<p>Just curious what the differences are in these 2 dorms-are they about the same age, house the same # students… any pros/cons? Looks like they are pretty close to each other …</p>
<p>They have the same floor plan. Riverside has the pool, game room and media room. No real pros or cons.</p>
<p>Ok, the “game room” at Riverside may not be what you envision as a cool drop-in place to hang. In order to play anything, my son says, you need to go over to Lakeside Dining (I believe) to check out equipment (paddles, console controllers, etc.). My S says it is dead and empty. It could be so much more. Maybe they had problems in the past with too many things going missing. Not sure why it is not more well used. UA staff hold a lot of meetings in this building, but I believe it is far from a “club house” for students.</p>
<p>This past summer, UA Housing decided to close some of the front desks and consolidate the services to the remaining front desks. For example, while Ridgecrest West hasn’t had a staffed front desk for years, if ever, there was a front desk at Ridgecrest East. This past summer, Housing merged the Ridgecrest East front desk with the Ridgecrest South front desk, meaning a longer walk for anyone needing something from the front desk.</p>
<p>In my experience, game/TV rooms are not popular as most everyone has their own electronics and doesn’t really want to play table games. For those that do want to play table games, most will bring their own equipment. There is also an issue of obsolete technology; the TV rooms in Ridgecrest East and West and presumably Lakeside and Riverside don’t have HDMI ports and are often missing remotes, making it difficult to plug in a gaming system/laptop or watch TV.</p>
<p>As for the differences between Lakeside and Riverside, the main difference is the pattern on the living room furniture and that one or all of the Riversides has convection ovens rather than conventional ones. While one can certainly cook in a convection oven, most 18 year-olds won’t know how to adjust the temperature and cooking times for recipes designed for conventional ovens.</p>