Laura's Disney Lines

Mike Scopa has been writing some interesting blog entries on running and one of the things he's been talking about is the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 13K run, to be held this October 27.

It just so happens that Lee and I will be in Florida then, on our bi-annual Food and Wine Festival Trip...so when I received the email announcement about the race several months ago I thought it sounded great! But then I realized that it's scheduled on the only Saturday night of our stay, which meant we had to choose between Party for the Senses and the race. We talked about it and the race won out - how many times do you have the opportunity to participate in an inaugural event? (And it didn't hurt that we recently attended Taste, the Disneyland version of Party for the Senses and had such a great time that we don't feel such a need to do it in Florida. We figure we'll do some other dinner/special event that week instead.)

I've run the Disney World Half Marathon, the Disney World Marathon, and the Disneyland Half Marathon, so 13K doesn't sound TOO bad...but it'll be the first race I've ever run at night...plus it's in Florida in October - which means higher temperatures and humidity than I'm used to here in CA. I'm a cool weather runner so I'm a little nervous about that...but I know I can always walk if I need to and still finish well within the time limit. The race sounds like great fun!

So, Mike, in answer to your question...Yes, you'll see us in October. :-)

And how about the rest of you - are YOU ready to take the Scopa Challenge?

Laura

p.s. For those interested...my AllEarsNet.com reports on the Disney races I've done are on-line:

2005 WDW Half Marathon
2006 WDW Marathon
2006 Disneyland Half Marathon

One week from now is the Tower of Terror 13K race. I did my last "long" training run (6 miles) Saturday morning - I'll do a couple of my regular 4 milers this week and then we leave on Friday morning.

For a change the 3 hour time difference between California and Florida will actually work in our *favor*, since the 9:30 p.m. start time of the race is only 6:30 to us. It's about time things worked out that way. :-) It's going to be SO nice not to have to get up at 3:00 a.m. to get ready for a race!

We plan to take it fairly easy on Saturday - we'll probably pick up our race packets that morning and maybe wander around Epcot a little, though on a Saturday during the Food and Wine Festival it's going to be pretty busy! And we don't want to stuff ourselves with exotic foods that day anyway - don't want to risk an upset stomach right before the race!

It's strange how very *little* information there is so far on this race - we've done the marathon and half marathon where we got LOTS of information in advance about the race, including transportation to/from, what time we had to be when, etc., but there's been almost nothing on the ToT 13K - they are keeping us in the dark, so to speak...but maybe that just goes along with the theme of the race!

Since Lee and I are staying at the Boardwalk, I'm assuming we can just walk to/from the race instead of having to deal with buses - it's not really that long a walk.

And the weather...here's hoping for clear skies and a cool night!!! Right now (8:21 p.m. PDT/11:21 p.m. EDT) weather.com is reporting 75 in Orlando - 10 degrees warmer than I'd prefer - but their 10 day forecast shows a cooling trend late in the week, with a Saturday low of 67, so that's a lot better for me! Hope the "Isolated Thunder-Storms" in the forecast are isolated to areas not over the race course...though I suppose it WOULD provide a lot of atmosphere. :-)

We're not going for time at all - I'll have my trusty tiny Canon SD300 with me and will be taking lots of pictures. I hope there will lots of fun surprises and character interactions. If we get hot/tired and need to walk, we will. One other thing working in our favor: we train in hilly San Diego, so it will be very nice to run in flat Florida where the largest "hill" we'll face will be an overpass or two!

So much for my random rambling thoughts on the race...at least for now.

...Are no match for Mother Nature. As I'm sure you've seen on the news, there are multiple wildfires burning in southern California, including two very large ones in San Diego County. One out of every three people in San Diego County has had to evacuate their home at some point since Sunday. Fortunately, Lee and I have been able to stay put, and our home was never threatened. As I write this on Tuesday night the Santa Ana winds have died down and the winds are primarily coming from the ocean now, which has helped firefighters tremendously. There are still areas burning out of control, though.

The air quality here has been quite poor (not surprisingly!), and we've had to stay inside and limit activity as much as possible. So, it appears I won't get in any of my training runs this week. In the grand scheme of things that's certainly quite unimportant, of course! For a while we were wondering if we'd be able to leave as scheduled this Friday morning, since if there was any chance of the fire getting close to us we'd want to be here to evacuate the cats and our computers. Things are looking pretty good at this point, though of course we will be watching the situation closely.

Please think good thoughts for the firefighters and all those who have been evacuated, and especially those who have lost their homes.

Laura

We dared to run 13K, and we survived. :-)

Quick recap: This year is the 13th anniversary of the Tower of Terror and back in April or May Disney announced the Tower of Terror 13K and 6.5K, which as it turned out were being held the weekend that we already had a trip planned. So we signed up. Fast forward to race day...we took it easy all day and walked over to the Studios from the Boardwalk on Saturday evening - it was a night race and not scheduled to start until 9:30.

It had rained a fair bit earlier in the day but it was dry by racetime - dry being a relative term, since the humidity was about 157%. Even though the temperature was about 70 degrees, we were sweating profusely quite quickly once we started running. The race course started on the parking lot access road and went back out to World Drive under the "Welcome to Walt Disney World" archway, then doubled back on itself before getting onto Osceola Parkway. That was a little bit of an uphill - we had to chuckle at all the people who were complaining about it, since it was barely a bump in the road by San Diego standards.

Once we got alongside Wide World of Sports we had an off-road section, where we turned onto a dirt/gravel road. This was somewhat challenging because it was dark, even with the lights they had set up, and there were a lot of puddles to skirt around because of the rain earlier in the day. This was apparently the "Haunted Forest" section of the course, because there were a lot of Cast Members dressed in white shirts and pants on this section, who were banging pots, making moaning noises, running beside different people saying "I love you", crouching in the bushes saying: "Help me, help me", etc. Some of them were into it a little too much, maybe (Lee says that he thinks they were Cast Members who had been working at "it's a small world" for too long)...when we got into the Wide World of Sports complex itself there was a woman with a belt whipping it against a light post yelling: "Play with me! Who's gonna play with me!" :-) At Wide World of Sports we got to take a lap around the track and run on the grass of one of the big fields. We eventually made a loop around the complex and went out the parking lot entrance back onto Osceola Parkway, and passed the 4 mile mark not long after that.

After another overpass (higher than the first, but I didn't hear so many complaints on this one), we ended up back on World Drive again, where we got this feeling of deja vu as we passed back through the starting area again. We came into the Studios by the parade gate near Sid Cahuenga's. At the corner of Hollywood Blvd we saw Deb Wills and Masayo Kano cheering runners on, and made a quick stop for greetings and photos. Up Hollywood Blvd and past the Commissary and then we wound around the Streets of America. Lee said it reminded him of one of my runs - around home I wind around the neighborhood streets to add distance (I can easily do a 7 mile run without backtracking and without getting more than 1.5 miles from home) - and it makes him crazy. :-) Eventually we ended up in the back of the park on the Lights, Motors, Action stage, where we could see ourselves on the big screen.

Somehow we got backstage on the road the Backstage Tour vehicles use, and ran through the big tunnel in the costuming/props area. We popped back into the park on Sunset Blvd where we could see people who had already finished the race, though we still had about .75 miles to go. Lee was doing really well but I was getting pretty tired - the humidity really takes it out of me. We ran back down Hollywood Blvd and ducked past Oscar's filling station into the the Fantasmic! amphitheater area and back behind it, then came around the corner behind the Tower of Terror to (finally!) the finish line. My goal had been to finish in under 1:30, and we came in at 1:29:31.

After the finish was the usual routine - get the timing chips cut off, get our medals, get our picture taken, and then go through the food line. Even though we'd had some water at all four water stops we were still really thirsty. To exit the runner's-only area we had to squeeze back into the park near the Rock'n'Roller Coaster fastpass machines - that was quite a choke point. After we drank our water and ate our brownies we were somewhat recovered and went to retrieve our baggage and change into the dry shirts we'd brought - the ones we'd run in were soaking wet. It felt really good to put on our dry Tower of Terror t-shirts!

The medal is very cool - it's quite a hefty piece of metal with a lot of detail. And the red elevator is on a spring - if you pull it down and let go it goes back up.

We met up with Deb and Masayo again near the Tower of Terror before they headed off. It was after midnight and we started to walk out of the park, but then decided that since it was the Tower of Terror 13K we should at least ride the Tower of Terror! There was a bit of a line, and it took about a half hour, but it was a fun ride. The bellhop warned us to hold onto any loose articles - like medals. :-) Good idea - getting bonked in the face by that thing wouldn't have been much fun! From there we walked back to Boardwalk - we were tired, but still felt good. Though we were glad our room was on the side of the Boardwalk closest to the Studios instead of the side closest to the Yacht Club! :-)

Though we had an ok time, overall I have to say that we were quite disappointed in the race - of the four Disney races we have done, this was the least "Disney-ish". I'll write more about that next time.

Race is over - now it's time to eat, drink, and be merry at the Food and Wine Festival. :-)

Laura

Last time I talked about the Tower of Terror race and how we did...and I mentioned that we were disappointed in it - it just wasn't up to Disney's standards. So here's all the reasons why we thought that.

The Good

It didn't rain. :-) Ok, so Disney has no control over the weather, but there was the possibility of rain in the forecast, and we were relieved when it didn't rain.

It was quite a small race by Disney standards - between the 6.5K and the 13K there were only 4000 participants. That sure made it at lot nicer at the start area, and at the start of the race. They also started the 6.5K 6 minutes later than the 13K, so that helped lessen the congestion that you always have at the beginning of a race.

The medals are really very nice - Disney really knows how to do medals! The sliding elevator is a very clever touch, and you know they spent some money on the medals.

As always, the volunteers and Cast Members were amazing - so helpful and upbeat. There weren't a lot of specators for this race until we got back to the Studios at about mile 6.5, so in a lot of areas there was just a lone Cast Member waving and yelling encouragement. The four water stops were well-staffed with plenty of people handing out cups.

The race shirt is actually a t-shirt and not a cool-max running shirt, which means I can actually wear it for something other than running. The shirt also is NOT covered with advertisements for the race sponsors like the cool-max shirts always are.

The race party was really a nice idea - it gave family and friends something to do in those 1-3 hours while the runners were out on the course. And it seemed like the spectactors were having a lot of fun dancing to the music and hanging out.

It was nice having a race that started at 9:30 p.m. instead of 6:00 a.m. - which meant there was no reason to get up at an ungodly hour and then stand around for two hours in the cold waiting for the race to start.

For a night race the course was fairly well-lit - there was one section on the off-road part where one of the lights was out, but with the other lights in the area it was still possible to see.

Lee says they had plenty of porta-potties near the start of the race. :-)

The Bad

There was very little information available on the race until a short time before. The course map wasn't published until a couple of weeks before, and all of the other race information, like what time we needed to be there, what transportation there was, what to do about baggage, etc. was not available until two days before the race. We also never received any kind of race packet, and I'm used to getting that in the mail from Disney about two months before the race! There was no information saying that we wouldn't get a packet, so I was concerned - and so were people on some of the other Disney running bulletin boards - at least until we found out we were all in the same boat.

I'm used to Disney races starting on time...but this one started 20 minutes late. Since this was a night race and not a morning race, apparently they had delays in getting the roads cleared, which in turn delayed the start of the race. Since they didn't announce this until right at 9:30, when we were all crowded together awaiting the start of the race, that meant that we had another 20 minutes of being crowded together, instead of only "loosely packed" like runners are when the start is still a ways away.

When we arrived at the Studios, having walked over from the Boardwalk, there were no signs at all telling us where the start of the race was. We finally found a security guard who told us to keep going left along the sidewalk in front of the park and we'd see the tents. We weren't the only people who were confused - there were a lot of runners milling around the entrance to the park.

While we were running in the parks, there were no barriers or ropes keeping the spectators separated from the runners, and no Cast Members manning designated crossing areas, which meant spectators were on their own for crossing the race route. This wasn't a problem for us, but we heard other runners say that they almost got run over by strollers or almost ran into someone who was crossing in front of them.

The Ugly

There were NO Disney characters anywhere. Not at the start, not along the race course, not even at the finish area. What? How can it be a Disney race without characters?? If we couldn't have a spooky Mickey, at least Mickey dressed as a Tower of Terror bellhop would have been nice.

From the race write-up we were expecting some spooky surprises at various points along the way. All we got was the "Haunted Forest" section near Wide World of Sports - and those doing the 6.5K didn't even have that, since their route didn't go over to that area. So much for "the 6.5K only scares you half way and back" as stated in the race literature. No offense to the Cast Members, many of whom were wonderfully creepy, but that was really not a very good place for it - it was a one-lane gravel road and pretty narrow, and runners were having enough trouble keeping their footing and dodging puddles to really get what was going on.

The "course map" was a travesty. There were no mile markers, no indications of where the water stops would be, and no detail at all of what the course was inside the Studios. We couldn't even tell for sure where the start and finish lines were! The 6.5K map had a little bit more detail, but the course it showed inside the Studios did not actually reflect the real course at all, with all of the winding turns on the streets.

In Conclusion

Lee's comment, and I agree, is that this really felt like any other race put on by one of the big race companies - it just happened to be on Disney property. Other than the late start things actually went very well - it just didn't feel like a Disney race because it didn't have the special touches that those of us who have run Disney races are used to experiencing.

We can only hope that if the race returns next year, they will fix some of the issues above. If it hadn't been a Disney race we really wouldn't have any complaints (well, except the lack of information beforehand)...but it IS Disney, so our expectations were a lot higher.

I wanted to share some of the comments I've received from other participants in the Tower of Terror races and from the party attendees.

From Ray:
I couldn't agree more! This was one of the worst prepared races imaginable. No one had any "official" information-cast members to volunteers were all giving out conflicting information on course expectations and party information for those not running. Seemed like no one knew for sure exactly what was going on. This was reinforced by the traffic conditions that delayed the race start--Disney got surprised by the lack of coordination and communication. Add to that the lack of Disney touches on the race--no characters, or any real "specials" along the course and it became apparent this was not even 2nd rate as a race or event.
The medal was cool. The shirt was ok.
The water stops were well stocked and well manned.
The course was "easy"--for a 13k, pretty simple route.
Bad "show" for Disney--no seeminlgy thinking through any particulars of a race or of a Disney event for this (even the pre-race stuff on screen was lame).

From Susan:
Just a quick comment on the late start of the race Saturday. Since you walked over from the Boardwalk hotel you missed the horrible traffic jams that were taking place on all roads leading to the Studios. My sister and I stayed at the Caribbean and we left at 7:45pm, thinking that would be more than enough time to get to the Studios. We were wrong. At 8:15 we were still sitting in traffic, going absolutely no where. In order to even get out of the Caribbean you had to turn right, head toward Downtown Disney and make a u-turn. Finally, I drove to the Boardwalk hotel, and crossed there into the Studios parking lot. Traffic was backed up in all directions. A lady who came from a hotel on International Drive told me traffic was backed up to the Interstate and people were getting out and walking on the sides of the road and medians. The only way to be fair to all those people stuck in traffic was to delay the start of the race.

I think Disney really messed up in having no transportation for runners staying onsite. I also think having 4000 people trying to enter a parking lot while you are also emptying the parking lot of day guests was not the brightest idea either. All in all, though, my sister and I had a great time (6.5K) and we will definitely enter again next year.

From Patt:
This is only my second Disney race (having done the half marathon in 2006) and I enjoyed this race as much, if not more, than the half. We also did the 13K and liked the night atmosphere more than the morning/day. Anything I don't have to get up at 4:00 AM to do I like more. ;-) Agreed, this was the inaugural race and they do need to think things through a little. A coworker did the 5K and even she was saying she thought there should have been different medals. I'll be signing up for this race again next year.

From Masayo:
I agree, it's not a Disney race. It was pretty much a confusing and disorganized race I think. For us party goers (and race cheer stations/spectators) we got just that wrist band, no map or no directions on where we can cheer for runners or what else was going on. I'm so glad that I was with Deb, Beci, Mike Newell and Linda Mac on that night. I don't know if I could have enjoyed the night otherwise with such little information.

Walt Disney World is again holding the Tower of Terror 13K race in October this year. Lee and I ran the first one last year, and, well, we were less than impressed. As I wrote in my blog entry, it was a fine race, just not "Disney" at all, and not what we were expecting. So we were disappointed.

But....it turns out we are going to be at WDW this year on October 25 when the race is being held again, and so, gluttons for punishment that we are, we have signed up for this year's race, also. (And signing up for the race also SAVES us from being gluttons at that night's Party for the Senses! :-) )

A few things I noticed about this year's race that are a little bit different...

• There's no 6.5K this year - only one race, the 13K.
• The price has increased significantly - $85 this year as opposed to $65 last year.
• The start time of the race has been pushed back to 10:00 instead of 9:30 - last year the start of the race was delayed until almost 10:00 anyway because they couldn't get the roads clear in time.
• This year they ARE providing Disney transportation from selected Disney resorts (All Star Sports, Caribbean Beach, and Boardwalk Inn). Last year there was no bus transportation available, and runners were on their own to get themselves to/from the Studios. Not a problem for us, since we walked over from the Boardwalk Villas, but I heard from people who stayed in other Disney hotels and drove over themselves, and they said the traffic was horrible.
• Last year packet pickup was at one of the clubs at Pleasure Island, but since of course that's closing at the end of September that won't work, and this year it is at Coronado Springs. I would have thought it would be better to have it at one of the event's hotels, (and the Boardwalk has convention space) but no one asked me.
• There's no mention in any of the race literature about any kind of spooky surprises, so I'm thinking that there will be even fewer Disney touches this year than there were last year, unfortunately.

I'm not really holding out a lot of hope that the event this year will be much of an improvement over last year, but we're going to at least give it another try. Of course that means we need to start running a little more than just 3-4 miles. But hey, it's only the end of July - we still have three months to train! :-)