Well, no one else will care about this, but it's interesting for us, right?
Miami was a priceless comedy of errors, and the saddest thing of all was that ALA had warning of how bad it might be. The ABA (the booksellers, not the lawyers!) had been in Miami in '93, and that was a disaster, too. Here is a story about the warnings:
http://www.infomotions.com/serials/ann/ann-v6n14.txt
Well, all of the dire predictions came true, and then some. Most of the hotels were seriously far away from the convention center and there was a huge amount of renovation being done that year; most of it was NOT finished as promised when ALA rolled around. As the island only has one main N-S artery, the traffic meant that the Gale shuttles were crawling. Many committee meetings didn't make quorum b/c members were stuck in traffic. There were problems with the setups in the exhibit hall, and of course, it was really hot, which meant that tempers frayed even faster than usual. Even the child-care arrangements were screwed up. The vendors were livid, and ALA got enormous numbers of complaints from librarians who swore that if ALA were held in S. Fla again, they would not attend. Problem was, 1996 had already been booked for Orlando.
In September '94, the Executive Board met about the Miami disaster, and decided to move summer '96 to New York instead, paying HUGE penalties to get out of the Orlando contracts. (When the rank and file heard about this, there was ANOTHER outcry, because everyone was saying that not being an island, Orlando was a different animal entirely, and that Orlando would have been fine.) However ...
The only time available in New York in '96 by that point was the 4th of July weekend, which also happened to be hosting a Tall Ships event. Hotel rooms were rather scarce and badly priced, and flights were overpriced, too, but that wasn't the worst problem. The worst problem was the Teamsters. The Executive Committee, seriously asleep at the wheel, didn't take into account that when Teamsters work on a national holiday, they have to be paid triple time, and the Javits center is completely union. The vendors went BALLISTIC, and nearly 50% decided to boycott the conference entirely, or only send a token booth. The '96 summer conference was a pitiful shadow of the usual event, it looked more like a Midwinter from what I heard, only with almost no vendors.
Lots of heads rolled over these debacles, and Florida was seen as a jinx for a LONG time. I was actually rather amazed that they broke down and decided to try Orlando so soon.
I haven't seen mention of special convention passes yet, and they might not have gotten them, since only a few events are at WDW, not the main conference. However, due to the size of ALA, even Disney would probably be willing to make convention passes available. Of course, ALA could not be held at WDW anyway; ALA requires a combination of 350,000 gross square feet of exhibition space, 8500 hotel rooms and 325-350 simultaneous meeting rooms. WDW is big, but not that big.
