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| That "precious" bag |
Dangle a runDisney backpack in front of Alyson and you never
know what will happen! She called me
from the Wine and Dine Expo asking if I wanted to go to WDW in January. Apparently, she needed this backpack they
were giving away with Goofy entries and Billy couldn’t go with her. Refuse a
trip to Disney…I don’t think so! And so
we had to quickly plan our trip. We decided to stay off property. We heard that the Hilton had race
transportation, so we thought we’d give it a try.
Hilton Bonnet Creek is “surrounded by the Walt Disney World
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| Room with 2 Queen Beds |
Resort” as they say on their website.
They offer free transportation to all 4 parks and I must say, they were
always on schedule. You can purchase
park tickets there and they even have a store where you can buy Disney
products. This hotel is all about customer service. At check in, I had to join our 2
reservations, no problem. I mentioned
that we were there for marathon weekend.
Even though we had not specifically registered under their “marathon
weekend package”, they gave me the swag bag and explained all the special accommodations
they had for marathoners.
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| Swag bag--even included a Bondi Band |
One of the fun things in the bag was instructions for
entering their contest for runners…estimate your finish time and the winner won
a free weekend for a future stay at Hilton Bonnet Creek!
Bonus: As I was settling in on Thursday night, I heard fireworks. I looked out the window and could see Illuminations off to the right!
On Friday, at noon, they open the special concierge for
marathon weekend. It’s here that you
sign up for race transportation. They
offered transportation for both the half on Saturday and the full on
Sunday. The only drawback here is if you
are doing Dopey, you would need to get to the 5k and 10k yourself.
They also had several buses going to the expo on Friday
afternoon. That didn’t fit my schedule
(I wanted to go in the morning) so I hopped a bus to the Magic Kingdom (ticket
and transportation center), took a monorail to the Polynesian and boarded an
expo bus there. When I returned to the
hotel in the afternoon, I signed Alyson and myself up for the race buses (you
get a wristband that gets you a seat on the bus). I didn’t know how I was going to tell Aly we
had to be downstairs for 2:45am!!!
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| Runner Breakfast |
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| It was quite the spread! |
Saturday morning we went down to the lobby at 2:45. What a sendoff this hotel gives you!! There was a full spread of bagels, protein
bars, COFFEE (I don’t function well without it), water, and everything that
might be on a runners list. In addition,
there were hotel employees cheering everyone on. We boarded the first bus heading to the race
(noted here that Sunday there was no need for us to be on the first bus).
After the race, we went to Harvest Bistro for
breakfast. We came straight from the
race. The staff treated Alyson like
royalty (and it wasn’t even Princess weekend!). Our waiter told us that he would be one of
the “cheerers” on Sunday morning. He
said the staff looks forward to this because it’s so much fun.
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| Feeling Goofy on the bus at 3am |
Sunday morning, we went down a little later but still had
the same experience. Took a coffee on
the bus with me, some water for later and we were off.
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| View from our room |
There are several fine restaurants on property (both at the
Hilton and the sister Waldorf Astoria within walking distance). Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to
experience any of them as we were there a short time and wanted to get some
park time in. We also looked at their
fully equipped fitness center. We didn’t
use it, but it was there if needed. I also regret not being able to take a trip around the “lazy
river” in the pool. It was too cold to even attempt!
Would we stay here again?
Definitely! In fact, this would
be a nice place to stay on a non-race trip so we would get to enjoy everything
this resort has to offer. You can check them out
HERE .
Have you ever stayed off property for a runDisney event?
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