Hey everyone!
Before I dig too deep into my photos and videos for the Dopey Challenge races, I wanted to make sure I quickly talk about the Cigna Blogger meet up.
Cigna is a major health services company and is the premier sponsor of the Walt Disney Marathon Weekend event. As part of all the things they do for the race they also hold a meet up for various social media folks, whether they do blogging, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, podcasts, etc. The idea is that they will get together a bunch of folks, play some games, have a bit of lunch, talk about health and their company health initiatives and just all around have a whole lot of fun.
I was invited to attend last year and was really happy when I got the invite again this year! Super awesome – thanks again to Cigna for the invite!! I will link below to my write up from last year.
https://biggoofyrunner.com/cigna-blogger-social-media-meetup-jan-5-2018/
Last year was held at the Atlantic Dance Hall at Disney’s Boardwalk – that was super convenient as we were staying at the Boardwalk for the Dopey Challenge, so it was a quick walk to get to the event!
This year was a bit different – we were to meet at the Grand Floridian, take a bus over to backstage at Epcot and then get to go into the GM Training and Conference Center located right above the entrance to Test Track – a little less convenient perhaps but super awesome!
We did have some fun at the security checkpoint backstage at Epcot but it got resolved relatively quickly and we were able to get to where we needed to be.
Not many people have had the opportunity to visit this location so I was pretty excited to see it and get some pictures!
There were many social media folks there that I have interacted with previously, either on Twitter, or YouTube or somewhere and it was great to get to meet some of them in person finally.
I won’t remember everyone there unfortunately but some of the folks I interacted with were (I apologize if I missed someone – let me know and I will add you to the list below!):
Allen Whittaker – https://twitter.com/allenwhittaker
Mike from BeOurGuest podcast – https://twitter.com/BeOurGuestMike
Gerald Reznick from RezRuns – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCasbrfjuTSiHtuFzAP3p2Fg
Joyful Miles – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiAzqlDS1zATTKOeT3tO0Yw
Jen Lefforge – https://www.youtube.com/user/momof3boys37 or https://twitter.com/Jenlefforge
Megan from Elbowglitter.com – https://twitter.com/elbowglitter
Heatherw25 – https://twitter.com/heatherw25
Disney_Groom – https://twitter.com/Disney_Groom
Justin Stone – https://twitter.com/DisnyRunr24
Heather Jergensen – https://www.youtube.com/user/hljscuba2002 or https://twitter.com/hlmusic73
Gail Savidge – Run all the Races – https://twitter.com/orlandotiki
The event started with a nice light lunch and an opportunity to have a health screening done. The focus was on your 4 health numbers (cholesterol, blood pressure, BMI and blood sugar) and what you can do to maintain the numbers in a healthy range.
Cigna is promoting these 4 healthy numbers as part of their Health Improvement Tour that has been traveling around the US providing folks with the opportunity for these quick health screenings.
The big game at the event this year was Spud Racing – who can make the fastest race car out of various fruits and vegetables? Apparently zucchini is the fastest fruit, if you need to know.
The game was not just about building the racer though – each team was also assigned a health theme that they needed to come up with a poster and PSA for that would be presented before the races occurred. Our team got “cholesterol”.
After the lunch we broke up into our teams and got to work. The team I was on consisted of Gail Savidge, Justin Stone, Heatherw25, Megan from Elbowglitter and myself.
It was a lot of fun and a lot harder than it looked like it should be!
Have a look at the YouTube video for an early crash test of our car as well as some other video and pictures from the event.
In the end, our team won the highly coveted “lemon award” medal – in a weekend heavily centered on the bling of all the medals you can get this was a welcome addition!
Cigna then provided us with some nice desserts before Mickey and Minnie came out in there racing outfits for pictures – super awesome! You don’t often get to have both Mickey and Minnie in one picture so this was another great addition to the event.
After all the pictures were taken and snacks were consumed the event wound down for the day. Those of us staying in Epcot had our tickets/magic bands scanned and we were walked to a near hidden exit near the Test Track entrance.
Another great event, thanks once again to Cigna for the opportunity to have some fun in a great venue with some awesome people!!
Thanks for reading along and stay tuned for a Dopey Challenge race recap with video and pictures from the race!
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