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| our view from just out side our door at Pop Century |
We woke up bright and early to head to pick up our race packets at the ESPN Wide Wold of Sports.
We were all alone in the beautiful elevator lobby of the 90's wing of Pop Century.
A walk to the bus was like a walk through our childhood.
Possibly the best decorated stairwells on earth.
At 8:25 am the bus lines are packed for the parks. If you are in the line for the bus at 8:25 you will most likely not be in the parks by 9:00 that is the sad truth. you really need to be in line for a bus around 8am if you want a good position at rope drop. The saddest thing about this picture is people in line for Animal Kingdom which had morning extra magic hours. The park has already been open for about a half hour by this time. Morning extra magic hours are great but you have to be there before it opens otherwise you are just heading into an already crowed park.
We arrived at the packet pick up just as it was opening. That's right we rope dropped packet pick up. We already had our race waivers printed and sign(we did it at home) so we could go straight to our window for a bib number. It is extremely organized and fast. The lines do grow and can get long in the middle of the day. (just like the parks)
Around just about every corner there was some sort of back drop people were taking pictures in front of.
With our pack it in toe we headed over to the expo.
This was the scene as we were heading in. Still early even with the time it took to get the packets.
And a shot the other direction. If there was something you wanted that has to do with running this is the place you could find it.
We grabbed an I Did It button from the RunDisney booth. It seems weird that they have a booth mixed in with all the other vendors. Most people we saw around the parks the next few days asked where we got the button. I bet the "convention" arm of WDW even charged runDisney for the booth space, even though they are promoting future races.
They had a big wall with every ones name on it. I'm snapping a pic of our names.
Here is Doug's. I put his picture on here because I am nice. There were 5 McKnight's in the race.
After a stop in the Official merch area and a stop to buy my next pair of running shoes we headed out. I was able to buy shoes way cheaper then normal. There really are some great deals to be found at the expo. From this picture you can see the level of crazy has doubled in the Expo and it was only 10am!
It is defiantly a hike from the front of the ESPN WWoS back to the bus stop. If you didn't want to hike and wait for a bus, a cab or Uber would not be a bad way to go.
After dropping our stuff off at Pop we hopped the bus to Hollywood Studios. Looked like it was going to rain and our first goal was to hit Star tours with a FastPass+ while Doug still had his motion sickness patch on from the flight. He left if on just to ride Star Tours, He is such a nerd.
After a flight though a galaxy far, far, away we had lunch at Backlot Express. We got some boring sandwiches which were actually very tasty and good. We were trying to limit the amount of fat we had the day before the race. I'm sure the fries were a good decision. One of the great things about Backlot express is you can refill your drinks so we could hydrate with the best Coke products Disney has to offer.
After lunch we headed over to the Animation Academy. We got there just as it was starting to sprinkle.
We got to draw with our favorite artist!
Any Guesses who Doug drew? At the end of the class the artist had a trivia question for his drawing. Doug give the room a few guesses before he raised his hand to answer. He really wanted to let a kid win it but failed. The question was from Monster U about a characters mother or something that no one with a life should know.
His might be a little better then ours.
It was still raining out side so we met Minnie.
When it is raining out they sometimes move the Disney Jr. meet and greets around.
It was all dried up and we had a Toy Story Midway Mania FastPass+ ready to use.
It was still only 1:26 and it feels like we have been up and at it for ever today.
Doug was thoroughly disappointed in this score. He blamed riding with me. He claimed I stole his targets. He will continue to ride alone when we come with the kids. On the other hand It was one of my better scores!
After some shooting we did the single rider line for Rocken' Roller Coaster. It took about 20 min for us both, the posted wait was 60min.
We looked at some snacks at Sweet Spells.
Lots of neat apple options!
This case gets the kids and Doug more excited. We didn't get any thing because we we're having an early dinner. With the race so early in the morning we wanted to eat and get to bed early, not or normal Disney plans!
We got a bus to Art of Animation to Eat at the Landscape of Flavors. They have a build your own pasta. It was the perfect pre race meal. It is a nice big serving of pasta just the way you want it. Lots of options of what type of noodle, sauce, meat, and veggies you want.
The John Lasseter signed art in the lobby.
It was misting just a little as we made our way from Art of Animation over to Pop Century. It is only about a 10 minuet walk from the food court to our room.
The two resorts are connected by a bridge in the middle.
I believe this is the 60's section.
Petals is the bar at the main pool.
Even with the rain though out the day it was plenty warm to swim.
This is the entrance from the pool side into the main building of Pop.
The store and food court are very nice at Pop. The only reason we ate across the bridge was for the BYO pasta.
The lobby of Pop Century.
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| flat Michelle and flat Doug |
Back at our room and off our feet by 6pm. We got our bibs on and every thing laid out and ready for a ridiculously early wake up call.
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