WDW Marathon Day One

It's been five weeks since my last posting? Really? REALLY?

Sheesh... I'm surprised I haven't been stormed and forced to blog at gunpoint... Oh wait, that's right - no one really reads this thing anyway... Except for you Andy junkies... You know who you are...

So let's see - I ran my marathon, which was awesome... So let's say I give you a rundown about that, for all you crazies out there...

WDW Marathon Weekend: Day One, Saturday Jan. 9, 2010

First off, when you book a race for January, you make sure to do it in a warm weather spot - the Carribean, Southern California, Death Valley maybe - and certainly central Florida, while not South Beach, should be a nice spot to run when the rest of the country is dealing with snow and ice...

Unless of course I AM THE ONE booking the race... Then it's guaranteed to be the coldest winter in Florida in decades, and guess what?! IT WAS! Lucky me! Just to give you a feel for what it SHOULD be like this time of year:

Ignore the rain forecast and you can see lows in the mid-50's and highs in the mid-70's, on average...That was not the forecast on Marathon weekend - instead, this is what I got:

Yeah, you read that right - RECORD LOWS IN THE TEENS!

Ugh...But I digress... Let me take you into a magical world of freezing rain, cloudy skies, and empty parks...

I got to my hotel, the Disney All-Star Sports Resort late late late Friday night after flying much of the evening, but at least I got this little surprise on my 4-hour flight from Dallas:

Yup... empty middle seat baby! The weekend is starting off RIGHT!

Then I got to the hotel where this little surprise was waiting for me...

Cute right? Well, that was about the only cute thing about the hotel... don't get me wrong, it was fine for what it was, but lacking in what you would expect a Disney hotel to be... Which leads me to this:

That's a picture of how I had to cook my food that first night. You see, carbo-loading for a marathon isn't a night-before situation - it takes many days of building cards, and so to save money I bought the little do-it-in-the-microwave pasta dishes and decided I would eat those instead of spending boucous Disney bucks on whatever they had there... Well, there was no microwave in the room... There was no microwave in the lobby... There. Was. No. Microwave.

So I had to improvise. In what can only be described as a genius mashup (GLEE word) of Man vs. Wild with McGuyver, I fashioned a way to make my pasta... I filled the little container with the pasta and as hot water as I could get from the tap, then covered the container with a towel and then placed the iron on top, on the hottest steam setting, allowing the water to hear even more... All the while I had the sauce, in it's little packet, sitting under the tap as the hottest water ran over it, heating the sauce...I did this twice, to two containers of pasta, and let me tell you one thing that I learned: When booking a hotel, make sure there's a microwave accessible, otherwise your pasta is going to be pretty gross and raw...

Anyway, by the time I got to bed that night, I only had a few hours to sleep before I had to get up to do as many of the parks as I could -

When I got out of my room I could finally see what the hotel looked like - pretty cool, I must say... And then it was ON TO THE PARKS!

I started at MGM Studios because it's got awesome rides, and Disney actually does this really cool thing where if you are staying at one of their resort hotels, they open at least one park an hour early for you to enjoy before all the others - on Saturdays it's MGM, so I made sure that was first -

My strategy was to rush into the park (The gates opened for us guests at 8:00, I was there at 7:58) get to the rides I had previously-mapped out as quickly as I could, then move on to the next park...

Well, little did I know that because of the RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES and freezing rain, that I would practically have the park to myself! HECK YEAH BOOSH!

I power-walked from the gate to Aerosmith, a completely indoors roller coaster, was the first one on (along with ten of my closest friends) and then WALKED ON AGAIN RIGHT AFTER! No line whatsoever - it was amazing!

From there it was a close walk to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and again walked right on without a line! This was great! Especially since in all my many times visiting DW I've never been able to ride the Tower because of this or that reason - but not only did I ride it, I RODE IT TWICE, and it's a LOT of fun!

I was making great time, and was happy as I hot-footed it straight to Toy Story Mania, where you sit in a car and shoot virtual 3-D objects at fair-type attractions - it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I did it, so now I can skip it the next time...

Then I made the long trek all the way across the park to a boyhood favorite - STAR TOURS! It wasn't as great as I remembered, but a goodie nonetheless, and with no line, how can you complain?? That completed my Hollywood Studios adventure, and I was off to the Magic Kingdom!

The second longest wait I had all day was for the transport to the MK from Hollywood - the half marathon was just ending at this point and Disney was using a lot of the busses, quite rightly, as courtesy transport to and from the hotels from the half marathon finish, which was at Epcot (which is why I decided to stay away from there and do that park last)... Anyway, I had to wait for about 20 minutes for a bus, but that's okay...

I got to the MK and I was expecting a much larger crowd because by this time all the parks had opened to everyone in the general public - I was wrong...

The Magic Kingdom was just as deserted as Hollywood was! I was SO STOKED! I headed straight for Tomorrowland to get in line for the greatest Disney ride of them all - the Grandaddy known as SPACE MOUNTAIN! But wait... no line? Go through twice without waiting? For a rollercoaster that's completely inside and totally in the dark? DON'T MIND IF I DO!

It was amazing - I'm really not sure there's a greater feeling in the WORLD than walking into a rollercoaster, and then doing it again!

After Space Mountain I was incredibly giddy, and I headed straight for the Buzz Lightyear ride, where you shoot lazers at stuff and rack up points... it's all under black lights with really cool colors, and it was another one that I can cross off the list and not go back to again...

From Tomorrowland I took the Northern route through Toon Town, Ariel's Gratto and It's a Small World, Dumbo's Elephant Ride and Peter Pan's Magic Flight, and no I didn't feel the need to do anything other than walk past these things at a pretty brisk pace...

I got to my destination: Liberty Square, where I poked my head into the Hall of Presidents, and then walked onto the Haunted Mansion - which was a nice respite after walking clear across the park in the freezing rain... it's a really great resting ride, with some old-school "scary" surprises that'll make you smile and remember the haunted fun house at the State Fair... or maybe that's just me...

From there, it was on to Frontierland, where after riding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (literally the only outdoor ride I did all day) I hoped over to Splash Mountain:

Really? 30 degrees, freezing rain, AND Splash Mountain is closed... Sheesh...

Well there was really only one thing left to do before I made my way to Epcot:

That's right, Yo Ho Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life For Me...

I tried tried tried to get pictures inside the ride, but it was so dark that none of them came out... Oh well... it was great - This isn't a thrill ride, and it's not really that exciting, but floating down that indoor river watching animatronic pirates hoist rum, single-shot black powder pistols, and wenches... well, it just makes me happy...

From there I took a quick trip down Main Street USA and out the front door, on my way to the final park of the day, Epcot!

When I walked into the gates, I immediately noticed that there were far more people here than at the other parks - no biggie - this was my last park of the day and I could stand to wait in a line or two at this point...

After a quick stop to say hi to my good friend Figment (of your imagination...) I stopped into what I knew was going to be the longest line of the day, and for good reason:

Soarin' is an AMAZING ride that takes you IMAX-style through the whole country and back again - I cannot describe to anyone still reading this (why, btw, are you still reading this??) how cool this ride was, and how worth it the 30-minute wait was. If on a day like this I had to wait 30 minutes for a shot at this ride, I cannot imagine how long the line must be on regular days...

After that I knew it was going to be downhill, so I'm glad I saved it for next-to-last - by this time I had been in the parks for about five hours, basically speed-walking non-stop in the rain and riding transport between parks - my dogs were barkin' and I thought I'd better put them to sleep because, let's face it, I had 26.2 miles to run the next day...

So I speeded on to my last two rides of the day: Mission Space and Test Track (where I saw a glimpse of what my future kids might look like:

Neither was really that great (probably because they were at the end of a long day that had

experienced amazing highs) but there were no lines for either of them, so what can you do??

As I had no interest in taking in the villages of Epcot, I exited and headed to the Sports Complex where I was going to pick up my race packet for the following day, and seriously, a race expo is SO FUN... if you're into running and gear and being a nerd about it, which I am...

After I picked up my race number, it was back to the hotel where I splurged on two plates of restaurant pasta, breadsticks and powerade and then headed back up to my room.

One-half of the Dallas Cowboys football game later and my light was out and I was asleep...

Friday, January 29, 2009