Parking is a complete and utter nightmare. Get there an hour and a half before you think you would need to. The venue sucks, bring lots of water. You will have to do a bit of walking too.
As someone who marched post covid under the Freddy/Mike Martin and Matt Harloff types of the world, they actually do try to mimic that sound. They are constantly preaching "open, dark, and orchestral" sounds and adopt techniques that orchestral players like Mike and Chris actually use in their day to day routine.
They really do have a great show. It's in a very good place considering they just blew up the whole thing from the ballad on and changed it all. Once they clean up some balance issues and get more comfortable with the changes, it's gonna be money.
Old heads be like "I miss melody!" and the melodies that they are referring to are like... Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Music is SO much cooler nowadays imo.
They've shown their capability to win all of them. I don't see why not. They won Brass and GE last year. They've won guard many times and are always at least top 2. They also have incredible vet retention in percussion. If there's any year it's going to happen, this is probably it.