Wine & Dine Half Marathon
Life goes on, things change, out with the old and in with the new… even with runDisney. In the last year, we’ve seen a new Paris Disneyland race weekend, Star Wars events on both coasts (half marathon and challenges), the elimination of Expedition Everest, a delay (or potential cancellation) of Tower of Terror 10 Miler… with all these, a lot due to the major construction going on all throughout Walt Disney World, Wine & Dine Half Marathon Weekend finally got its turn.
To sum it all up, the W&D Half Marathon is now on Sunday MORNING (the usual 5am start that WDW marathoners know all too well), with the Jingle Jungle 5K being moved to Friday morning and being renamed Mickey’s Christmas 5K. Adding to the list is a Wine & Dine 10K on Saturday morning, with Lumiere offering up a Two-Course Challenge (10K and Half). There is still an after-party, but that’s on Sunday evening, not the usual post-race party.
I can’t say I’m happy about the changes, especially since W&D was the last night race, and I am one of the group that likes the night races. Unfortunately, with the removal of the Osborne Lights due to the construction of Star Wars Land in Hollywood Studios, this seemed inevitable. Even so, it was nice to do the race, then party in Epcot until 4am. The last 3 years however have seen a mess of weather. 2013 (my first half marathon ever), it was hot and humid, and a lot of people got sick afterwards. 2014 saw torrential rain for the entire race and after-party (made for a very empty but cold Epcot until 4am). 2015 (which I did not race) saw a rain delay and shortened race (the Half of a Half Marathon) due to lightening. With all that happening, runDisney probably didn’t want the headache with unpredictable nighttime weather.
I can’t say I’m going to run W&D again, at least not anytime soon. The allure just isn’t there. It was a nice mini-vacation arriving Friday and leaving Sunday, packing a lot of racing and fun into a short time. Now it’s stretched out over a longer time, basically requiring a Thurs-Mon visit if you want to run all the races and enjoy the party. For the increasing prices of everything at WDW, right now I’m going to focus on completing Dopey in 2017, and doing other destination races. Sometime in the future, I might be back!