First WM1 Class St Albans in Second Life

Today was my second trip out to St Albans, and the first opportunity for a class in Second Life.
We started out by trying to sign up, but as luck would have it, Second Life has closed off new accounts, so slowly and after a few phone calls to 'borrow' friends usernames and passwords, we got everyone logged in. Once logged in the lag was quite bad, creating quite a few operational problems, hopefully it was just one of those days.
Once in world, due to the limitations with building, editing characters or doign anything too delicate, the first assignment was to (as below) travel to three seperate SL locations and do a quick report including it's name, likes and dislikes, snapshots, and whether it was worth another visit.
The purpose of this is to gain an understanding of the scope of Second Life, and as a group gain experience in what can and has already been done, and how things work.
We then took a moment to chat about the classes ideas for their town, which was a tropical paradise like city island. We discussed some of the limitations including 'prims' for each parcel and the size of each island, and then continued to discuss more specific ideas.
- Submarine
- Resort
- Racing
- Lifesaving
- Hovercraft
- Jetskis
- Boats
- Cocktail Bar
- Sports Arena
There seemed to be a lot of discussion about the sports arena, with replicas of Telstra Stadium, the MCG, Rod Laver Arena, Aquatic Centre, Motor Racing/Motorcycle Tracks. The vocal consensus after discussion seemed to be the MCG, so I called them just out of interest to try and set up a meeting with their marketing people. I left a message and will try to arrange a meeting out of interest.
In the short term, the most realistic option seems to be if we could make something similar, like the ACG - to avoid licensing issues, and also potentially have a great portfolio piece which the class could then approach real venues like the MCG or Rod Laver in an attempt to get real paid work.
A new concept would also give us more creative freedom, and time is a constraint for any larger project.
The other issue is how a story and secret can be incorporated into a build such as this.
It's all still open at the moment, I am looking forward to more discussion, absolutely nothing is concrete, it would be good to explore a few more ideas in depth(perhaps some of the ones above).