Marathon Weekend 2027

[The Expert]

Since most work gets done over Zoom, Teams, and email these days, being “around” from Disney seems totally workable. You’ll be back to your resort and available well before any of your team get to the office.

This! I'm also in a very small department and every role is critical. When I did almost-Dopey to Dumbo the year the DL races came back, I went directly from Orlando to Anaheim and was away from home for almost two full weeks. I took my work laptop and was able to keep up on everything, taking only five total days of PTO over that whole period -- and two of those were for travel. I stayed on the race wakeup schedule and was even able to do quite a bit of park time. I made clear that I was "on call" if something came up on those working days, joined a few random calls from my phone, and had my laptop in the car just in case. It worked out really well.

 

[jrsharp21]

I have run into this situation in the past. I am the director of a department of nine employees and have about fifty others in the field that my team oversees in a way. Being that it's accounting, MW always falls during our year end close. I always register assuming it's going to be no problem if I go and work from the resort. One of my co-workers, manager in a different department but rolls up into the same boss, decided he wanted to start doing MW. One year our boss pretty much told us that he didn't think it was a good idea we were both gone for year end. He also said that in years past it was okay, but not sure it would be okay going forward. I pretty much told him that if that was the case, he would be searching for a new director. LOL. So essentially I am working from the resort the first couple of days each year. Heck, one year I worked outside Starbucks at Disney Springs, out by the water. LOL. I usually will work half day in the morning and then head to the parks, but answer emails while waiting in line for rides.

 

[Disneyhanna]

My job is remote and I use company provided internet at home, which is pretty slow, like 25mbps. When I worked at Disney over marathon weekend the wifi speeds in my room were like 150+ mbps for both upload and download. Files that take me a minute to save at home took a few seconds to save! I told my boss I should just work at Disney going forward!

 

[PrincessV]

Feeling pretty jealous of all these sane telework policies lol! My employer’s are draconian in contrast: no telework outside of 50 miles from the office, can’t telework in any week with holidays or vacation days. My job is 100% online and there are so many days I’d love to take my laptop to EPCOT to work, but it’s more than 50 miles away, so…

 

[accm]

I work in construction, so can't work remotely. But everyone at my work also knows that my vacation requests are actually vacation notifications. I will work 7 days a week, however many hours required, but you will not mess with my trips.

Feeling pretty jealous of all these sane telework policies lol! My employer’s are draconian in contrast: no telework outside of 50 miles from the office, can’t telework in any week with holidays or vacation days. My job is 100% online and there are so many days I’d love to take my laptop to EPCOT to work, but it’s more than 50 miles away, so…

This is ridiculous and arbitrary. What difference does it make if you're 15mi or 75mi away? Also, how would they even know?

 

[PrincessV]

This is ridiculous and arbitrary. What difference does it make if you're 15mi or 75mi away? Also, how would they even know?

Yep. It’s dumb and everyone hates it. But it’s possibly the least toxic thing going on in our org, and with constant threats of taking away telework altogether, we just keep our heads down and take it. The only justification we’ve been given is that this is to keep things “fair” for those employees whose work cannot be done remotely. (Never mind that we worked 100% remotely for 2 YEARS during the COVID shutdown and received constant praise for how well we performed!)

 

[sandam1]

But everyone at my work also knows that my vacation requests are actually vacation notifications.

This is me too. I had a toxic boss for 10 years and at one point he lost his gourd during a staff meeting because someone was taking a specific day off (for a medical appointment!) because he might need them that day. Afterwards, I said to a co-worker that the day I have a vacation request denied is the day that I'm done. However, said boss was also a bully/coward and knew better than to mess with me.

Thankfully, said boss has been retired for 2+ years and my amazing new boss wholeheartedly believes in work-life balance and treating his staff like responsible adults that can plan ahead to make sure that things are covered. Whenever I go on vacation, I usually give updates on how to reach me in an emergency (i.e. whether I plan on checking email and how often or if text/calling is better), but that's my personal preference. I have other co-workers go radio-silence when they are on vacation and that's perfectly acceptable too.

 

[fatmanatee]

I think a few of us are in similar positions with this being a tough weekend to work around. I'm lucky to be able to do this remote (we're back to three days per week in office so ill have to make that up afterwards) but couldn't take any days off and was working 10 hour days last year. This time I'm aiming to fly in Sunday just in case I have to work late again.

 

[marty3d]

My job is remote and I use company provided internet at home, which is pretty slow, like 25mbps. When I worked at Disney over marathon weekend the wifi speeds in my room were like 150+ mbps for both upload and download. Files that take me a minute to save at home took a few seconds to save! I told my boss I should just work at Disney going forward!

I’ve also found Disney WiFi at the resorts to be very good. I’ve worked outside on the Boardwalk a couple of times and was able to do video Teams calls no problem. I will argue that being able to sit on the BW and work is a productivity boost over my home office!

Though I did get several comments from colleagues on the view

 

[The Expert]

Also, how would they even know?

I would 100% be testing this theory. And if they ARE tracking, blame it on wonky internet and install a VPN for next time.

 

[marty3d]

I would 100% be testing this theory. And if they ARE tracking, blame it on wonky internet and install a VPN for next time.

While I’m allowed to work from anywhere globally (with the exception of a handful of countries that I’m not even allowed to bring my laptop to) I do know the Cisco software on my laptop logs my location and It can’t be disabled - not for employee tracking but for security. I suspect that’s not uncommon on corporate devices.

 

[The Expert]

While I’m allowed to work from anywhere globally (with the exception of a handful of countries that I’m not even allowed to bring my laptop to) I do know the Cisco software on my laptop logs my location and It can’t be disabled - not for employee tracking but for security. I suspect that’s not uncommon on corporate devices.

Yeah, mine does too, I think. So that was somewhat in jest. But I sincerely don't understand why it matters so much. I've managed people for decades and my philosophy has always been if your work is good, you're reachable when you say you will be, and it's not a huge distraction to everyone else, work wherever, whenever and however works best for you.

 

[Fenway1970]

I like where your head is at! I’ve thought about trying to casually mention why I’m trying to be gone (though part of me is wary of trying to sell her on the merits of my 4th Disney trip in five years). I don’t know.

On one hand, I feel very fortunate to even have the half and full available to me and maybe/hopefully the 10K, but OTOH, if I got just a *liiiiiiiiiitle* bit more time, I get the full Dopey.

I’ve got a great boss, but she’s risk averse, we have a small team, and I don’t blame her for wanting at least one of us around in case something hits the fan. IDK, I’ll keep mulling it over.

Oof that does stink and hopefully sometime in the next 8 months you can work something out with her. Personally, I think the fact that it's your fourth Disney trip in five years should be immaterial to the decision. Your vacation time is part of your compensation for working there and what you do with it is completely up to you and none of your employer's business. If you wanted to spend every single one of your vacation days at Disney, I don't think anyone here would fault you.

Anyway, if being able to work remotely on Wednesday and or Thursday is a suitable compromise for your boss I can also attest to WDW's wifi and the ease at which this can be done. I've done Dopey the past two years with a friend who is also a coworker and rather than burn vacation days right out of the gate in January she typically works remotely on Expo and 5K day. She is a manager herself and does get calls and questions from her team when we are there. Obviously different employers have different rules but if you can convince your boss that are able to handle remotely anything that might arise, it's absolutely doable from WDW.

As an aside, I really wish rD would allow us to delegate bib pickups as most non-Disney races do. I'm sure many of us would be happy to pick up your bibs for you if we could. But that's a different discussion.

 

[PrincessV]

I do know the Cisco software on my laptop logs my location and It can’t be disabled - not for employee tracking but for security. I suspect that’s not uncommon on corporate devices.

Yep, that. Plus I can’t install/uninstall anything on my work laptop, and have to use its VPN to do work outside of my desktop. So I assume they can see where people are, if they ever choose to. They’ve lost a lot of great employees over it, but don’t care because the job market sucks and they can just replace them with less-great employees at lower salaries… but then wonder why morale is low. Just a few more years until retirement…

 

[Naomeri]

My boss is totally the opposite on vacation days--it's part of our monthly 1:1s that she nags us about using our PTO

I'm sure she would be completely in favor of my traveling with my laptop and working from where ever I wanted, but there's no possible way I could do most of my job on a single 15 inch screen--one of my tasks requires 6 different windows to be used (not simultaneously, but I need to see and interact with varying combinations of 2 at all times)