Marathon Impact on park days?

[Dreamport]

My father is looking to bring the family back down to Disney for his birthday next February. This time, the trip would coincide with the beginning of the Princess Half Marathon rather than barely catching the traffic at the end. In the past, has there been a significant difference on marathon mornings in park opening hours or the ability to get to the parks (namely Epcot and MK) if using Disney transportation from Pop Century? Should I try to steer him toward looking earlier the month (not sure if he'd go for super early to avoid President's Day) or pushing the trip back into March with Epcot's Garden Festival going on? What would you do?

Normally we would just work around anything going on, but since we're hoping to bring along a pair of first-timer family friends the pressure is on to make sure optimal park time can be applied. My father's the financier and final decision maker; I'm merely the planner with the awesome message board helpers. I do know changes are taking place with paid added morning hours to certain days which may throw things off anyway. Thanks in advance for any advice or insight.

 

[bumbershoot]

The hours, as far as I know, are the same. You definitely want to use onsite transportation, though, because they do have closures of roads as the runners finish up and the water stations, etc, are taken up after the Half on Sunday.