Avoiding Marathon Week?

[MomTo3PrincessesInNJ]

We just came home from our first Disney vacation and we had a blast -- now it's time to plan our next trip!

We were all set to go back for a short trip in Jan 2014 to celebrate our middle daughter's 5th birthday. I was looking forward to being IN Disney World ON her birthday.

Our plan was to fly out Wednesday 1/8 after school and have Thursday 1/9 (her birthday) as our first park day. We would then fly home Sunday afternoon.

H will only let the girls miss 2 days of school so we can't go earlier in the week -- has to be Wed to Sun. I've started planning and I saw that the week we picked is set to be the Marathon Weekend.

Should we forget about that week and go a week later?

I'm not sure how much the marathon impacts crowds.

Suggestions?

 

[Axel]

We've gone over Marathon weekend before and didn't notice too much of a crowd impact (many of the people who partake in the marathon don't go to the parks on their race days, but some do and it's fun to see the medals!).

What does get impacted is the bus service! DO NOT plan on buses running on-time while the Marathon is going on (hours for the race can be found online somewhere, I'm sure). They close certain portions of the roads for the race. So for the marathon days, just plan to do a park which can be accessed easily by monorail. We were staying at BLT so we just hopped on the monorail to EPCOT on marathon day. While that was the park with the higher crowd level (EPCOT is where the marathon finishes), we were there in time to see the end of the race.

Watching the marathon is fun in and of itself! People wear all sorts of fun costumes (we saw Cruella, Buzz, Rapunzel, and even a Cinderella in full ball gown!) and do all sorts of amusing things (one guy was finishing the race with a beer in each hand--one from Norway and one from Germany--and told us he was re-fueling his carbs!). Plus the runners love it if you stop and cheer for them, many of them gave us high-fives as they passed and thanked us for encouraging them as they neared the last half-mile.