Cheerleaders!

[Mickey&Minnie]

I have a friend that will be coming up from west palm beach to cheer me on for my first marathon, so quick question....

Will she need a ticket to get in to Magic Kingdom to see me run thru the castle? My husband and I will have park hopper tickets but we are trying to see if she needs to spend the extra money to do so.

 

[lukacseven]

No. During the races, spectators can enter MK park and are restricted to Main Street only. The street itself is roped off and the left half (as you look at the castle) is for spectators, as well as the circle in front of the castle. Once the final runners go through the park, all spectators must exit before the official park opening. Spectators are required to pay for admission to Epcot, HS, and AK if they wish to see the runners inside the parks. The official race program has a spectator guide to viewing areas and transportation times & methods between each area.

 

[Mickey&Minnie]

Ok great. We are going to epcot that night so her entering that park will be ok. The other parks she probably won't go to anyway. Thanks for the info, I had no idea there was a spectator guide. That will come in handy.

 

[lukacseven]

This year they changed the start of the course, but there is spectator viewing at the start line, at the Ticket & Transportation Center, Main St., AK entrance, Boardwalk Resort, Yacht & Beach Club and Finish line. Not sure yet if they will have a spectator area at WWOS. It might be hard getting busses in there. It's probably best to stick to transportation via monorail during the race - the busses are re-routed and can take a really long tme between locations. Depending on your pace, you may beat the busses and the spectators will miss you.

 

[Mickey&Minnie]

This year they changed the start of the course, but there is spectator viewing at the start line, at the Ticket & Transportation Center, Main St., AK entrance, Boardwalk Resort, Yacht & Beach Club and Finish line. Not sure yet if they will have a spectator area at WWOS. It might be hard getting busses in there. It's probably best to stick to transportation via monorail during the race - the busses are re-routed and can take a really long tme between locations. Depending on your pace, you may beat the busses and the spectators will miss you.

I don't think there would be any chance for me to beat the busses lol, but let me ask you this...

Do you think our best bet would to have her with me at the start line and for her to then hop on the monorail to MK to see me on main street? Will the monorail even be running that early?
Then from there I am not sure where she will go. She will probably want to be able to see me as many times as possible so as to not get bored.

 

[lukacseven]

There are some pretty elaborate fireworks for the start. As far as actually seeing you there. That's tough becuase the runners are on the far side of the road. The monorails are running prior to the race start, so after your wave goes off, they can take the Epcot monorail to T&T Center and switch the the MK monorail. They will be able to see you run down Main st. and into Fantasyland. Moments later you'll come through the castle and turn into Frontierland. After that, the safest thing to do is for them to go back to Epcot and wait at the finish line. I've had people try to go to AK and they didn't make it in time and then also missed the finish because they couldn't get from AK back to Epcot. If they want to see you finish, it's hard to catch you in between - they could try to take the monorail from MK to Polynesian and see you there, but that's about it. They usually publish the official race program online in November and have paper copies at the Expo. They did have a spectator plan for both start/finish viewing and for max. number of viewing locations. Here's last year's program: http://as1.wdpromedia.com/media/ewwos/pdf/rundisney/marathons/wdw-marathon/WDW12Program.pdf

 

[Mickey&Minnie]

^^^Thanks for the advice. I will pass it along to her.

 

[Mad Stitch]

Some of the space along Main Street and in the grandstands at the finish are reserved for what they call the ChEAR squad. Exactly how much space and where I'm not sure of, maybe someone who has done it can chime in. Disney does charge $ to be in the ChEAR squad. Once you exit Epcot for the finish the rest of the run is lined with very high fencing, so even if you did find each other in the big crowd all you would be able to do is wave. You mentioned that she will be using a ticket for Epcot that day anyway, unless the finish line is a necessity you'd be better off finding each other at a predetermined location like in front of Mexico for example.