Crowds during the Princess Half Marathon weekend?

[PurpleRose]

Hi! I was originally planning an anniversary trip in March but the dates got changed to Feb 22-25th. At the time, I didn't realize it was during the Princess Half Marathon weekend! How busy are the parks? I've looked at a few crowd calendars online but I've seen conflicting reports from 30 minutes waits to a madhouse. Also, any chance of some rare characters coming out? Thanks!

 

[Driver]

Hi! I was originally planning an anniversary trip in March but the dates got changed to Feb 22-25th. At the time, I didn't realize it was during the Princess Half Marathon weekend! How busy are the parks? I've looked at a few crowd calendars online but I've seen conflicting reports from 30 minutes waits to a madhouse. Also, any chance of some rare characters coming out? Thanks!

I really didn't notice anything different

 

[dreamfinder]

The Princess weekend will be busy, but as much as from the fact it usually overlaps with multiple school vacation weeks as from the fact the races are being held. The Princess event (in my experience) tends to attract a lot of women who use it as a chance to get away from their families and meet up/run with friends in a girls weekend out type of thing.
Any rare characters would most likely doing training sets in advance of the event, and then would usually appear in locations that the normal public doesn't have access to. There may be one or two onstage in Epcot when the runners are in that area, but most would be in backstage locations, or in parks that are cleared of runners before they open to the public.