Overall
Great congress. Well organised, great location and fantastic music. It was like a big SOS with more people, more time to dance and better artists. Pitfalls were a serious lack of powerful air conditioning and rubbish after parties (at least there were after parties though!). The location is great for anyone coming from Heathrow but doesn't really favour those who live in the centre of London. Still, it's so close to home that it's unavoidable and totally worth the small hassle of getting there!
I only did the parties this year so cannot comment on all aspects, but here are my thoughts regarding my common congress-comparison criteria.
Prices
1. Flights - Easily accessible from Heathrow, the ultimate transport hub. Free buses from Heathrow too (5mins down the road). What's not to love? No flights needed for Londoners!
2. Pass prices - Not at all bad. Party pass was £55, which seems cheap, but note that this didn't include shows (well, there was a video screen outside if you really wanted to see them). Also while the after parties ended at 6am, barely anything other than kizomba and bachata was played. Full pass prices are reasonable, especially given recent weakness of the pound. Moreover, the Radisson (venue hotel) is affordable and the room prices include a buffet breakfast.
3. Hotels - I would recommend that anyone coming to the congress stay at a hotel on Bath Road (i.e. within 10mins walk of the Radisson), with the ideal solution being the Radisson itself. Breakfast opens at 6am following the after party. It's a buffet style food offering and smells amazing. Not as great as the breakfast I raved about in Karlsruhe but well timed and plentiful all the same. The single beds in the Radisson are very narrow, but do the trick. Most of my friends appear to repeatedly stay in the Ibis, which I understand is cheaper.
4. Water - Jugs of water all around the venue for dancers to rehydrate between dances were much appreciated. Especially since the air conditioning clearly was not made to handle hundreds of dancers and it was pretty steamy on the dance floor!
Venue
1. Floor - Built for the congress. Temporary wooden floor, no one had any issues with it. It was one of those rare events where the floor was so right that no one even bothered to talk about it!
2. Number of dance floors - Three. Mambo floor, Cuban salsa floor, Kizomba/after party room. I once went hunting for water in the Cuban room and it seemed to be quite busy, but otherwise I was so happy with the mambo room and the bar/water/hang out area just outside it that it never occurred to me to go looking anywhere else. There may well have been a bachata or other room, but I was too busy dancing to find it!
3. Workshops vs. parties - All in the same venue. I believe there were 5 workshops per hour, but you'd have to check the website for full details. Last year, some of the more popular workshops (e.g. Juan Matos, Santo Rico, Karel Flores) were really busy, but others were somewhat smaller and more intimate. Workshops started around 11am and went through to 6pm. There was a power cut at around 4pm on Sunday afternoon, but the workshops continued anyway, despite delaying everything by about an hour.
4. Show seats. I missed the shows this year because I only had a party pass. Last year we all piled onto the floor at the front of the stage. I remember there being a great vibe from really being able to cheer the performers on. VIPs are given seats (and perhaps those who are really quick to enter the room as well, though not sure).
5. Show visibility. Great in my past experience. You actually also had a great view from the screens they set up outside if you found yourself outside waiting and badly timed your arrival. This happened to us on Sunday because of the power cut which delayed the shows. The only thing you couldn't hear was the microphone chat, but speakers played the music during the shows. Missing out on the various intros and jokes wasn't too bad and at least we didn't feel rude for ignoring the speaker!
6. Workshop visibility. No comment, I was fast asleep during workshop hours. Or busy having breakfast and serial drinking mugs of tea!
7. Workshop organisation. See above.
Crowd
1. Workshops. No idea, I guess you had to be there!
2. Parties - Medium to high level of dancing. Apparently there's a rumour in among Paris dancers that only old ladies can be found social dancing at MamboCity. Let me just say that that is categorically untrue! Level-wise, it's like SOS but multiplied in numbers and with a much larger contingent of on2 dancers. I might have danced on1 twice over the course of the weekend and maybe a bachata (not by design!) but I can't say I remember either. In my personal opinion, there were not enough foreigners, but there were some very readily available and friendly artists who contributed to my dance floor happiness. I like discovering new and amazing dance partners at congresses and generally find that this doesn't really happen at UK events, however, this lack of surprise was surprisingly comfortable and relaxing.
3. Size - Medium. You never got lost, you could always find people. Except Steve. For some reason, I'm always looking for Steve however large the congress. Not sure quite how he manages to disappear all the time since he's not the smallest guy in the world. Generally though, there was always room on the dance floor, however hot it became and there were minimal accidents as a result.
4. After parties - Held downstairs in a smaller room. Terrible choice of music (mostly kizomba, semba et al) and very little salsa played. No choice but to hang around and wait for non-kizomba, especially when you're waiting for the tube to open to head back into London. I was fortunate enough to get a ride from some very generous gentlemen (on all three nights), but still, the yearning for one more dance kept us there much longer than the music should have!
Line-up
1. Quality of teaching - Good from what I could tell: Eddie Torres, Juan Matos, Adolfo all present. Previous years have had Yamulee and Santo Rico instead of Eddie. A great many local teachers too. Doesn't measure up to Berlin or Zurich in terms of numbers, but still some very decent names.
2. Choice of workshops - Not quite enough to make me opt for a full pass, but it's always worth going to Eddie's, Adolfo's and Juan's classes!
3. Number of shows - None on Friday, bunch on Saturday and bunch on Sunday. As a party pass holder, I missed them all. You'd have to ask someone who sat through them whether their bum got sore!
4. Artists on the dance floor. Other than Eddie who no longer social dances and Juan who simply likes to stand around and drink, the Italians were out in full force (Latin Soul Dancers, Marco Ferrigno's Group and Grupo Alafia), Terry from Paris and Brian Lieber never stopped dancing. Others were around and generally willing too. I think the Italian ladies were slightly less available, but the men could generally be found and easily approached on the dance floor.
5. DJs. Big shout out to Julian the Duke, aka "The best DJ in the Universe" for amazing sets on Saturday and Sunday. He was helped by someone else with whom he tried to share the credit, but I can't remember who it was. One of the Italian artists spent most of Saturday on Shazaam (i-phone application that listens to songs and tells you the name and artist) because he loved every song and needed to commit each one to memory! If it weren't for the sheer heat in the main room, I probably would never have stopped dancing to notice this... On Friday, the music was less good, so I won't name and shame the DJs, but there was some annoying track mixing going on and way too much salsa romantica at around 3am. The crowd wanted faster songs at that point and palpable frustration could be felt. It definitely helped highlight the quality of the music choice on the following two nights though!
6. Bands. No live bands. However, the video "La Epoca - The Lost Rhythms in Salsa" was shown on Friday night (instead of having shows). This was a highly educational documentary about salsa music in the Palladium era and would have been great had it been less long winded (by say being 45mins shorter) and less judgmental. Telling 200 dancers that they are doing it wrong prior to a congress doesn't really go down too well…But then again, had I not been desperately hungry and increasingly starving during the whole thing, perhaps I would have been more receptive?!
Location
1. Central location? Multiple conversations I had went like this:
Random person: "Did you have to come far to get here?"
Me: "Yes, I came from London"
Random person: "But we're in London"
Me, uneasy: "No, we're not!"
Random person: "Where are we then?"
Me: "We're in Greater London, Zone 6, or the sticks, this doesn't count as London, it's not central enough"
You get the idea. 50mins by tube from Zone 1 (i.e. "home") is not central. In fact, anything outside of Zone 1 is not central, since by definition, it is not in the centre. Yep, I'm a Zone 1 snob. But seriously, there's not a shop within walking distance, the closest and only pub/food option that isn't hotel related is a 10min walk and there's no way you can walk outside and hail a taxi or even walk to the closest tube station. Having said that, everything (food, beds, dancing, workshops) can be found within the hotel and thus MamboCity qualifies for the "centralised location" criteria!
2. Distance from the airport - 5mins ride on a free red bus. Really practical for those coming from abroad, not so great for those who live in London, wish to arrive by Eurostar or are coming via another airport. Personally, as someone who loves flying around the world, I find it pretty difficult to make it all the way to Heathrow and then NOT board a plane. First-world-problem style torture!
3. Time to London. 50 minutes. Or 30 minutes at 7am when your wonderful friend drop you home.
4. Number of days off work. None. Conveniently timed over a May bank holiday, for all my moaning about it being a 50 minute ride out of London, this congress is simply unavoidable. Check for next year though as it's not always over a bank holiday weekend. However, whether you're planning on doing the whole thing, a day or just the parties, it's definitely one that shouldn't be missed!
For more information, check out the website here: http://www.mambocity.co.uk/congress/
