View Full Version : Minnesota Boat & Marine Show St. Paul, MN
The Great Guide
02-19-2002, 02:19 PM
I'm thinking about taking this show in this weekend. Is it worth traveling 150 miles? I'm not looking yet but will be next year. What do you think?
TGG
The Great Guide,
Personally I would wait till March 22 and see the Northwest Sport Show. It has a lot more vendors, both boats and otherwise and is a much larger and nicer show. It's at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
The Great Guide
A lot of dealers have to look at how they spend there money on these shows and because Mpls and St. Paul both have shows at different times of the year. The Mpls Convention Center is a great place to have a boat show or a sportsman show and St. Paul is smaller. I worked at the St. Paul Home and Garden show and it was quite. The Mpls will be twice as busy and alot of venders go there and not St. Paul. I would go to the Northwest Sports Show in March. It will be better
Bad Finger
02-19-2002, 02:34 PM
Agree with above. There are a lot of crusers, bass boats, pontoons taking up space where I'm sure you would rather see a Walleye Boat!
Schnauzer
02-19-2002, 02:44 PM
Ditto...
This is a decent show if you are already in town but the Mpls boat show or the March sport show are much better choices if you are driving 150 miles just for the event. The Mpls boat show was in January but the other one is next month.
The St. Paul boat show is a fraction of the size.
eyewitness
02-19-2002, 03:17 PM
The others are right about the Mpls. show being the better of the two.....HOWEVER, if your really shopping to make a purchase and want to have the full attention of the dealers reps when looking at boats, you may want to consider going to the one that will be quieter. Once the crowds converge it's tough to get the attention of the factory guys because they are almost always busy chatting with someone. Makes for a long day of asking questions. To give an example, when I shopped at the Mpls. show I spent 6-1/2 hrs. there running back and forth between boats and people in the know just to get all the answers I wanted. Sounds a little overboard (no pun intended,)but in reality my input with all the rigs right there in front of me made it a whole lot easier for me to decide on what was important for me, as well as making me feel a whole lot better about my final decision when it came time to put down the green (which I did the following week). The down side was that I never got a chance to enjoy the rest of the show anyway. Just something to chew on.....