2014 Marathon Weekend Recap and Post Trip Race Report - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
2014 Marathon Weekend Recap and Post Trip Race Report
***EDIT - Decided to get this moved to the trip report area, as I might follow up with some highlights and thoughts from the rest of our vacation. 2 weeks at WDW, with some new (to us) experiences, figure I might turn this into one big trip report. Hope everyone enjoys! ***
As promised, here is the first of what will probably be many posts recapping my experiences with my first marathon, and runDisney event. I'll try to include photos, or if not, will link to the blog posts that will have them as well. Just waiting for the MarathonFoto link to get mailed to me so I can get some of the in-race photos too.
Bit of background for those that might need it...I entered into the Goofy Challenge, running the half on Saturday and the full on Sunday. I had never run any distance events before this one, so it was going to be the first of many great experiences. I also realize that many might not know (though my friends from the running forum will) that I am an "Athlete with Disability", having a pretty bad visual impairment that makes me nearly blind. No low-light/night vision, and pretty severe tunnel blindness. So with that out of the way...
Arrival was on the Friday of marathon weekend. It was really hard seeing some of the online friends I was following posting runDisney stuff as early as Monday and Tuesday of the setup and prep for the weekend's events...I was so excited to get there! Made it really hard the last few days of work to concentrate on anything other than my upcoming run.
Luckily the trip down and to the hotel (POFQ) went really smoothly. Flight left a little late, but we literally walked onto our DME bus and left for the resort, which was great. Got there, checked in to the hotel and had a bit of lunch. I was travelling with an entire cheering crew, consisting of my MiL, FiL, BiL, wife and two daughters. I was itching to get to the expo, I had read a lot of horror stories about long lines and waits, I wanted to make sure I could get everything done as quickly as possible. The In-Laws offered to keep an eye on the kidlets and spend the afternoon at the pool so I wouldn't have to worry about the expo by myself, so with that, we checked our carry ons with Bell Services and hopped the bus to WWoS for the expo.
Mixed experiences there...I was surprised at how long of a walk it was from the bus drop off to the expo area, but we made it there and the signage made it easy to find the building for packet pickup. Once there though, it was a bit difficult to find the lower area for Goofy packet pickup, one of the helpful volunteers pointed us to packet pickup for half and full marathon, but not the separate area for Goofy/Dopey runners. I knew we had to go downstairs to pick it up, so we found our own way to a set of stairs, walked down and ended up finding it from there.
After reading the horror stories I was shocked at how much of a breeze pickup went. There was no one in line at all for the Goofy registration, and before I knew it had my bib, and was pointed towards shirt pickup. Had the first of the magic from the volunteers there, as I had originally signed up and put XXL for shirt choices, but after losing a bunch of weight, really needed XL (or possibly L)...and luckily for me the volunteer that I spoke to at shirt pickup was always "screwing things up" (in his words) and wouldn't you know it, he "accidentally" came back with an XL package so I wouldn't have to head over to shirt size swapping...nice! Chatted with him and his daughter for a few minutes, then off to the expo floor proper for a bit of shopping.
What can I say about the expo portion??? It was a freaking zoo, and didn't really enjoy the experience at all. I knew what I wanted to see/pick up (CEP booth for some quad compression sleeves not easily acquired here in Canada, runDisney booth to see what other swag was available) but really didn't have a chance to look around at anything, since it was not an environment that made for a relaxing browsing experience...and with two runs the last thing I wanted was to be on my feet for several hours...so back to the hotel.
Timed things perfectly, we got back to our rooms finally being ready and also the bathing beauties just finishing up from the pool. Grabbed our bags from Bell Services and off to the rooms....to find out lo and behold my oldest daughter managed to lose her MagicBand after only 3 1/2 hours... luckily it was just mis-placed in her sister's backpack, but we didn't find it until after it had been deactivated with the front desk (really easy and quick process btw).
Decided to take the boat up to Riverside to poke around up there a bit and have dinner up there. I was on a pasta mission, and after the HORRIBLE pasta I had at POFQ, was over the moon with the amazing pasta at Riverside. Not sure if the POFQ was gluten free or what its deal was...but the two times I had it the pasta was the exact same consistency.... BAD! Luckily Riverside was just what the doctor ordered for a yummy dinner before my first run...but man was it hard to sit there with so many yummy looking dinners being consumed and NOT participating myself. Stuck to decently sized portions, and only water/sport drink...NOT fun :P
Finished dinner and decided to have a nice stroll back to POFQ, the kids were going to watch the movie under the stars while I got all my gear ready for the race the next day. Counted out my gels (actually got a favourite from Gu when I tweeted a photo of all the gels I brought for the weekend... was neat!) getting everything laid out and ready for the next (early) morning, so I wouldn't need to rush around. E-load for my fuel belt (my energy drink of choice, developed up here in Canada and is AMAZING), with e-Mend for immediate post-run recovery (same company...GREAT stuff). Loaded the fuel belt and got ready for an early bed time.
Was in bed by 8:30ish (everyone was pretty tired from the early morning wake up to travel to the airport, etc, so no one complained about being in bed that early, but had to curse Illuminations for waking me up...we were in building 4, closest to the bus stops and could hear the fireworks through the walls. Was nice the rest of the trip...but made it hard to go to sleep for those early wake up mornings Luckily I actually drifted off and actually got a few hours sleep... the 2:00 wake up call would come soon enough.....
Tim
__________________
Hey, check out my blog all about being active with a disability -> activeandblind.com
Last edited by Tim Sullivan; 01-30-2014 at 08:30 PM..
Reason: Adding information prior to move
About This Page: 
luckily it was just mis-placed in her sister's backpack, but we didn't find it until after it had been deactivated with the front desk (really easy and quick process btw).
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Threaded Mode
