Jan 12, 2015

runDisney When You're Not *Running* Disney | Magical Mickey

Welcome back to another edition of the linkup. First, a little mouse house keeping. You may notice I did not say the "Mickey Monday linkup" as my text normally starts. This is due to something that was discovered on Twitter, the hash tag for the linkup name, #MickeyMonday, is very much NSFW any more. When I started the linkup, I was forward thinking enough to check the hashtag first, and it was mostly unused, definitely not used in an inappropriate way. Unfortunately, this is not the case any more, so we will adapt. We'll take the Mickey Monday linkup, sprinkle a little pixie dust on it and give it a new name: the Magical Mickey linkup! Frankly, I liked the alliteration the first time around, so I'm sticking with it. Let me know what you think of the new name or if you have any other names to propose.

So... welcome back to another the first edition of the Magical Mickey linkup: the linkup centering around a love for Disney, sharing that love and connecting with others. I hope you find this linkup as a great place to turn to for Disney content each week and help all the bloggers participating out by helping readers find that great mouse-eared content. I'm co-hosting with Katie from Adventures by Katie, so of course check her blog out.

In case you haven't been on social media, or don't follow as many runner and / or Disney friends as I do, this past weekend was Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend (#WDWMarathon). This is the premier weekend of the runDisney season. It kicks off the new year with the largest number of runners, most number of races and the only full marathon of the year for runDisney. However, if you were like me, you weren't there running it. Which provides an interesting topic. This week I'll be talking about...


runDisney when you're not running Disney

runDisney is a fantastic and magical thing, in my opinion. It is an experience different than really any other race weekend you'll find, truly unique. However, for most of the people who run it, it's a destination race, a runcation. The fees for the races can be quite high compared to other races, many you have to be ready to register the day of if you want to go, which is many months in advance and then you have the travel cost, hotel maybe park tickets coupled with your time off from work. All of this can add up, though I think the experience is worth it. Granted, I'll also accept any excuse as a reason to go to Disney if I could afford it. With this, it's not always financial possible to run all the runDisney races or maybe even just one a year. I do believe this presents a unique opportunity to experience another side of runDisney... the outside.

I had many friends running this past weekend at Walt Disney World. And I don't just mean online blogger and Twitter friends, but people I know in real life too. That made for a lot of tweets and pictures showing up in my feeds: on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook (to a lesser extent). I loved it and couldn't get enough of it. Seeing pictures of the expo made the memory pop fresh into my mind when I was there and picked up my first runDisney bibs, got my New Balance runDisney shoes and checked out all the vendors. When I saw the early morning race day pictures (after I woke up much later in a nice warm bed) I remember the early morning corrals full of people in the dark waiting for the 5K. Then I remember the long trek to the corrals on Saturday for my first half marathon. And the waiting. I remember running past all the characters, too afraid to stop and running through the parks full of joy and then struggling on some of the back roads just pushing to finish. That side of things was really cool, but I digress.

The cool thing about the weekend is there is so much coverage, through the runDisney blog and Disney Parks blog as well as all the runners on Twitter. They even set out "official" hash tags to try and make stuff easier to follow. For me, other than the memories it brought back, it really just makes you psyched to go run it yourself. Seeing all that there is to see while you run. Seeing the excitement everyone there has and the fun they're having even when it is unusually cold for Florida. I don't know how you could see that and not want to be a part of it. If you know people running, you could set up to track them. You get text or email updates as to their progress on the long races. So many ways to keep connected.

This year, they actually took things a step further for those of us that couldn't be there. This past year, the Disney Parks blog has been live streaming a lot of events, though to various degrees of success (from a viewing and technical standpoint). They extended the live stream to the marathon weekend events. This year you were able to watch live feeds of both the start and finish lines of the half marathon and full marathon. It was a really great idea. As mentioned, I wasn't up early enough to see the start line streams (though I was up before the start happened thanks to having a 6 month old at home that likes to wake up about 4 am). I did however watch some of the finish line streams. The cool part was you were not just given a video feed but you also were able to hear the finish line announcers. It was a good angle, good feed and great coverage. I actually tuned in a good bit to the marathon streams, even seeing 3 people I know cross the finish. Not too bad for being 855 miles away. As with all their live streams, you can watch them back after. So, if you did run, you can now see how you looked when you started and when you finished. How many races offer that?

You can check out the replay videos from the live streams on the Disney Parks blog for the half marathon and the full marathon or I've embedded the full marathon finish line video here below.



Did you run with weekend? Did you follow along at home? What do you think about the new name?


Onto the Linkup

Here are the guidelines:

The post just needs to be about anything Disney related. There have been posts on runDisney, on the parks and even on the Moms Panel, so just give it some Disney and count it.

New posts are fantastic, but for now, if you have a great old post you want to share, drop it on in.

Try to visit as many of the posts that you can as time allows. The point of this is to share and support each other.

If you're going to be a regular, please link back to the host posts. It's just good etiquette and frankly, that's how others will get to your fellow Disney lovers content. Without that link back, they can't find the linkup and therefore the other blogs. Help me help you.

You also have the option to add the linkup code to your post if you'd like. It is not required, just another option. If not, please follow the above link back guideline. Get the InLinkz code


4 comments:

  1. I ran the 10K this weekend, but got to cheer on the marathon runners for about half an hour at Disney's Hollywood Studios. It was a wonderful experience (although my voice is pretty scratchy today)! I love the live stream!!

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    1. Very cool. Glad you got to cheer them on. When I ran the half marathon last year, we went in and cheered for the marathoners in EPCOT for a while. It was fun.

      The live stream was very cool from home. I actually Chromecast it to the TV and just had it on in the background for a large portion of the morning. My 3 year loved it. She wants to go run with them.

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  2. I really enjoyed all the photos and tweets about marathon weekend. It helped me feel like I could be a part of it even though I wasn't there :) I didn't check out the live streams but I'll have to look into that too.

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    1. It was fun to follow along with the pictures. Makes me itch to get back there.

      The streams were fun, I'm interested to see if they do them for any other races or not. I can't imagine them doing it for all the races.

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