I was very excited when the Star Wars Dark Side races were announced for Disney World, just a bit bummed about the pricing of the races.  I love running at Disney as the races are typically well organized, but the constant price increases really leaves me wondering if it’s worth it sometimes.  Since my husband and I are running Disneyland Paris we decided to give our bank account a break and only sign up for the 10K for the inaugural weekend.  We picked up our packets like usual, everything running smoothly there and then took a look at the official race merchandise.  The highlight of the expo for us was the chance to do the BB8 Meet and Greet.

We sleepily rolled ourselves out of bed at 2:45am in order to drive over to Epcot for the start of the 10K.

I will say that I found the 10K starting area was much more relaxed than the half marathons typically are. We didn’t have to make the move to the corrals too early and we had some time for photo ops…those were fun.

 I will say I noticed a different atmosphere in the start corrals on the morning of the 10K.  Usually everyone is happy to see the sports personalities and cheers constantly, but the interaction between the personalities and the crowd was much more strained and subdued.  The crowd just wasn’t responsive to jokes or anything like that.  I’m not sure what the difference was, but it was interesting to observe.  With Kevin (my husband) in Corral A and myself in Corral B we were off to an early start.  I found that I didn’t mind the course too much, aside from some of the uphill parts over by Boardwalk and then again up the ramp after exiting Hollywood Studios.  I was partially injured, which means those areas took a little more toll than usual.  The pack spread out a bit, but I still encountered those that no matter how many times people are reminded to be courteous to runners, you always have people walking 3 or 4 across etc.  I wouldn’t say Kevin and I experienced much problem with congestion, but I did read many complaints about how tight the course was and how bottle-necked it became at certain parts.  I also read of some water stations running out of water.

The course was tight in areas (Boardwalk to Studios path for instance) and part of the problem is just the number of runners that they allow to register.  I wonder if things will be different once construction at the Studios is completed?  One thing I did love…the Photopass photographers out on the course…I’m able to get all my race photos now!  I came through the finish line and proceeded through to get my medal, water, food etc. and locate my husband.  The on-course characters were great, but I wasn’t stopping for a picture.  The lines for R2-D2 were exceptionally long and the race had just begun, I found that very interesting.  One dismaying detail…it was a VERY LONG walk to the port-o-lets once you finished the race.  I can’t understand the logic of putting them all the way back over where the buses were picking up to return people.  We had a bit of a wait for a bus back to Epcot parking, but nothing like people finishing later in the morning.

We learned the reasoning for that was the route that Disney had the buses taking to pick people up went over a large, soft dirt path and one of the buses got stuck.  It was going to have to be towed out…but this meant that there was only 1 exit and entry point now for everybody to come and go from.  This caused a HUGE back up which we heard resulted in 2 hour waits for a bus back to the Epcot parking lot to retrieve a car.

All in all, I didn’t have a major problem with the course.  It’s tight in areas just as other areas are tight.  I think there were some details that need to be worked on for the next year, but the theme was awesome and there were a lot of great characters around.  It was fun to see movie clips on the course and just a different feel to this race than typical Disney races where you are surrounded by people in Disney Character costumes.  This time, if you were dressed as a princess, you really looked out of place.