<p>These two events: April 16-18th. I have my tickets booked :) anybody else going?</p>
<p>Also I'm leaving early, and will be there on Wednesday. So I'm gonna have all of Wednesday night and Thursday before 6pm to myself, does anybody have any suggestions for what I should do during this time? I really want to go check out Detroit but I'm wondering if wandering around in the city by myself (a girl) is a good idea</p>
<p>i’ll also be attending both events.
i have to be honest, i don’t know much about the amaizin blue preview.
it seems like a good opportunity to become more familiar with the campus.
do you know approximately how many students attend?</p>
<p>as for wandering around detroit by yourself, i wouldn’t recommend it…</p>
<p>I’m going to both too :)</p>
<p>This Blue Preview day sounds awesome that they’re letting us explore to school around. Maybe we can see each other there going, hey, are you…jieun & leighwe? i’m sjdanad26</p>
<p>aha</p>
<p>I’d recommend against wandering around Detroit. There are plenty of things going on in Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>I STRONGLY recommend wandering Detroit, especially as a female who doesn’t know the city. Head straight to Ann Arbor from the airport, do not collect $200.</p>
<p>The issue with going to Detroit is finding a way there. The only way that I’ve found is driving or the $80 taxi ride.</p>
<p>I’ve wandered around Detroit by myself, as a very young confused-looking girl, and I’m alive and it’s wonderful. Then again, I love exploring new places and I have an undying love for Detroit. That being said, Detroit is not what you would expect of a big city. There’s a fairly empty but nicer downtown and there there’s empty urban sprawl and broken down local stores / lots and lots of abandoned lots (these areas are safer than you might think, but having a boy around would be suggested). Ann Arbor is probably better for the average sight-seer, but everyone should experience the tourist Detroit, the cultural Detroit, and the neighborhood Detroit some time while they’re in Ann Arbor.</p>
<p>Just FYI, not that I’m suggesting to do it alone, but there is both Greyhound and Amtrak service to Detroit from AA a few times a day so it is actually not difficult or expensive to get there. The Greyhound station is a few blocks from downtown. That said, unless there was some kind of waterfront festival or I were with friends I would generally not recommend wandering around alone, mainly because you won’t know what areas to avoid. If there were specific attractions you planned to attend and you minimized your potential to get lost or planned to stick to cabs you might fare better. Detroit is not an especially vibrant city center compared to, say, Chicago, and there are some very burnt out, vagrant pockets that do not garner a lot of protective attention. So you’d do better with a plan than a wander in mind.</p>
<p>Just in case you did not understand the kindly advice that others have given here, I would like to say it in no uncertain terms: DO NOT WANDER AROUND ANYWHERE IN THE CITY OF DETROIT ALONE. If you are going to an event, or want to see the sights in the city, fine, go with someone, have a plan, stick to the well-beaten path. You can go the city center, Greektown, etc, then go to the WSU/museum area, but you can’t wander from one to the other. There are some great things in Detroit, and if you make a friend who knows the city well, and they can show you the less well known areas, great, but for a tourist or occasional visitor, no way should you just walk around cluelessly. I say this for your own good.</p>
<p>Thanks, fredmar, I should have made that more clear. OP, I am an intrepid traveler and former journalist and have indeed wandered around Detroit (on stories) and Fredmar is 100% spot on. Got it? I mean, the kasbah in Tangiers is less daunting than some areas of Detroit. Really. And I mean no disrespect to Detroit. There are things to love : )</p>
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<p>What the hell? </p>
<p>Is this some sort of cool game, let’s pretend that Detroit = Mogadishu or something like that? Seriously, this is beyond comprehension. Unless the OP is a 12 year old who’s never left their hometown and cannot read a map, then there is literally no problem. </p>
<p>The only reason not to go to Detroit is that there’s not anything particularly awesome to do in Detroit on a random day. You can go check out all the stuff in the center of the city - DIA, the big library, the Science Center, Greektown + other casinos, Ford Field/Comerica Park, and so on, but there are equivalent things in every major city in the US. </p>
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<p>Even if this was true, which I seriously doubt, the statement also applies to NYC. And Chicago. And LA. And Boston. And Philly. And so on. This is totally meaningless. Unless the OP plans to go look for the single most unsafe neighborhood in Detroit and head straight there.</p>
<p>I agree with tetrahedron. Detroit isn’t bad at all. Ever been to Southeast DC?</p>
<p>There is definitely a difference in perspective between the moms and the students. Ask your parents if they think it is ok for an out of towner girl to wander around the City of Detroit alone, then get back to me. Besides the obvious dangers of any city, there is the fact that it is a totally unnecessary risk to take. Just because other big cities have dangerous areas too, doesn’t make it a good idea. The OP was asking if it was ok, and you are not doing her any favor by sugarcoating it. I love Detroit, and I’ve spent a lot of time there, but I don’t take unnecessary risks in any city, and I don’t advise my kids to do so either.</p>
<p>Well I don’t know Detroit at all. But I do know Manhattan (btw I hate how the name “NYC” incorporates BK, Queens, SI, and Bx: Every New Yorker knows NYC is MANHATTAN… anyway) </p>
<p>If you wander in Manhattan around the center and even the south you’ll be fine. But I feel sorry for the soul that wanders to the Northwest side aka Harlem alone.</p>
<p>My point being that most people wouldn’t know what is dangerous in a city, so don’t be naive, find a friend, and stick to the highly populated places. It is never necessary to wander alone.</p>
<p>Okay, just so the OP understands (as well as those who don’t believe my Kasbah reference… which BTW I can corroborate with direct experience but whatever)…THERE ARE PARTS OF DETROIT, MANY OF SAID PARTS BETWEEN ATTRACTIONS, THAT ARE NOT SAFE FOR A YOUNG, UNARMED, FEMALE WHO IS POSSIBLY INEXPERIENCED AT URBAN TRAVEL OR SELF DEFENSE AND WHO IS TRAVELING ALONE.</p>
<p>The reason we are telling you this (note: Tetra!) is because a tourist doesn’t typically “accidentially” wander into South Chicago or even Harlem despite the latter’s proximity to Manhattan (although I have in fact done just that on occasion). In Detroit, the layout is very different in that getting from part A to part B often means traveling through areas that are much rougher than you might usually encounter in an immediate city center. That’s because the “city center” is not especially well developed in Detroit, and has never really fully recovered from the fires.</p>
<p>This is not a conspiracy against Detroit or born of a desire to strike fear into the hearts of young urban travellers. This is just about common sense and sound advice from those who know the terrain.</p>
<p>As a lifelong resident of the Metro area, I again want to tell you to stay out of Detroit as an 18 year old girl. I honestly think the only time I have been down there alone (off the interstate) is the stretch of Jefferson from 375 to the Windsor-Detroit tunnel…</p>
<p>Sure, things are different for sporting events, festivals that bring a lot of people in from the suburbs, etc. But as a young girl, I still would recommend against heading down there alone. The downtown area is not terrible, but almost all of it is so deserted that I would still want to avoid…</p>
<p>Let’s all take a deep breath folks. First of all, downtown Detroit is not the Robocop-Mad Max-Sin City post-apocalyptic nightmare the rest of the country thinks it is. It’s a tough town with some very bad areas. kmccrindle is 100% correct, you can be walking along, having done everything right and suddenly find yourself in a very dangerous situation. Under no circumstances would I recommend walking around at night, unknowing and alone. It’s not like other cities. That said it’s been days since a roving gang of thugs snatched a tourist in broad daylight and harvested his or her organs for re-sale, (that’s a joke by the way). </p>
<p>In Detroit there is no there, there. Go all the way downtown and all you’re going to see is office buildings. You have to be going to a specific area for a specific reason to get the most out of Detroit.</p>
<p>It’s nearly 50 miles each way from Ann Arbor to downtown Detroit, so unless you have a car, and you know exactly where you’re going, and the roads aren’t closed for construction, you’re looking at nearly an hour of driving each way. It’s a very involved process for very little pay off.</p>
<p>Ann Arbor is an amazingly safe small city. It’s very compact and walkable. Jieun, I strongly encourage you to spend your free time exploring Ann Arbor and save the trips to Greektown, Ford Field and Greenfield Village for a group of your dormmates.</p>
<p>Ummmm… thanks for all the feedback, everyone! I guess I’m not gonna go to Detroit by myself then, lol. I’m from the Seattle area and I’ve wandered around in downtown Seattle plenty of times by myself alone, and was just curious if Detroit would be okay for that too. I love wandering around in urban areas as long as I feel relatively safe, so yeah…</p>
<p>And from what you guys are saying, certain parts are probably definitely okay as long as you use some common sense and discretion. But I’ll save it for another day, with a friend or something, when we have a travel plan, so you don’t end up hearing about me on the news OTL</p>
<p>My name is Ji Eun P. so if there are ever nametags and such and you see me, say hi! :)</p>
<p>I gotta go pack -_-</p>
<p>I too am coming to amaizin’ blue preview, however, I am woefully short on details. For instance, what are the accomodations for Thurs and Fri night? I can’t seem to find any sort of schedule or detailed info on the web and my e-mailed questions to UM seem to fall on deaf ears. Anybody know anything?</p>
<p>Vballer, did you receive an email invitation to Amazin’ Blue Preview? Or are you confusing it with the Spring Welcome day?
ABP program is for invited scholarship students and all the details around it are in the link that is inside your invitation email. Those links take you to a mini-site that will explain everything, where you should have registered at the time of invitation.
You would have had to have RSVP’d to reserve the hotel room space when you first received the invitation – since the hotel part is tomorrow night, I’m not sure you’d still be able to register if you hadn’t already.
For Spring Welcome (Friday at 6 p.m. through Saturday), you’d also have been paired with a student by now to overnight in the dorms if you registered for that. My son received an email yesterday from the student with whom he was paired.
It sounds like you did not actually register by responding to the invite???
They may not be able to respond to you if you were not registered.
Perhaps you should call them directly.
Again, the contact info is in the email invite, so dig that up if you have one.</p>
<p>I did get the invite and I did register per the website. The “confirmation” was simply lacking in details. I have today, received an email telling me the hotel that I am set up for, so I feel a lot better now than I did this morning. At least I know that I have a bed thursday night. I have not heard from any student regarding friday night, but I can deal with that when I am AA. Thanks for the nice reply.</p>