Open registration is... well, open

For those who have been waiting to register for the Confluence until after the "hotel package" was done, now's your chance.

I just saw the announcement that open registration has begun.

You can get there from here, if you want.

Now, personally, as I noted below, I think staying at the hotel will be a great part of the experience. It feels like you will be less at the "confluence" of things if you are not at the confluence, if you get my drift.

But, it could mean a savings of $400 or $500, so I get that. And for all of Tim Miller's students in and around San Diego, it might be hard to justify staying down at the beach.

Anyway, we'll try to keep our room open as much as possible for everyone.

Note: We've moved to http://theconfluencecountdown.com/.

So what's the hotel going to be like?

A lot of the initial talk I heard about the AYC -- besides overall enthusiasm and excitement -- was about having to book a room at the hotel.

Right off, I'll get this out of the way: The price seems pretty reasonable to me. And I think staying there -- being in the chaos of all those Ashtangis -- will be part of the fun.

But not everyone was enthused about that. So I thought, "Well, how good is the hotel?"

The answer: Seems OK, to pretty good.

At least that seems to be the consensus from the Yelp reviews, which I've run through so you don't have to. (See how we are helpful that way?)

As with any Yelp, there are always the outliers who absolutely hate the place or have a bad experience. And there seem to be an equal number of people who just gush and gush over it.

All said, from 94 reviews it gets 3.5 stars, but I'd say it's fair to say that a few really bad reviews probably pulled it down from being closer to 4. I will warn, though, that some of the poorer reviews are from 2011. So I don't know if the place had a bad run this Spring.

If anyone's stayed there or knows about it, comment away.

Note: We've moved to http://theconfluencecountdown.com/.