Marathon Weekend 2024

Wonder if we have others from the Mitten State?!
:wave: Born & bred from Grand Rapids. I haven't been to a runDisney race since MW 2020, so I'm not as active on the boards in recent years, but I try to check in here a couple of times a month. I was hoping to make it to MW 2024, but too many other things going on in my world to make it work, so sticking closer to home for races for awhile.
 
Since it seemed like you could do a refund/repurchase with AP discount at Springtime, I reached out to rD to ask, and they said they'll have that available for MW as well. So that's nice!
That is such awesome news! I always want the medal replica pins and they have been selling out so fast. The price of the pre-order pin sets is so steep and at least with the AP discount I should be able to sell the pins in the set that I don't want without a loss. I wish they sold a medal replica pin set, I don't need three pins for every race!
 
Good Evening runDisney All-Stars!

This week’s SAFD is actually a SEAFD (Saturday Evenings Are For Disney). I have the Spring Surprise 10 Miler tomorrow so want to get this out now.

Question: Well the hunger games, i.e. Registration Day, is over…. How did it go for you, were you a tribute or a victor? Did you get what you wanted? What are you running at MW2024?

My Answer: It was stressful! Every browser I was running came back with over an hour wait and stayed that way for SOOOO long. At first I panicked, then I relaxed and then slowly got more and more anxious as time slipped by…. As I mentioned earlier this week this community saved my bacon. I was able to register for Dopey and get DD’s 10K and Half registered based on two separate links shared in direct messages and with in the thread. You are all awesome people! Thank you! I did miss out on the 5k for DD because it just went so fast. We ended up with 3 of 4 races and got the two most important my Dopey (will be my 8th!) and DD’s Half (will be her 3rd!)

Separate note - all you running the 10 Miler tomorrow at Spring Surprise; hydrate, hydrate, hydrate! Going to be challenging conditions! Good luck and see you there!
 
SAFD: This was a stressful registration for me. I was running three browsers, laptop Edge and Chrome and iPad Safari. All my initial times were more than an hour, but the two laptop browsers started counting down pretty quickly. The Edge got in after ~25 min and I got all the way through the registration screens but couldn't get the payment info to come up. Nothing I tried got it to come up. In the meantime Chrome got through, so I shifted my efforts there. Same issue. I was certain I was going to get shut out, as the iPad had just started counting down.

I had been watching the board here on my iPhone, so out of desperation I clicked on a queue link that @1GoldenSun posted. After rushing through the required info, the payment screen magically came up and I was able to finish up registration for Dopey#7!

I'm so thankful that we have such a helpful community here that looks out for each other, posting queue links rather than just heaving a sigh of relief at getting themselves registered and closing out remaining queues. I tried to pay it forward by posting my last queue link which was down to ~19 minutes by that point. Hopefully someone was able to take advantage of it!

Looking forward to seeing everyone in January!
 
SAFD:

I had four browsers up at the start (phone, iPad, chrome, and incognito) because I wasn’t too fussed about registration. My sister was already registered for Dopey through her perfect link and my mom and I were the only other registering for races this year. I also kind of thought this year was going to be less frantic. That was wrong.

When my first three browsers showed over an hour I wasn’t feeling great, but the good ol’ incognito had 23 minutes and quickly went to 8. My mom had nothing but over an hour so I knew I had to register her for her 5k and kind of panicked. I had planned for the Half and 5k this year but I impulsed to Dopey so I could get my mom’s registration done as well.

Deep down I know that Dopey is the race I wanted. I have had the most successful 5 days of running that I’ve experienced in a depressingly long time in the days since registering. I’ve researched and written a plan for the first time in years. This is definitely going to be my Dopey revenge and I’m hoping to push for PR in all 4 individual race distances over the next year (not necessarily during MW itself; those races are going to be a celebration after my recent shame marches).
 
SAFD: this was my smoothest registration yet, I was checked out with Dopey in minutes and had my confirmation email in my inbox by 10:05 ET. I did have a silly amount of browsers open but none went to waste as I sent all of my lowish times to friend in my running group. A larger percentage of my browsers had low times than in past registrations, I always open a lot because usually only 1-2 would have a countdown that would even get me through before sellout, and this time a good half of them had times under 30 minutes. Perhaps I got lucky? Safari on my MacBook is always what gets me through, knock on wood. I was just so thrilled that it opened exactly on time. If all registrations were on time, it would be a much less stressful process.
 
SAFD: I volunteer as tribute!

This was a bit crazy, but not as crazy as last year's registration. I'm 90% certain that the fields for every single rD race has shrank, probably by about 1/3. What was 20000 is now closer to 13000 or so. It still wasn't 2021, when everything went in seconds, before eventually getting cancelled. But it's still bonkers.

I had 10 windows open on my computer (Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Vivaldi, each one with a regular window and an incognito window). The Vivaldi incognito window was left in reserve. The first 9 I clicked through the marathon link right when it opened. Each window first said over an hour, but one (Opera incognito, window number 7) fell to 38 minutes, then 22, then 17 fairly quickly. Then I clicked window 10 to see where it would place me. Yup. End of the line. I closed that.

I sent some leftover links via DM to a few people on here.

I got everything I wanted. I got my DW's Dopey, which is the entire reason I am going to WDW in early January. Without that secured, the entire trip would've been ruined. After that, I got our DD and me into the 5k. She left the nest, but still has my address on her registration. Oops! I'm thinking that with the info already in there, it shouldn't be a problem.
 
SAFD: This year's registration was much smoother than last year's, when we had to wait until 12:30 for the queues to even open. I had 4 and then 5 browsers in the queue and all of them were over an hour, but luckily @jmasgat shared a link with me and I was able to register for the half. Whew! It was nice to have this community around this time and I appreciated all of the links being posted and the moral support!
 
SAFD: Because I was just registering for the half, I didn’t go as crazy with browsers as I did for Dopey 2023 or W&D. I had 6 in total. 1 Safari, 1 Safari Private and 1 Chrome on my Mac. Safari on my iphone (off Wi-Fi) and Safari on my iPad. For every browser other than my iPad, I went in through the early marathon link. On my iPad, I only joined the queue at 10:05. It initially showed over an hour but quickly dropped to 38 minutes. I ended up getting in at about 10:25 and was able to register for the half which is what I wanted as I’m doing the C2C.

my other browsers never really got much quicker until closer to 11. I posted a few here and hope someone got to take advantage. This is a such a great community and even though I didn’t need help this time, I wouldn’t have gotten into the W&D challenge without a shared link (despite 10+ browsers open that day).
 
SAFD: This was a stressful registration for me. I was running three browsers, laptop Edge and Chrome and iPad Safari. All my initial times were more than an hour, but the two laptop browsers started counting down pretty quickly. The Edge got in after ~25 min and I got all the way through the registration screens but couldn't get the payment info to come up. Nothing I tried got it to come up. In the meantime Chrome got through, so I shifted my efforts there. Same issue. I was certain I was going to get shut out, as the iPad had just started counting down.

I had been watching the board here on my iPhone, so out of desperation I clicked on a queue link that @1GoldenSun posted. After rushing through the required info, the payment screen magically came up and I was able to finish up registration for Dopey#7!

I'm so thankful that we have such a helpful community here that looks out for each other, posting queue links rather than just heaving a sigh of relief at getting themselves registered and closing out remaining queues. I tried to pay it forward by posting my last queue link which was down to ~19 minutes by that point. Hopefully someone was able to take advantage of it!

Looking forward to seeing everyone in January!

I can't tell you how happy it makes me that you were able to use a link I posted! I feel like I am always here asking questions but never have any information to share--I'm always a taker and never a giver! :) It feels so good to be able to give something back.

SAFD: I was only able to get multiple links due to all the advice I found here. But this was was soooo much better than the last two years, which is the extent of my experience. I opened 6 different pages--3 on each of two different laptops--1 in Chrome, 1 in Safari, and 1 in Edge (I kept my phone free for watching this board). They all said "over an hour" wait but started to come down quickly. They kept switching back and worth as to which had the lowest wait, though, so I kept having to check all of them in turn to see which got there first. I think I only waited around 35-45 minutes (I didn't really pay attention) and I got Dopey! That's all I wanted so I'm super excited!

I have to say I got very nervous when people were reporting here that you could click on any race and still choose something different at registration, because the marathon had been open for a while by the time Dopey opened and I thought too many people might be queued ahead of me by then, but it was fine!
 
SAFD: I got registered for THE marathon which was my goal (emphasizing “the" because my partner scolded me last time I referred to it as “just" 😊). My backup plan was Goofy so include me in those that were surprised that challenge went so fast.

I wasn’t super concerned since the marathon is typically (always?) the last to sell out but my situation did make it more stressful than usual. I was hiking in Yosemite with my mom with unreliable cell service and Wi-Fi that only worked in the hotel lobby. I also didn’t want to haul my laptop just for registration so I was limited to my tablet and phone. Graciously, my mom agreed to hang out in the lobby with me at 6:45a local time so I ended up with 5 queue spots. All were originally over an hour but 3 of them dropped and were in within the first half hour. Two of them still showed over an hour though when I went for my run at 7:30a. Glad I didn’t need to rely on any of those 😬.

Hope everyone got what they wanted! Excited for another fun marathon weekend ahead.
 

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