to the list, who just registered for MOTD!
I registered for MOTD a few minutes after the online option opened up. Registered myself and Robert...then IMMEDIATELY went over and registered for Aaron's run. Can't wait!
I think there is a flaw in that registration as it counts people and not cars. If all cars have 2 people and they both registered that would be 60 people and 30 cars yet the event would show as full. Barry needs to ID those that added passengers, remove said passengers from the list and make sure the registration notes state to only add the drivers name.
"The maximum number of people allowed on this drive is 60. There are currently 60 people signed up for the drive with 39 MINIs attending." That's straight from the site. Perhaps I'm confused as to what you're talking about?
There are 3 groups of 20 cars each for the drive. Hence 60 cars in total, however the registration counts people not cars. Since it full at 60 people with 39 cars there is really room for 21 more cars. What was not taken into account is how many people per car. In my view the registration should have said: The maximum number of MINIs allowed on this drive is 60. Only the driver should register. Barry counted people, not cars, for this drive. So...when you sign up and add 1 or 2 passengers you are removing the ability for other drivers to sign up since the real count of cars is not taken in consideration. If you look at the list you will entries such as SNEEEZY - Erika, SNEEEZY - Robert. (not picking on you Erika, you were just first on the list). I am 99% confident that both Erika and Robert will be in one car, but they take up 2 slots. That keeps another car of the 60 possible from attending. To reinforce my point, T8rChick and ArmaDiddo I know will be in one car, yet take up 2 spots on the list. So with 60 People and 39 MINI we see that there are passengers registered when only drivers should have registered.
Why do they have a limit anyway?? We've had, at THMMC, over 60 Minis (more people) run in row, together, the full length of the Blue Ridge Parkway during our annual BRPT....
Maybe I missed it somewhere on the MOTD site, because I saw no mention until recently about 3 groups of 20 cars each. All that's on the site - which is what I went by - is it's a "spirited" drive, max of 60 people. Anything beyond that wasn't in place when I signed up. Matter of fact, I thought I remembered seeing a max of 30 initially. No matter, we're signed up
Thanks all... We started out strangely but things are working correctly on the registration website (+ or - a few percent). Initially, we were hoping to limit the # of cars to around 30 CARS. The limit was set to 30, but as was noted above, the website started counting people instead of cars. I contacted Barry on day #2 of registration and he asked his web guru to fix for us. Given the overwhelming response, we also increased the total # of cars allowed. I used the ratio of people to cars that had registered in the first few days to estimate that 60 people would equal about 40 cars (so the web guru wouldn't have to change his/her logic) and got it pretty close... We upped the # of people allowed to 60 and we have hit a capacity of 39 cars attending, so technically we have room for 1 more car. If you REALLY want to do the drive and didn't make it on the list, send me a PM and I'll start a back-up list... plans frequently change and I'll be happy to work something out if I get a large response... maybe even finding more leaders among us to have more groups. There are lots of different reasons for a driving event. If the purpose is to experience a large number of MINIs in one place, in one long line, having no limit makes sense... the purpose of these drives is to get a lot of MINIs in one place and to enjoy that experience, so it gets better with more cars... the bigger the better. MOTD has these types of events (the Dragon Parade, for example) and they are lots of fun. These types of events are much better and more fun when the route is simple and there are few traffic control devices or when there are long stretches of passing lanes so that other traffic can pass or be passed by the caravan. The purpose of this particular drive is #1: great drive and #2: great scenery. The route for this drive isn't horribly complicated (10-15 turns with mileages clearly marked), but previous experience on this route has shown that having more than 10-15 cars in a group can cause issues and dampen the fun... The leaders have to spend more and more time bringing the herd together (why I went mud bogging the first year) and dealing with non-MINIs who get into the middle of the line and separate the group (if everyone didn't make it through on the same green light signal at a traffic light, for example). Given the purpose of this drive, the road conditions and the combined knowledge of 4 years of experience leading this drive, we know that we need to restrict the groups to 10-15 cars. With 3 group leaders ready, this gives us a total of around 40 cars.
No offense taken since I know none was intended. As I posted earlier, as soon as I registered myself & Robert, I made a beeline to the Sunrise run to sign-up; I didn't want to miss out on it again. But yes, the registration IS skewed since it is counting seats vs. MINIs. However, I suppose the restaurant does have a seating capacity that needs to be kept in mind...
Keep trying! BTW, we may end up just taking one MINI, but won't know until we get some installs scheduled. That could open up a slot for another person to join the fun.
Hi all. The Sunrise Drive leader team finished the route instructions earlier this week and Barry posted them to the MOTD website this morning. I've updated post #1 on this thread so you can find them easily later, but if you want a sneak preview, you can find them here: http://www.minisonthedragon.com/files/Sunrise_Smoky_Mountain_Drive_2011.pdf
OK... Responding to popular demand, we opened up a new section of the Sunrise drive on Saturday morning. Get over to registration soon... it's filling up quickly! MINIs On The Dragon - Sunrise Drive Thru the Smokies