Disneyland Half Marathon 2024

[The Expert]

Not me checking email and spam boxes every 2 minutes waiting for my survey link...

 

[fatmanatee]

Another interesting thing—we were waiting for the monorail to open for early entry on Tuesday morning, when we heard a very large helicopter approaching. It came into sight, stopped, and hovered. We saw a cable come down, then one of the full-size prop elephants (I assume from Jungle Cruise?) came up on the cable. I never really thought about how you would move those around, but it was really interesting to watch. Even the CMs stopped what they were doing to watch.

Def Jungle Cruise, saw some stories on social media about it.

 

[Deisell78]

Maybe an emoji version?

There would be a lot of this emoji lol

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

The 3-2-1 go podcast with Carrisa and John covers the Disneyland weekend. It mostly is about Carrisa's experience but does touch a little on the things that went wrong. using the handy spoiler thing, as I like to listen to podcasts like I watch tv...

Spoiler: discusses podcast

I was a little disappointed that it seemed Carrisa, glossed over some of what seemed to cause the trouble, by that is how Disneyland always did it such as release the corral all at once. And the parks are an experience themselves, so they don't want to them to be crowded them with lines for characters, and that she was told not to mention the delay. John did push back on that. They did admit the water stop at three was a mistake, and mention Spectrum. Nothing about the lack of photopass if they had heard about that issue.

 

[AZMermaid]

Although I agree security after the was a big problem and they need to at a min have runner only lanes or no bag lines… I’ve seen it back up halfway to harbor on the single sidewalk. So i groaned seeing it to reach that’s sidewalk but was also glad it wasn’t worse.

 

[fatmanatee]

The 3-2-1 go podcast with Carrisa and John covers the Disneyland weekend. It mostly is about Carrisa's experience but does touch a little on the things that went wrong. using the handy spoiler thing, as I like to listen to podcasts like I watch tv...

Spoiler: discusses podcast

I was a little disappointed that it seemed Carrisa, glossed over some of what seemed to cause the trouble, by that is how Disneyland always did it such as release the corral all at once. And the parks are an experience themselves, so they don't want to them to be crowded them with lines for characters, and that she was told not to mention the delay. John did push back on that. They did admit the water stop at three was a mistake, and mention Spectrum. Nothing about the lack of photopass if they had heard about that issue.

My hunch is that they have a harder stop for end of race due to Anaheim’s involvement, and so they need to get people out quickly. If they want to do mini waves it has to be efficient and fast. I don’t know if they were confident they could do that for the first race back.

As for the delay I dunno… i assume there was something happening on the course that needed to be cleared out, it didn’t matter that much to me that they didn’t mention what was happening. I guess it would have been nice?

They’re going to have to figure it out with photo ops. They have to know that people with experience at WDW come in with certain expectations, and they also knew that plenty of people were coming directly from WDW races that happened the prior weekend. If they’re concerned about crowding and safety on the course that’s one thing, but they missed a few big opportunities for photos. I still can’t believe they didn’t do anything for Avengers Campus. We don’t get this in WDW, there’s space off to the side of the course to have a character, but nope.

 

[The Expert]

Disneyland 10K finishers: 6,601 (announcer on race morning said 8,000 registered)
Disneyland Half finishers: 11,186 (announcer said 13,000 registered)
Dumbo Double Dare finishers: 3,288

per same source:

Dopey-to-Dumbo 639
Goofy-to-Dumbo: 159

Those are only official bibs, not including anyone (like me) who did other combos of races or ran on individual non-challenge bibs. It also doesn't account for 5K participation, since he was counting from timed results.
I'm still personally curious about C2C in general and how many of us got the ugly suitcase medal.

 

[Naomeri]

They’re going to have to figure it out with photo ops. They have to know that people with experience at WDW come in with certain expectations, and they also knew that plenty of people were coming directly from WDW races that happened the prior weekend. If they’re concerned about crowding and safety on the course that’s one thing, but they missed a few big opportunities for photos. I still can’t believe they didn’t do anything for Avengers Campus. We don’t get this in WDW, there’s space off to the side of the course to have a character, but nope.

There was so much space to have photo lines completely off the course in Avengers Campus and Galaxy’s Edge, and they just totally blew it

 

[AZMermaid]

There was so much space to have photo lines completely off the course in Avengers Campus and Galaxy’s Edge, and they just totally blew it

Totally! Again it’s insulting to not offer it for fear of long lines. Let the people decide. I’d think It’d thin the lines a bit if there were more stops too.

 

[marty3d]

As for the delay I dunno… i assume there was something happening on the course that needed to be cleared out, it didn’t matter that much to me that they didn’t mention what was happening. I guess it would have been nice?

My DW and I were grabbing Starbucks in Anaheim Sunday (actually the same one we passed on the course just after leaving DL) and bumped into 2 Anaheim police officers. They were asking me about the race (has my running shirt on). We chatted for a bit and they brought up the delay - apparently there was an early morning car accident on the course and it took 90 minutes to clear - they were rushing to get it off the course not to cause any delays. Guessing they rD had to wait for the all clear to go. Not too sure why they couldn't have just said that.

 

[fatmanatee]

Got the survey!

 

[AJruns]

I just noticed something on my finish line photos that almost made me tear up. This is one of a series where you can see that Minnie has turned to face me as I run down the chute, while Mickey is waving at the next person behind me (I was basically the only one there then). She’s cut off in this one (I have significantly more chins in the others ) but it’s so nice to think of her as my cheerleader, and I didn’t even realize she was there

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

My DW and I were grabbing Starbucks in Anaheim Sunday (actually the same one we passed on the course just after leaving DL) and bumped into 2 Anaheim police officers. They were asking me about the race (has my running shirt on). We chatted for a bit and they brought up the delay - apparently there was an early morning car accident on the course and it took 90 minutes to clear - they were rushing to get it off the course not to cause any delays. Guessing they rD had to wait for the all clear to go. Not too sure why they couldn't have just said that.

See this would be great to know... just let us know hey there was accident and we need to wait till the police say we can go which should be any min... instead of just letting us stand there not knowing.

 

[fatmanatee]

Got the survey!

Basically focused on security and photo ops, two things that directly impacted me so I felt it was better to use the full space to talk about that. Certain other issues I think they're well aware of and will make fixes to. PARTICULARLY the mile 3 debacle. They can't do that again.

So.... what did you guys think?

 

[Naomeri]

Basically focused on security and photo ops, two things that directly impacted me so I felt it was better to use the full space to talk about that. Certain other issues I think they're well aware of and will make fixes to. PARTICULARLY the mile 3 debacle. They can't do that again.

So.... what did you guys think?
View attachment 826879

Somewhere between poor and just okay (or didn’t experience, in the case of the half for me)

 

[DisneyParrothead]

My issue was more on the expo. It was so crowded with that setup, there was no way I could casually stroll by, and a lot of people were waiting for their VQs in the walkways, which made the congestion worse.

Looking at it logistically, I'd switch bib and shirt pickup to where the VQ line was and the official merchandise, and I'd put official merchandise in the big ballroom where bib pickup was. Then use part of that area for the pre-purchase area.

 

[Disneyhanna]

I called photopass and it took about an hour to find three photos I’m in the blurry background of. So the Main Street photos exist, I just didn’t get any good ones. CM was really nice and had fun looking at all the costumes. We agreed the DL photographers do much more aiming and shooting to try and get good photos of select people at the expense of missing other people, whereas at WDW they just never stop clicking that button. If you’re missing photos and you had a bib in clear view you probably are just the blurry background of someone else’s photo.

Almost all the photos I’m in, were taken by the camera on the opposite side I ran on with someone in front of me because of it. I usually try to run in an opening where no one is on in front of me on my side but that failed miserably in DL lol. Seems like they did more pointing their cameras to the opposite side of the street, and probably had a lot of cases where some people got pictures from both camera angles and a lot of people got zero pictures because the camera was pointed the opposite way

Instead of getting a picture from the camera on my side I was facing, I get this funky side view instead, from the camera on the other side (this is my best castle pic and I didn’t even get tagged, I’m the one in front in neon lol)

 

[nancipants]

There was so much space to have photo lines completely off the course in Avengers Campus and Galaxy’s Edge, and they just totally blew it

You would think they would take advantage of Avenger’s Campus since WDW doesn’t have it and only uses Gamora and Star-Lord occasionally. And there’s no reason they couldn’t have an actual Rey or Chewie photo op. But what do I know? Lol.

 

[iheartglaciers]

I called photopass and it took about an hour to find three photos I’m in the blurry background of. So the Main Street photos exist, I just didn’t get any good ones. CM was really nice and had fun looking at all the costumes. We agreed the DL photographers do much more aiming and shooting to try and get good photos of select people at the expense of missing other people, whereas at WDW they just never stop clicking that button. If you’re missing photos and you had a bib in clear view you probably are just the blurry background of someone else’s photo.

My Main Street pictures were out of focus too!

 

[Bree]

I think WDW photopass is pretty incredible at times so DL was a big change for most of us.

This photo made it into my account with only this teeny bit of me showing. I have had more like this from other races, but this was the latest from W&D.