Castaway Challenge 2016?

[poohs4me]

This seems like so much fun! Anyone heard any rumors of whether they are going to offer this next year.

 

[nostalgic4disney]

I would like to know this as well. I'm hoping to do the PHM 2/2016 and would like to run the CCC.

 

[bumbershoot]

They said they have no plans further than princess and that any announcements about any runs are done via rundisney.com.

I did the inaugural and while the run itself was good, I'm not sure I they should continue. Not sure they get cruising or running, really, and definitely not the combination.

 

[poohs4me]

Thanks. I hope they do give it another year. The description said you were a VIP. Did they do anything special for you all?

 

[wilkeliza]

I think they will do it again. We just haven't seen any runDisney weekends go for sale yet besides Marathon and Princess. I would bet money there will be one for wine and dine if the schedules match up.

They do the 5K on every Castaway Cay stop and since the marathon weekend cruse was their first attempt I think it will only get better.

Not sure what the previous poster meant by they don't know how to cruise because DCL wouldn't be able to sell out ships at one of the most expensive rates if they didn't know cruising.

 

[bumbershoot]

I'm not sure that the rundisney people
understand cruising. Not dcl.

 

[bumbershoot]

The description said you were a VIP. Did they do anything special for you all?

No.

An hour long meeting where the nutritionist let "just a 5k" come out of her mouth and where they found that the info about merchandise had something listed that wasn't even made. Half an hour of the meeting was Q&A about things runners should already know about running and more importantly about things rundisney should have told us months before.

Merchandise opened for sale at the same time as main dinner seating

The special menu item was a coconut water kale smoothie for sale, that was first mentioned in the Navigator for the day of the 5k. A recovery drink ,not something nice ahead of time.

The actual course was decent but very very narrow in the out and back portion along serenity bay.

The new 5k medals are adorable. Challenge medals were enormous.

It took Christiaan the cruise director to make it happen that the backdrop from the island get moved to the ship for pictures, as it seemed the rundisney people didn't comprehend that the runners might want pictures with the backdrop with all their medals. They actively discouraged us from bag checking the other medals. There was no good option until Christiaan made it happen.

Most importantly overall, they ended up docking at midnight to give the strongest chance of us actually being there for the race. I would not have wanted to see eat would've happened if we couldn't have docked. If there had been lightning they said we would just meet that morning (5:45am) to handout medals. They wouldn't even try to have a run on the ship later.

To get there so early they had to book it from Nassau, which made for an unpleasant and rocky evening. I felt like the challenge was such a disruption to the normal running of the ship that even finances might not convince them to keep doing these runs.

My experience and opinions.