Walt Disney World Triathlon

I signed up for Disney a couple of months ago before reading any of the negative feedback.  My friend and I started training for tri's in February and we made Disney our long term goal.  Honestly, unless you're in it to be super competitive and finish high in the standings, I don't think it will be such a horrible experience even if they haven't worked out all the kinks.  It's what you make of it.  My husband runs marathons, and he ran the A1A in Ft. Lauderdale which got horrible reviews from runners last year.  Maybe they made lots of corrections from '06, but he had a great experience.  Our whole family will be with me that weekend in Orlando, so I'm hoping it will be lots of fun.

Good luck to you!

Thanks for all the feedback.  I ran the Disney Marathon in 2006 and loved it, but its a much bigger event and I'm sure it (and the 70.3 race) are run by a different crowd.  I brought the family last year and we all just had a blast in the parks and all.  My little girl is 3 this year and a big part of why I want to do this race is so she can go to Disney again this year. 

Anyway, when it's all said and done, I'll probably be doing this race.  I'm just concerned about a few things.  I saw on their sparse website where they have changed the bike course to alleviate some "athlete safety concerns" from last year, but now it's 36 miles!  Do you really have to add 11 miles to the course just to correct a few problem areas?? 

The other big issue for me is the Disney transportation stuff.  It looks like last year the only way to get your bike into transition was to park in the Magic Kingdom parking lot and hop on a Disney shuttle with your bike to take it to transition.  From the reports I read they only let a few bikes on at a time and it ended up taking some folks quite a while to do this.  Between getting the bikes into transition and getting to and from the expo, it seems like they had a lot of logistical issues. 

I think I also read that the run ends behind Epcot (same as the marathon) and folks had trouble getting back to transition to get their bikes and then getting back to their hotels from there.

I think if they fixed the course issues and I could stay at the Wilderness lodge or the campground I'd probably be OK. 

What do ya'll think?

I just saw that on the 70.3 website.  That sounds like a great idea (riding to transition).  They haven't posted the course yet, so I don't know where  they plan to end the run this year, but they only say they've changed the bike course, not the run, so I'd assume it still ends behind Epcot in the big parking lot.

Thanks ManOnMission for the info.  For those who are interested, here's a link to the HIM course info: http://www.floridahalfironman.com/course.php

The bike course for the HIM has two lobes, a north one and a south one.  They meet about halfway up the page where Lake Hancock Road runs into Reams Road.  I'm thinking the new 36 mile route for this year's "Olympic" is to just ride the lower lobe.  If you look on google maps you can see that Hancock actually runs into Reams here.