Walt Disney World is again holding the Tower of Terror 13K race in October this year. Lee and I ran the first one last year, and, well, we were less than impressed. As I wrote in my blog entry, it was a fine race, just not “Disney” at all, and not what we were expecting. So we were disappointed.

But….it turns out we are going to be at WDW this year on October 25 when the race is being held again, and so, gluttons for punishment that we are, we have signed up for this year’s race, also. (And signing up for the race also SAVES us from being gluttons at that night’s Party for the Senses! 🙂 )

A few things I noticed about this year’s race that are a little bit different…

• There’s no 6.5K this year – only one race, the 13K.
• The price has increased significantly – $85 this year as opposed to $65 last year.
• The start time of the race has been pushed back to 10:00 instead of 9:30 – last year the start of the race was delayed until almost 10:00 anyway because they couldn’t get the roads clear in time.
• This year they ARE providing Disney transportation from selected Disney resorts (All Star Sports, Caribbean Beach, and Boardwalk Inn). Last year there was no bus transportation available, and runners were on their own to get themselves to/from the Studios. Not a problem for us, since we walked over from the Boardwalk Villas, but I heard from people who stayed in other Disney hotels and drove over themselves, and they said the traffic was horrible.
• Last year packet pickup was at one of the clubs at Pleasure Island, but since of course that’s closing at the end of September that won’t work, and this year it is at Coronado Springs. I would have thought it would be better to have it at one of the event’s hotels, (and the Boardwalk has convention space) but no one asked me.
• There’s no mention in any of the race literature about any kind of spooky surprises, so I’m thinking that there will be even fewer Disney touches this year than there were last year, unfortunately.

I’m not really holding out a lot of hope that the event this year will be much of an improvement over last year, but we’re going to at least give it another try. Of course that means we need to start running a little more than just 3-4 miles. But hey, it’s only the end of July – we still have three months to train! 🙂