Easy peasy! Right?
So, much has been written about the expo at the Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend. And, yes, there were some mistakes made. But something that runDisney is good at is responding to feedback from event participants, so hopefully for folks participating next year there will be some changes in place.
Welcome — you can come inside, but you might never leave (apologies to the Eagles!)
“Problem” 1 – This year a new race was added to the weekend. A 10K on Saturday morning. This meant that everyone who was running the 10K AND those doing the #DumboDoubleDare had to pick up their race packet by Friday. And the expo opened on Friday. At 10 am. So…there were a quite few thousand people running the 10K alone with the additional 6,000 or so Dumbos (Hopefully I’ll get real numbers and can update this soon!). I got there around 9:30 thinking I’d be early enough. HAHAHAHAH HAHAHA. Yeah..nope. The lineup was a true cluster – even the cast members seemed to be a little unsure of where the lines were ending! I finally went somewhere I was told was the end of the line and waited. And waited. AND. WAITED. Finally the line moved. Eventually it kept moving. And finally! I saw the inside of the Disneyland Hotel ballroom.
“Problem” 2 – There was already a massive line to check out of the runDisney merchandise “booth”. And the expo had only been open barely 20 minutes! So, all I wanted was a wine glass and a magnet. They had wine glasses remaining so I grabbed one and started looking for the end of the line. I found it at the other end of the room. And decided I just couldn’t do it for one wine glass. I expressed my frustration, in a very ladylike manner of course, and a kind person in line offered to pay since she was getting shirts for all of her friends who were waiting in the packet pickup line. I let her use my Annual Passport to get a discount and she actually paid for the glass for me (and in all that, I never even got her name but THANK YOU KIND STRANGER!)
The elusive wine glass
I headed to get my ankle taped up at the KT Tape booth and was there for awhile – THIS line I will wait in! Then I picked up a couple pairs of PRO Compression socks (light blue and white) and headed to find my new stranger friend in line. She was just about to pay so the timing was perfect! I have heard that people were waiting anywhere up to 3 hours in line. THREE. HOURS.
Always one of my favorite sites an expo!
“Problem” 3 – There just was not enough race specific merchandise available – for it to be 85% gone less than an hour into the expo?? With an entire second day to go?? Sadly, if you go to eBay and search for “Dumbo Double Dare” or “Disneyland Half Marathon” you’ll find what you’re looking for. And pay a fortune. So at least we know where all the merch went! So that’s a bummer. (I actually had the same problem at Goofy this year but that was because I didn’t get to the expo until the afternoon of the second day!)
There are a couple of simple solutions to a couple of these (all of them?) – opening the expo a day early would be a great idea instead of funneling all those people through in one day.
Don’t put out all the race merchandise at once…especially when you see it going in the FIRST HOUR. Or…as several people have suggested, let runners pre-order when they register for the event.
People have also suggested limiting the amount of merchandise that one person can buy – someone in one of my Facebook groups saw a person buying over 1,000 dollars worth of stuff…Really? Bet some/most of that is the stuff you’re seeing on eBay…
There were also complaints about packet pickup – there was a magnet in the gEAR bag that could deactivate the B-tag on your bib. Lots of announcements were being made, but there was no chip verification at the expo as usual so many people ended up having bib issues – not me, unfortunately, my time is my time! 😉
The infamous Little Mermaid magnet!
I didn’t have any issues with pickup, probably because I went to the parks and then went back later in the day. I also checked the expo then – there was still a super long line to pay for runDisney merchandise, wrapping around the room…
So, not a super great start to the exciting weekend, but it certainly didn’t dampen my excitement!!
Up next – 10K you say?
outrunningthefork 