Race Day minus 1

Friday January 11^th, 2013 – more of a rest day

We were up relatively early – my brother hadn’t managed to get to package pick on Thursday after he got in so he was heading there this morning to get his stuff.  He had missed the regular Goofy sign up so he had signed up for the Runners World Challenge so he had a different pick up location which went smoothly.  The Runners World folks didn’t have to get their shirts at the expo so he didn’t have to go in – he had thought about it but the line was apparently out the door so he passed.

While he was doing that my wife and I went to Animal Kingdom to do the Kilimanjaro Safari ride.  It was a good day for it – weather is nice and the animals were very active.  We saw an elephant playing in one of the pools – running around with only its trunk and tusks up.  We also saw a pretty young white rhino running around and playing.  One of the better runs I have had on the ride – very cool.

After we were done there we had a text from my brother and headed out to meet him at Downtown Disney.  We got a bit of a surprise – I knew that they run buses to other parks from Animal Kingdom and had assumed they ran a bus to Downtown Disney as well…but they don’t.  I can understand why as they wouldn’t want someone parking for free at Downtown Disney and riding the bus over to Animal Kingdom from there.

So we ended up taking a bus to Port Orleans: French Quarter and then riding the boat from there to Downtown Disney – a nice ride and good weather for it.  The extra time it took though without having a direct bus meant my brother had already eaten but he joined us as we had Earl of Sandwich and wandered around shopping.

We stayed at Downtown for supper – T-Rex – we had a bit of a mix up as the hostess sat us in a closed serving location and we didn’t realize until people around us were getting served that had been seated after us.  That was all resolved and we headed out to the buses to get back to the hotel.

Ended up having some fun on the buses though – one of a group of 4 teenage boys was taking a bunch of flash pics of the bus which ended up in a bit of confrontation.  I assume the boys were there as part of one of the high school bands playing along the course or something over the weekend as they didn’t seem related.  His friends gave him crap and they ditched off the bus at the next stop – while he did try to get chirpy again as he got off the bus it was pretty obvious he just blustering and trying to get attention – pretty sad really.  The worst part of that would be that if he was part of one of the bands or something it takes away a bit from the great thing that the bands and volunteers are doing on race day.  You don’t often run into jerks at Disney World but when you do they really stand out.

Got back to the hotel – laid out my stuff for the morning and sacked out.

So – being amped up on adrenaline from the pissing contest and worry about the heat on the race the next day it took quite some time to fall asleep.  Probably got 2 hours sleep – yay!