Great vacation spots to get the testing done? :D

[jjane45]

Carried a little conversation with sk8lady in the practice thread on this topic and found it interesting.

What are some great vacation spots to spend a wonderful vacation with family or friends, with easy access to practice ice, dance partnering, and a skating club without a reputation of being "difficult"?  

Wow Hawaii FSC is quite decent! 4 tests a year and

All test sessions will include PRE-PRELIMINARY through SENIOR Moves In The Field
and Free Skate AND Preliminary through Pre-Silver Dance unless you are notified
otherwise.

Of course I have no idea about partnering, but if they offer pre-silver dance tests regularly I guess the dance program is fairly strong!

I thought about skating camps too but they may be too time consuming and boring to non-skating family members.

Your thoughts?

[RosiePosie.iskates]

Hmm...there's an ice rink in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. They do shows there sometimes since it's a high tourist area, but during the day, I hear there's alot of available ice. They even host competitions there sometimes. 

[phoenix]

Sun Valley would be my first choice.

[jjane45]

What about southern California?

Also which are the "generally more difficult" clubs to avoid? 

[Schmeck]

The Boston area has so many clubs (SCOB, Colonials, Hayden, North Shore, etc) that there's always a test session when you need one.

[jjane45]

I guess in addition to the "lower passing rates", another factor would be finding a test partner from an unfamiliar area? (assuming vacation spot does not repeat very often lol)  The only ways I could think of would be 1) asking for referrals from current dance coach(es), 2) skatingforums! and 3) directly contacting clubs / rink skating directors for referrals. What would you for in a hypothetical test?

[icedancer]

I would go to Sun Valley and hire one of their coaches and then test - this happens all of the time there!

[jjane45]

I would go to Sun Valley and hire one of their coaches and then test - this happens all of the time there!

Right. I would not know which one to hire though!

[Skittl1321]

I don't think I'd want to test on vacation, it is too stressful.  However, when I look for tests within 4 hours drive of me- I see them all over Illinois.  Jjane- you location is Chicago, how could you be lacking test sessions? The are all over the place around there!  It doesn't seem like you would need to go very far out of your way to find one.

[jjane45]

Because I'm THE curious one and half of my questions don't apply to myself, lol. Several dancers mentioned lack of test sessions / test partner, and I thought it's an interesting discussion.

[VAsk8r]

Thinking about the east coast, if you want to go to Virginia Beach, the Tidewater Figure Skating Club does a couple of tests every year. The rink that usually has the tests is about 50 minutes away from the beach, but there are a couple that are closer. If you instead want to go to Virginia's "historic triangle" (insert eye roll here) of Williamsburg, Jamestown and Yorktown, you'll be 10-20 mins from the nice TFSC rink, and 45 minutes or an hour away from a couple of other rinks with clubs that also offer a few tests a year.

Since I grew up in Virginia Beach, I'd rather be anywhere else, and I wholeheartedly agree with my friend who called it a "poor man's vacation." But for some reason I can't quite understand, people from all over the East Coast and even Canada go there every year.

[jjane45]

icedancers yahoo group discussed "T2T" or "travel to test" recently, and some clubs were mentioned. They may or may not be vacation spots:

Champions Skating Center in Cromwell, CT always has high level dances at its test sessions too which are typically held monthly.

As a test chair for Broadmoor SC, I would like to let everyone know that we always offer high dance on all of our session.