FerretAfros
Well-Known Member
While I agree that runners were not the primary cause of the crowding, I still blame runDisney for it being so busy during Marathon Weekend. The runDisney events have historically been used to boost attendance during otherwise-quiet times of year (Nobody wants to take a vacation right after the holidays, so let's bring in some runners to fill those hotel rooms!), but for whatever reason that simply wasn't the case this year.
Marathon Weekend is traditionally the weekend after the first full week in January; this year it was the first weekend in January. When the dates were first announced in late 2016, I could immediately tell that much of it would overlap with New Years crowds, since many schools wouldn't return until Monday the 8th. Shocking to nobody, it was crowded with all the holiday crowds that hadn't left yet
Runners reported having trouble finding hotel rooms in late-spring, despite usually having last-minute availability in the past. The parks were jam-packed all week, despite usually quite manageable crowds. For me personally, Thursday at MK was the worst of it, to the point that I was debating if I ever wanted to do it again, even though this event is something I look forward to every year. But by the weekend, crowds started to improve considerably and looked a lot more like a normal race weekend
As a rule of thumb, race crowds are very easy to pick out: they arrive at the parks late in the morning and leave early in the evening; there are far fewer groups with young children than normal, and they tend to be repeat visitors who generally know where they're going. That simply wasn't the case this year, when the parks were packed from opening to closing, and filled with strollers and lost tourists.
That said, I'm really impressed with how quickly the support crews were able to turn things around from New Years (when Epcot needed every parking space imaginable) to the races just a few days later. The frontline CMs also did a great job making the races special, even though they were coming out of a long hellish period themselves
So no, the majority of the crowds during the worst part of the week weren't from runDisney. However, I blame runDisney for making a bad situation worse, and forcing runners to also deal with all that chaos.
Marathon Weekend is traditionally the weekend after the first full week in January; this year it was the first weekend in January. When the dates were first announced in late 2016, I could immediately tell that much of it would overlap with New Years crowds, since many schools wouldn't return until Monday the 8th. Shocking to nobody, it was crowded with all the holiday crowds that hadn't left yet
Runners reported having trouble finding hotel rooms in late-spring, despite usually having last-minute availability in the past. The parks were jam-packed all week, despite usually quite manageable crowds. For me personally, Thursday at MK was the worst of it, to the point that I was debating if I ever wanted to do it again, even though this event is something I look forward to every year. But by the weekend, crowds started to improve considerably and looked a lot more like a normal race weekend
As a rule of thumb, race crowds are very easy to pick out: they arrive at the parks late in the morning and leave early in the evening; there are far fewer groups with young children than normal, and they tend to be repeat visitors who generally know where they're going. That simply wasn't the case this year, when the parks were packed from opening to closing, and filled with strollers and lost tourists.
That said, I'm really impressed with how quickly the support crews were able to turn things around from New Years (when Epcot needed every parking space imaginable) to the races just a few days later. The frontline CMs also did a great job making the races special, even though they were coming out of a long hellish period themselves
So no, the majority of the crowds during the worst part of the week weren't from runDisney. However, I blame runDisney for making a bad situation worse, and forcing runners to also deal with all that chaos.
