<p>you don’t have hotel reservations yet? Unless things have changed dramatically since my d graduated in 2008, you should be in “hotel lottery” the year before graduation as hotels will take the reservation one year in advance. So I would contact hotels ASAP and find out about a reservation for next years graduation.
Re: graduation–
There are 2 services- Saturday am/noontime is the convocation (?) program. The “famous speaker” is invited to address the graduates at convocation. I believe the president of Cornell is always the speaker at the actual graduation service on Sunday.</p>
<p>If you cannot get a hotel room in Ithaca, the school has a lottery in February to get rooms in the dorm. We got dorm rooms for a few family members as hotel rooms are absolutely ridiculously expensive for graduation. It was over $300/nite in 2008 and we made our reservations in 2004 when we dropped our kid off for orientation. Yes, some hotels do take reservations 4 years in advance- others have the lottery one year prior to graduation.<br>
We had dinner reservations for both saturday and sunday- we figured if we were done by 10:00Pm we wouldn’t get into our kids way- I think most kids were willing to put up with their parents for part of the evening.<br>
My kid was in Tradition- and they had a nice Awards dinner planned for Friday evening. I think other student organizations (Hillel) may also have things planned for friday evening too.<br>
Traffic was tough to get into graduation. As we had a disabled family member, we were able to get a special parking permit and seating area. That made things alot easier.</p>
<p>and if interested- we had a great dinner at Taughanock Farms. Prix fixed- 3 or 4 courses and reasonably priced. Which is a rarity during graduation week-end. Restaurants start taking dinner reservations in January. So don’t overlook that fact either.</p>