I decided to sleep in today after a bit of tossing and turning because of knee pain following the run. I did make a new best friend yesterday and his name is Ironman Muscle Rub Gel. I had never used a product like this since my high school days when Ben Gay was the only player in town. The gel had no nasty smell like Ben Gay did and it had a very nice cooling effect after I applied it on my knees and thighs. I only had to rub a little bit on to ease the aching that I usually get day 2 and day 3 after the run. Last year it was hard to walk around the parks especially after sitting on a ride for a while then getting up to continue on. I saw quite a few ‘shufflers’ at the park the next day (those who had run one of the races and had a bit of trouble walking around).
I did get up in time to see and cheer on many of the runners who where passing by our hotel by the 8:30 mark (they will have finished in just over 3 hours). I stayed out there for about 45 minutes to show some support before we went into the parks for the day. Below is one of the videos I shot on Saturday during the full marathon. The audio a not the best because of the cheering, but I will get in and fix that up once I get back in town.
Matt and I went into the parks for a few hours then made our way over to the Bay Lake Towers for a 1pm Disney Vacation Club meeting to see a preview of the Aulani resort they will be opening in Hawaii. We had stopped by the DVC booth in Epcot on Saturday just to say hi and the cast member told us about the preview and signed us up.
On the way to the preview I stopped at the front desk of the Contemporary hotel to see if we could come over to Bay Lake a day early and leave Beach club a day early. The manager on duty said there was availability and the we cold make the switch from a 1 bedroom to a studio for both nights with out a problem. the only problem was there was a bit of a language barrier and I had to explain what I wanted to do three times before she understood. She then said she could not make the change and that she had to call member services to have them do it. I was a bit concerned when I saw her doing children’s puzzles in crayon as she was talking on the phone to them. She finally put me on the phone and they confirmed that they would down grade me to a studio for 2 nights and inform Beach Club that I would be checking out early.
We made it to the preview 2 minutes late because of the difficulty at the front desk, but I put my happy face back on ready to enjoy the DVC gathering. During the preview they had a trivia DVC Trivia contest where they asked questions about the DVC properties, point values and other interesting questions. Matt and I both had a our names draw to win some VIP fast passes that we could use during our stay this week. The VIP passes have three uses loaded into them and you can walk up to any fast pass machine and print out an immediate fast pass to use right then (regular fast passes require you to come back at a later time to use them). The preview lasted about an hour including the tour of the Bay Lake Towers rooms (we had stayed here before so that was no surprise for us). We had a fun time and were now off to test out the fast passes.
Since we were so close to the Magic Kingdom we walked over there from Bay Lake Towers (one of the benefits of that property) and went directly to the big three (Pirates, Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain). Pirates and Haunted Mansion were not busy at all (there were only two other people in out boat at Pirates so we did not test the passes till Space Mountain which showed a 50 minute wait time.
We walked up, inserted our VIP cards and the machine treated us to an immediate entry paper fast pass (you still need to hand the paper fast pass to the cast member to get on the ride like any other fast pass). We were on and off the ride in about 15 minutes total. Nice. The rest of the day we just park hopped and tried to do some things we don’t normally do.
Tomorrow, more Disney magic and Ironman gel for my knees.