If You are Going to Jump at the Finish Line, Be Sure You Stick the Landing – A 2018 Dopey Run TR

[run.minnie.miles]

Sorry to hear that the expo was such a mess! I would have waned to look at official merchandise too, but like you, I'm not sure I would have waited!
(I did see that there is a marathon baseball cap available online, but no dopey. Bummer!)

Great ToT photo!! (That is my favorite Disney ride!)

 

[Ariel484]

Those expos pictures are YUCKY!! Don’t know what they were thinking screwing with the setup. I hope they do women’s cut 5K shirts sometime soon, get with the times runDisney!

Didn’t know you have Cable Knit Capris!! Aren’t they the best?

You’re selfies are sooooo cute. Love them!!

 

[Sailormoon2]

I'm with you on the 5K shirt-it's practically a dress on my 5'0 frame!
I had the filet at HBD too-it was abbsolutely delicious! But passed on dessert as nothing really appealed to me.
Scoring a TSMM fast pass last minute is amazing!! I could honestly ride that all day! My best record so far is 3x in a row on a late August rope drop, followed by 2 FPs later in the day, I doubt with the increasing crowds, I could pull that again

I love this ride so much!!! Can you tell from my ride photo this time?

Clearly you are having fun on this one! TOT scares the @#$% out of me!! My ride photo is me cowering as far into my chair as possible while screaming "Make it stop!".

 

[ZellyB]

ToT is the best!
I’m still floored by all the pics I’ve seen of the expo and the lines. Yikes!

ToT is still my favorite ride at Disney! The expo was crazy.

Ooh I like the race shirts....I think it's the first time seeing all of them! Whoa, merchandise madness, eh?! I've been meaning to try Brown Derby for some time-I hear the Cobb salad is famous! Love ToT! Cute outfit! Are they InB cable knit leggings? I need them!

I really like the race shirts too. I think they did a good job on them. And, yes, those are the cable knit leggings. Sadly they go unseen during the run because I kept sweat pants over them the whole time.

I don't blame you for getting out of that expo quick. I did like the new bus drop off as well but yeah just a mess.

Never been to Brown Derby but it looks nice.

I didn't go on ToT this trip but love your ride photo!

Looks like a great day! Can't wait to hear about the 5K!

I think you would really like Brown Derby. It really was a great day, rain, expo and all.

Sorry to hear that the expo was such a mess! I would have waned to look at official merchandise too, but like you, I'm not sure I would have waited!
(I did see that there is a marathon baseball cap available online, but no dopey. Bummer!)

Great ToT photo!! (That is my favorite Disney ride!)

My favorite ride too. Yeah, I saw the marathon cap, but I was really hoping for Dopey, but it's okay. I'll shall survive.

Those expos pictures are YUCKY!! Don’t know what they were thinking screwing with the setup. I hope they do women’s cut 5K shirts sometime soon, get with the times runDisney!

Didn’t know you have Cable Knit Capris!! Aren’t they the best?

You’re selfies are sooooo cute. Love them!!

I got the cable knit tights a few months ago off the ISO. I was so happy and they've become my favorite tights. You know how we love our selfies.

 

[ZellyB]

I'm with you on the 5K shirt-it's practically a dress on my 5'0 frame!
I had the filet at HBD too-it was abbsolutely delicious! But passed on dessert as nothing really appealed to me.
Scoring a TSMM fast pass last minute is amazing!! I could honestly ride that all day! My best record so far is 3x in a row on a late August rope drop, followed by 2 FPs later in the day, I doubt with the increasing crowds, I could pull that again

Clearly you are having fun on this one! TOT scares the @#$% out of me!! My ride photo is me cowering as far into my chair as possible while screaming "Make it stop!".

TSMM is a really fun ride. I'm so jealous of 3x in a row. WOW! Chris can't ride it too much because of the spinning, but I'm like you and would love to ride it over and over, but probably not going to happen ever.

I hate that TOT scares you. I think it's amazing, but I can understand how it's a bit intense for some.

 

[disneydaydreamer33]

Yay!! I am HERE for this trip report! Your AK day sounds wonderful (despite the chilly temps) I love Tiffins and was totally blown away by FoP. I haven't seen RoL yet!
That is hilarious that Mickey yells for the wake up call. I've only done that a couple of times, and I don't remember yelling but I am also not a morning person so I probably have blocked it out haha
I'm sorry Expo was so crazy! One advantage of doing marathon only this year was waiting until Saturday for the expo haha

And yay for HBD! I really enjoy the Cobb salad there too!

 

[ZellyB]

Yay!! I am HERE for this trip report! Your AK day sounds wonderful (despite the chilly temps) I love Tiffins and was totally blown away by FoP. I haven't seen RoL yet!
That is hilarious that Mickey yells for the wake up call. I've only done that a couple of times, and I don't remember yelling but I am also not a morning person so I probably have blocked it out haha
I'm sorry Expo was so crazy! One advantage of doing marathon only this year was waiting until Saturday for the expo haha

And yay for HBD! I really enjoy the Cobb salad there too!

YAY! So happy you are here. Well, I'm not sure Mickey is intending to yell, but it's crazy loud. At least it is to me at 3 AM.

That Cobb salad is to die for. I love it.

 

[baxter24]

It’s almost as if RunDisney didn’t realize thousands of people would be descending on WWoS at the same time‍.....me and the people around us were laughing at how weird the line was for bib pick up too. We asked the guy holding up the “end of the line” sign if this was the line for Dopey bibs and acted like even he didn’t know.‍

After seeing the race shirts, I texted my husband with a “guess who is getting a 5k T-shirt?!?”

 

[roxymama]

First off I'm in the "how about a tech shirt in women's cut for the 5k? Or at least women's size cotton!" camp!! They aren't even comfy for pajamas.

Secondly:
A clamshell selfie is a Shellfie!

Lastly: omg I want to go back in time and crash your Hollywood studios date so I could share your "more puree" and ride toy story with y'all. You'd both beat me, btw.

 

[Sailormoon2]

I realize I'm hacking Zelly's threa with quotes from Roxymamma but they're too funny!

You'd both beat me, btw.

!1st off, then you would beat me, because as much as I love this ride, I am abysmal at it!

They aren't even comfy for pajamas.

Right?? The only thing they are good for is throw-away layer at the next race cold race-or maybe part of a quilt? I think @Ariel484 did something like that?

Shellfie!

Maybe it's early and I'm still tired but

 

[Sailormoon2]

Also for @ZellyB and anyone else on here doing trip reports how do you make your pictures the right size. I am a techno loser and don't understand where to move them from MDE that I can edit them to fit in a report. As well what size do they then need to be edited to? TIA.

 

[amazingact21]

Oh my gosh, that expo looked insane. I think I'm most surprised that people were willing to stand in those long lines for merchandise. I had heard packet pickup could be busy, but even that seems unusual. I'm glad you were able to get your bibs and get out of there in time for your dinner reservation!
That's great luck, landing both a TSMM and a Tower of Terror Fastpass the night of!

 

[emilyindisney]

Glad you survived the expo madness! As a first-time Dopey (like you guys) I don't have any experience with going to the expo on Wednesday but if it's never been like this before it'd be interesting to see a repeat Dopey speculate where runDisney fell short. Interesting that so far I haven't seen anyone have any suggestions on what went wrong!

That's awesome luck, scoring those fastpasses! I wish the system worked that good all the time!

 

[ZellyB]

It’s almost as if RunDisney didn’t realize thousands of people would be descending on WWoS at the same time‍.....me and the people around us were laughing at how weird the line was for bib pick up too. We asked the guy holding up the “end of the line” sign if this was the line for Dopey bibs and acted like even he didn’t know.‍

After seeing the race shirts, I texted my husband with a “guess who is getting a 5k T-shirt?!?”

I'm just not sure what prompted them to change things. I felt like it went pretty smoothly in years past. I knew the 5K was a cotton shirt, but was honestly surprised at how huge it was.

First off I'm in the "how about a tech shirt in women's cut for the 5k? Or at least women's size cotton!" camp!! They aren't even comfy for pajamas.

Secondly:
A clamshell selfie is a Shellfie!

Lastly: omg I want to go back in time and crash your Hollywood studios date so I could share your "more puree" and ride toy story with y'all. You'd both beat me, btw.

Shellfie!!!

I realize I'm hacking Zelly's threa with quotes from Roxymamma but they're too funny!

!1st off, then you would beat me, because as much as I love this ride, I am abysmal at it!


Right?? The only thing they are good for is throw-away layer at the next race cold race-or maybe part of a quilt? I think @Ariel484 did something like that?


Maybe it's early and I'm still tired but

Hack away! Love it.

Also for @ZellyB and anyone else on here doing trip reports how do you make your pictures the right size. I am a techno loser and don't understand where to move them from MDE that I can edit them to fit in a report. As well what size do they then need to be edited to? TIA.

I save them to my phone and then I use Flickr to upload them and create a hotlink. When you go to share the link it gives you an option for a lower file size photo. When I upload direct from my phone the only way I could figure out to do it was to email it to myself and choose a smaller file size for the email.

Oh my gosh, that expo looked insane. I think I'm most surprised that people were willing to stand in those long lines for merchandise. I had heard packet pickup could be busy, but even that seems unusual. I'm glad you were able to get your bibs and get out of there in time for your dinner reservation!
That's great luck, landing both a TSMM and a Tower of Terror Fastpass the night of!

I couldn't believe it when those two FP popped up for us. So lucky and for perfect times!

Glad you survived the expo madness! As a first-time Dopey (like you guys) I don't have any experience with going to the expo on Wednesday but if it's never been like this before it'd be interesting to see a repeat Dopey speculate where runDisney fell short. Interesting that so far I haven't seen anyone have any suggestions on what went wrong!

That's awesome luck, scoring those fastpasses! I wish the system worked that good all the time!

Yeah, I'm not sure why it was so much worse. I don't know if separating out the official merchandise from the other vendors was part of the problem. I wonder if having it in the same building as the bib pickup was the problem? Maybe there was a capacity issue or something in that building. I seem to recall they would have a little official merchandise in the same building as pickup, but that the majority was in the main vendor area. That might have split up those shoppers some between two buildings? I don't know really, but my biggest beef was just poor communication and signage. It was difficult to figure out where you needed to go and what line you needed to stand in.

 

[ZellyB]

5K Race, Looking for Dissers, and THE COLD TOTALLY BOTHERED ME ANYWAY!!!

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The signage around the resort was telling racers to be on the bus by 3:30 and I guess the 5K was starting a half hour earlier than in prior years. Lucky us. We tend to be nervous folks about getting to the race start early, so we had our alarm set for 3:00 AM to wake up. That was my phone alarm, Chris' phone alarm and crazy-loud Mickey. We were taking no chances. All three went off as planned and we both got up pretty easily. We are used to rising early at home, so while this was especially early, it wasn't terrible to get up (at least not for day 1 of 4 ).

We both got dressed quickly and checked the temps outside. I think it was around 35 degrees with a feels like of 29 or something insane like that. BWAHHHHHH!!! As mentioned, we had packed a lot of gear for keeping warm after learning our lesson about just how cold 30 some degrees can feel in Florida, but the forecast when we left looked like the temps would moderate some for the half and full. However, once we arrived those continued to worsen. Of course. So, we were concerned about having enough blankets etc for the pre-race waits. Chris opted to carry a lightweight mesh backpack that we could put the blankets in once the race began and he was going to run with that. I was glad he was willing to do that, because I sure wouldn't have done it.

Anyway, a bus was waiting when we walked out shortly after 3:00 and we had an uneventful ride to the start corrals. We grabbed a quick photo by the anniversary sign.

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https://flic.kr/p/22kEGwo
There were some portable heaters scattered about, but people were already about 5 deep around them. We walked over to the area where we thought the Dis meet was happening, but couldn't find anybody. We walked around a bit more, but still didn't see any familiar faces. We stood for awhile near where we though the meet was and @CherieFran came up and introduced herself. I recognized her right away! We talked for a bit about how we couldn't find anybody else. LOL And after a bit decided to walk to the corrals. We had scored a B corral and said goodbye at the A entrance since @CherieFran is speedy! We were up pretty close to the front of B. We'd already gotten out our blankets so we wrapped up in those and then wrapped a mylar sheet around that. We'd bought the bigger hand warmers to use, so I had one down the back of my shirt and one in my hands. That warmer and the wrap did a pretty good job of keeping me warm, although my feet got pretty cold. I told Chris I felt like a microwave burrito. Still it wasn't bad at all.

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[URL='https://flic.kr/p/22kEGwo']
A little before 5, they moved up the wheel chair racers and then led corral A up. We left shortly after that and they walked us past the other corrals and sort of up and down until we were lined up for the start.

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Once they sang the anthem, we rolled up our blankets and put those and the mylar sheets in the backpack and got ready to start! We were in the first wave of the B corral, so we got off to an early start! YAY!! The first mile or so was a bit difficult just because my feet had gotten totally numb. I felt like I had ice blocks for feet. Not fun! Plus it was just dark and kinda boring, but eventually my feet thawed out and things got better. We had decided not to run intervals and just run straight stopping for any pictures we wanted. I was pretty excited to be running my first Disney 5K, so I didn't really keep good track of where we were or what was going on. LOL. But pretty soon we saw the first character stop and got in a stupidly long line!

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Afterward I thought we probably could have skipped this one since we have several race photos with Chip & Dale, but whatever. I was just excited for my first character photo. I think not too long after this, we did loop around and then enter Epcot. It was awesome running through Epcot with everything lit up and the torches blazing and Disney tunes blaring. WE were having a BLAST!!

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Honestly, I was pretty giddy running in here plus I'd warmed up enough to pull of my sweatshirt at least! I was clearly all about the grey stuff now in my dress code!

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Again we saw another character coming up. One we'd gotten before and with a stupid long line, but what the heck!

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I really do love this picture though!

A bit further down was vacation Genie. We've had Genie before, although not sure we've had vacation Genie, but the line was crazy long by this point, so we opted just for a quick shot of him in the background instead.

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I honestly have no recollection of how the course was going at this point, but I do know we came upon the phone booths and decided to get a little silly. Hello? Anybody there?
https://flic.kr/p/23qm1kX​

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Oh, hey, look who it is!

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Yeah, we are just that corny.

On we ran and of course had to get a selfie with Spaceship Earth.

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We were getting close to the end when we spied another character line that was surprisingly short for a unusual character. WE jumped in line and while waiting talked with a woman in front of us who told us her plan for the half was to change outfits at each mile marker! WHAT??? She was also running as the house from UP for the marathon with 26 balloons for each mile that she would pop at each marker. Craziness!

Look who it is!

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Horace!! I was surprised more people didn't stop for him. Their loss was our gain though! Love this one.

From there it was just a short distance more and we were headed toward the finish line.

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And just like that the race was over. No finish line photos though. Maybe they don't take them for the 5k? Who knows? Still our first race of the weekend was down and it was so much fun. Loved every minute of it. Running through Epcot in the dark with the music playing was fantastic. I see why people lament the old marathon course that started that way. It was amazing. We collected our medals, new mylar sheets, the bananas and boxes and headed for the buses. We had a full day ahead of us! No rest for the weary at a runDisney trip.

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Next up: MK and just how long does it take to get there from the Poly?


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[TeeterTots]

Yay! 5K day! What a super fun race! Great pics!! You two are such a cute couple!

 

[Capang]

Reading all these trip reports of the races makes me cold

The 5k looks like so much fun! I’d love to run Epcot in the dark, I may just have to one of these years.

I wonder if that lady really did change closthes each mile of the half? That seems time consuming...

Love all of your pics! Looks like you guys had a blast!

 

[Sailormoon2]

Your phone booth shots are hilarious!! How FUN!

her plan for the half was to change outfits at each mile marker! WHAT??? She was also running as the house from UP for the marathon with 26 balloons for each mile that she would pop at each marker. Craziness!

That is the most wonderful, craziest thing I have ever heard! I wonder if she actually did it??!!

Running through Epcot in the dark with the music playing was fantastic. I

This is the best part of the 5K for me too. Epcot is beautiful in the dark!

 

[rteetz]

Looks like you two had a great time!

Chris told me about that lady at Hurricane Hannahs. I then talked to someone after the half and said they saw her doing it!

1 done 3 to go!

 

[Ariel484]

YES! Running through a dark Epcot is justue best!!

Smart to bring the blankets and the hand warmers, Chris is such a trooper for carrying them in that backpack!

You know...the character lines during the 5K are so annoying but it never occurred to me to just other pics around Epcot - love the phone booth ones! You guys are so smart!

Poor Horace. People just must not know who he is.