WDW Marathon trip planning part 3

This will (probably) be my last post before my trip - even though I do have one last outstanding decision. I am writing this while sitting on the porch of our condo in Costa Rica. It's New Years Eve and I think I've had quite enough sun so I thought I'd make this last post before the big Florida trip. I'll be posting a write-up on Costa Rica in the next few days.

First, the final bits are in place. I put in a lunch reservation at Be Our Guest Restaurant at 1:00 on Tuesday. I also signed up for a Illuminations dessert party and "Bling Fest" (showing off race medals) sponsored by the Mickey Miles Podcast on Sunday night after the marathon. This has necessitated my decision to upgrade to a park-hopper since Kirk and I will be in MK before the party. This is fine because its always more convenient to have a park-hopper. Finally, our wait list request for Old Key West came through. We were really hoping for this to happen because the rooms at OKW are signicantly larger and the studios have 2 beds instead of one bed and a fold-out sofa.

Lastly I did make changes to our FP+ reservations for Thursday after the 5k. I made a 9:25 reservation for "Mission Space" that we have no intention of using. I won't get to Epcot until about 11:00. We have "Soaring'" at 10:35 and "Nemo and Friends" at 11:35. This way we will have used all three FP+ reservations early enough to hopefully get one for "Test Track" later.  That one last outstanding decision is whether to go to a breakfast meet-up on Thursday morning at Epcot. As of this writing I have not decided, although I think I have to decide soon. I'll see...

That's it. We are all set for our trip. I'm looking forward to seeing some of my Disney runner friends!

WDW Marathon trip planning part 2

A bit of an update on trip planning for my trip to Walt Disney World for the WDW Marathon weekend.

First, I purchased my pass. I got a 5-day single park pass. Because of my race schedule I am not planning any park hopping. In my previous post I mentioned that, if I wanted to park hop on Monday (the one day I might want to park-hop) I could always buy a sixth day. Turns out, I was informed by a reader that Disney does not allow that. No biggie, it just means no park hopping on Monday either. As I mentioned, Kirk has an AP so if he wants to park-hop while I'm doing the races he can do that.

Second, I was able to procure our FP+ reservations. I had heard that getting reservations for Toy Story Midway Mania, Soarin' and especially Seven Dwarfs Mine Train can be tough. So, I went online at midnight on the day they became available to procure those reservations. (And this was on a night when I had a 6AM flight the next morning - oh the things I will do for a perfect trip!) It was worth the effort, however, and I got exactly what I wanted. Here is a list of what I got:

Wednesday January 7:

• 9:15 - 10:15: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
• 10:15 - 11:15: Toy Story Midway Mania
• 11:15 - 12:15: Star Tours

Kirk does not like Star Tours so that will be me riding twice. We could not get a reservation for Rock 'n Roller Coaster because you have to chose between that and TSMM, and TSMM is harder to get. After we have done all 3 hopefully we can get a RnRC reservation for later.

Thursday January 8:

• 9:25 - 10:25: Mission Space
• 10:35 - 11:35: Soarin'
• 11:50 - 12:50: Character Meet & Greet

We actually won't be arriving until 11 (at least I won't). The MS ressie is just so that we go through our 3 reservations early enough to get a reservation later for Test Track (you can't do both Test Track and Soarin', and again Soarin' is harder to get)

Friday January 9 & Saturday January 10:

No reservations as I won't be park touring. I told Kirk to let me know if he wants me to get any reservations for him.

Sunday January 11:

• 5:10 - 6:10: Space Mountain
• 6:20 - 7:20: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
• 7:20 - 8:20: Pirates of the Caribbean

This is Marathon day and I won't get there until about 5. I talked to Kirk about it and offered to make separate reservations for him earlier, but he said he'd rather we use our reservations later together. The main thing was that we wanted to ride SDMT for the first time in the dark Mission accomplished.

Monday January 12:

• 9:20 - 10:20: Soarin'
• 10:20 - 11:20: The Seas with Nemo & Friends
• 11:20 - 12:02: Journey into Imagination

We may not use the Figment reservation. The important thing is to get a reservation for Test Track - and maybe even Soarin' again - later if we can.

Tuesday January 13:

• 9:45 - 10:45: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
• 10:45 - 11:45: Space Mountain
• 11:45 - 12:45: Peter Pan Flight

I'm hoping we'll be able to get a reservation later for Enchanted Tales with Belle. We'll see.

I haven't changed all of the touring plans to reflect the FP+ reservations - I'm still playing aorund with that. All that's left for me to do is (hopefully) get a lunch reservation at Be Our Guest.

That's it for now!