Shades of Green for Marathon?

[Texa]

Has anyone ever stayed at SOG when participating in the marathon? Do they provide transportation? I suppose if we stayed there I could just walk to the POLY to catch the monorail.

Thanks!

 

[windwalker]

Has anyone ever stayed at SOG when participating in the marathon? Do they provide transportation? I suppose if we stayed there I could just walk to the POLY to catch the monorail.

Thanks!

I have questionsd about SOG also:

Can you use disney dinning?

Buses to the parks?

Do you get locker inspections?

I'm retired from the USAF so I can stay there. But I think I have to clean my room every day and pull kitchen duty.

Dave

 

[goingthedistance]

I stayed at SOG for the full for my first Goofy in 2006. They had busses that took us to the marathon staging area in the morning. There were quite a few people at SOG for the marathon, but we were still able to get on the first bus out. I do not know if they have transportation to the EXPO (I would assume they do) because I stayed at the Contemporary for the 1/2 (my in-laws are retired Air Force and did not arrive until Saturday) and went to the EXPO from there. Worst case scenario, you could take the SOG bus to MGM and then take the Wide World of Sports bus from MGM to the EXPO, or you could walk to the Poly and take their bus to the EXPO.

Coming back from the marathon, we decided to take the monorail from EPCOT to Poly, and then walked from the Poly to SOG. Again, I imagine there is a bus to SOG from the finish line, but we didnt want to waste effort searching for a bus that might not be there.

That said, SOG does have transportation to all of the Disney parks. They have a bus schedule available that gives the times of departure both ways. They have a shuttle called the Shady Shuttle that goes from SOG to the street at the Poly, but it is a short enough walk that the shuttle is not necessary. I personally used the monorail from the Poly for EPCOT and MK. My father-in-law had a rental car (because the Magical Express does not service SOG and you have to get to SOG from the airport somehow) and we used the rental car for AK and MGM.

From what I understand, you cannot use DDP when you are at SOG. You can use extra magic hours.

We had a view over the pool and we had a balcony, which provided a view of the fireworks from MK every night, which was nice.

No, we didn't have locker inspections but I did have my mother-in-law in the next room, which is scary enough (just kidding ) .

Paul

 

[Jen117]

No, we didn't have locker inspections but I did have my mother-in-law in the next room, which is scary enough (just kidding ) .
Paul

I had the same at WL this past January... and yes it was scarey!!!!

 

[thndrmatt]

DW have stayed there regularly (and got married there) and were there again the night before the marathon. We decided we were durned tired after the half and the drive down, so we went with the total opposite to the "commando" technique on marathon morning.

We set our alarms for 4:30, left by 5:00, drove to Epcot (don't think the buses were running after 5), basically skipping all the traffic because we were coming from the north instead of the south like everyone else (and after 5 there are barely any cars coming in anyway, seems most everyone drives in earlier), parked in the Epcot lot, I was through the lettered tents and headed toward the corrals by 5:30, and ended up meeting up with Howard and company in our corral at about 5:45 or so. If you value your sleep, and don't mind using the speedwalk/jog from the expo area to the actual start line as your warm up, and stretching for 15 min prior to the start is enough, then this will work.

Granted you miss out on all the mad corral love, so it's up to you.

 

[Texa]

Great info! Thanks everyone. We were really leaning towards the POLY but it's hard to justify the price when you can stay right across the street. I wasn't sure SOG participated in provided transportation to the marathons though. Thanks!