EVO Friday/Saturday location

Is EVO repeating what it did last year? Site says Sunday finals will be at Mandalay Bay, but is Thursday-Saturday at the LV Convention center again? I wouldn’t mind staying at Mandalay Bay hotel, but if I’m going to to LVCC three times, I might as well stay around there and just drive on finals day

This is a three month old post so you’ve probably already figured stuff out by now, but just in case (wouldn’t want anyone missing out):

The first two/three days of EVO (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) will be held at the Mandalay Bay convention center. It’s a 1,000,000 square foot building and you can walk to it without having to take a step outside as its connected to the Mandalay Bay hotel. Finals on Sunday will be hosted at the Mandalay Bay events center just like last year. Once again, sorry if you’ve already figured this out by now. Just wanted to throw this out there in case you still haven’t found the info you were looking for is all!

When do pools start for SF5? There’s no schedule…

Should be posted a few days after reg closes, but the rule of thumb is that large tournaments start Friday at 8 AM. I expect it to be the same for this year.

Is there anything else to do there at Evo weekend besides competing and competing at side tourneys at AnimEvo. I’m assuming there’s panels and obviously a playable demo of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite.

Checking out the merch is always fun! I know you mentioned panels but, it really is a good time waster if you don’t have anything to do. There are a lot of cool t-shirts, art (posters, stickers, etc.), custom buttons for your fightstick, plushies, official EVO merch, and so on.

Aside from that there’s always a couple people who bring their own setups and host stuff in their rooms, but that’s the kind of thing you’d have to check Twitter for (or just wait for EVO and then ask around).

Mandalay Bay itself has pools/a fake beach, restaurants, aquarium, theater… so if you’re looking for non EVO-related stuff then there’s also that.