The most important day of the trip for the Dopey Challenge is Wednesday -- the first day of the expo, and the only one that Dopey competitors can go to in order to have our bibs in advance of the races, since they start on Thursday.
I had a couple of big things to do beforehand, though.
First up was getting to Animal Kingdom in time for rope drop so that I could get on Flight of Passage early, since I wouldn't be doing any Genie+ or Lightning Lane during the trip, and I knew that the lines (as always) would be huge for this attraction. It's just such a good ride. Given a very late bus from CBR, I scanned into AK moments after rope drop. But those who have been to the parks in the past several years know that rope drop isn't at the entrance any more, but far inside the parks, at least for the early hours entry for those staying on-property. In the context of AK, that means the bridge into Pandora right in front of Tiffin's. By the time I got to Pandora, and made my way all the way to the back of the line, it was much of the way down the other bridge down towards where Festival of the Lion King is held.
But, given it was first thing, the line kept on moving. While it did take me 30 minutes to get onto the ride, most of that time was spent moving at a not unreasonable pace through the very long, winding queue. The views are always impressive.
And it really does look like they have a real avatar being grown in the lab:
The flight is just such a good ride, and ends all too fast (though it is about 4-5 minutes actually on the ride, excluding the pre-shows). As I was leaving the area, I checked the wait time (which would now be accurate) and it was far too long for me to try to go on one more time before my next stop.
It was approximately 8:30am by this point, and I hadn't yet eaten breakfast. One of my favorite stops of any Disney trip was next:
TONGA TOAST!
It's a good thing that it is slightly out of the way for me, since I don't stay at the Poly, otherwise I would be having this every day -- while delicious, it would probably be a bad move.
By the time I got to Capt. Cook's and finished my Tonga Toast, it was time to catch the bus to the expo. The plan was to get there right about when it opened.
Alas, I did. I saw the line for the official merchandise and asked several CMs where I should go to pick up my pre-purchased merchandise. (All I ordered was the Dopey magnet/pin bundle.) I was told each time that there is just the one line, regardless of whether you pre-purchased. WTF?! The whole point of pre-purchasing is to NOT have to wait in line, get it and go. runDisney *used* to have the pre-purchase items in the same area as where we picked up our bibs - which totally makes sense. If we wanted to go and check out other items, we could then join the outrageous line. So, I wound up wasting TWO HOURS on a huge-ass line to pick up my merch, just on the side of where the rest of the official merchandise area was (the reason why they had just the one long line).
I got out of there shortly after a friend I made during last February's Florida Marathon arrived.
As you'll see for the half marathon, the two of us ran together for the half, and I wound up joining her and a couple of other people from this group to go on a couple of rides at MK later in the week. Good times.
After flying through bib and shirt pickup and grabbing lunch (which I certainly needed by then), I ignored the other expo venue entirely (first time I've not even passed through it), went back to the hotel to drop off my stuff; the shirts we got were pretty nice:
Next up, return to AK.
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