Day 3: car rental

Tuesday 1/8

We rented a car for 4 days, because we wanted to see some thing outside of the Disney parks. We rented a car for the second time at Alamo, which is based in the Dolphin & Swan Resort. To get there, we took a bus from CBR to Epcot, and we thought that there would be a bus going to the hotel from there... There was a boat that went, but inside the parks. And when we arrived there, the boat just left. The Castmember said it would be faster to walk than to wait on another boar. So, we walked the Boardwalk to D&S. Fast method? No. Free? Yes! :P Boardwalk is a lovely place to walk, especially at 8:30AM. (Jep, still jetlegged)

 Skyliner!

After we got out car, we wanted to go to a vintage, second hand, pin store called Character Corner. Turned out it wasn't open yet... So we went to the outlets and Florida Mall after. It's our shopping day!
I discovered a super fun store: Box Lunch! All things Disney, Harry Potter, tv series stuff, a bit like Hot Topic, I loved it!

Very happy with this find! I love the runDisney tech running clothing line, but it's very expensive. This skirt was priced from $60 to $8! I guess I have my new costume planned for Paris in 2019 ;)

After we got back to the hotel, signs started to show up for Marathon Weekend! I was getting excited! 

These were at all the busstops.

This big info sign was at all Disney hotels, our hotel was route #8, pink. You could see what the bus transportation times were and at what time you really really really had to be in the bus. We took the first bus every race morning.

Day 2: Disney Springs + Hollywood Studios

Monday 1/7

Because we had FP+ reservations at the end of the day, we slept in. Hello Jetleg, that means wide awake at 7AM. We relaxed a bit at our hotel, and waited for Disney Springs to open.

 Christmas decoration everywhere! So bizar, with short sleeves standing next to a Christmas Tree, in January!

 Harley Davidson Marvel clothing line.

At last, I saw the water car!

In the afternoon we visited Hollywood Studios. It was the very first time for us to see Toy Story Land! What an amazing themed place, so many details! Loved the babybel bits. We had a FP+ for Toy Story Mania, and just looked around. We never wait longer than 30min, we are used to this in Paris. I know, we are spoiled. When we see a 45min wait, we think "Nah, too long". So we definitily won't want over 2 hours for an attraction ;)

 Galaxy's Edge!

Slinky Dog or Zero from Nightmare Before Christmas? ;-)

In the One Man's Dream museum you can see how Galaxy's Edge is supposed to look like.

John thought he heard that these popcorn buckets were only 5$. I thought, that makes sense, Christmas was a long time ago, and maybe they need to get rid of these. WRONG! They were 35$ each! Including popcorn that is. We skipped ;-)
At night we had a FP for Fantasmic, amazing show! Mostly enjoyed the show instead of making photos.

My Dopey Challenge!

This Trip Report will mainly contain writing and photos of the  Marathon Weekend in Walt Disney World, Florida. We went on a two week holiday, but I didn't take much photos in the parks. And I took all my photos with my cell phone, so quaility isn't always that great. We have visited WDW before, and have many photos from the parks. This time, I just wanted to take it as easy as I could, because I was running the Dopey Challenge! But hey, we were still in WDW, so ofcourse we visited the parks more than once!

How the Dopey Dream began? Somewhere in 2014 I found out about the runDisney race in America. I collected more and more information and that's how I discovered the Dopey Challenge: 78,3km through four parks in Walt Disney World! It took a while until that dream became reality. Ofcourse it was amazing news that Paris would start their runDisney races in 2016, but Dopey has always been in my mind. And now, in 2019, that dream became reality!

2018

In March we booked our plain tickets, and in april our hotel package through the UK site(7=14 days park tickets, free dinining, free Memory Maker and the $200 giftcard.) Now, we just needed bibs! They always say: if you really want to do a race, make sure you get registered when the bib only sale goes live!
July 19th was the day of the bib sale, and how stressfull it was! We had 2 laptops, 1 tablet and 2 phones ready. I registered myself first for Dopey, and then John for his 5K, 10K and Half marathon. The system wasn't complete flawless, because when I was almost done with John's registration, they threw us out! We had to start all over again! Luckily everything went well after that, we got our bibs!

Training
I followed Jeff Galloway's training schedule for Dopey, a 28 week schedule which started in July. I had to adjust it a little bit, because I also did the 36K Challenge in Paris, and the Two Course Challenge during Wine and Dine. 28 weeks is long and hard, especially the long runs. Due to an injury I couldn't do a longer run than 30K and only did 1 mock Dopey.  But, all went well! The hardest part about Dopey for me was the 28 week training schedule, the Dopey Challenge itself was a celebration of that training! (Honestely, the people who say the hardest part about Dopey is the 4 early wake up calls... Zipp it, just go to bed early, that isn't the hardest part!)

Tripreport Dopey Challenge!

We stayed at Caribbean Beach Resort from 5-17 January. We arrived in the last weekend of the Christmas Vacation, and the hotel was fully booked! And that's why we got a free upgrade to a Pirates room with a water view. I really like the theme, all the details! The beds were a bit smaller than the standard room, but hey, we slept in a pirate ship! We stayed at Trinidad, and we were the 3rd busstop. The route was Martinique, Old Port Royal, Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and Aruba. We walked to the main building almost everyday for breakfast, about a 10min walk. And most of the parks were just a 10-15min ride away.

Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, a Pirates Life for Me!

Day 1: Animal Kingdom + Magic Kingdom + Animal Kingdom

We always pick Animal Kingdom as our first park, mostly because it's the least crowded on Sunday. There were still Chirstmas decoration everywhere!

After spending the day in AK, we went to Magic Kingdom, because we really wanted to see the Christmas decoration over there. We knew they would take it down somewhere around Marathon Weekend, so we didn't want to miss it. (They took it down after the marathon). We only saw the decoration in daylight.

Yeah, parkhopping is our thing! We went back to AK, because we had a Fastpass for Flight of Passage. And my parents hadn't seen Pandora in the dark, that's a must!

Yeah, we had over 25.000 steps every day...