2025 Dopey Challenge Recap: Arrival and Expo

Is there anything more exciting than arrival day for a Walt Disney World vacation? Even though there's plenty of stress in packing everything (and fighting that nagging feeling you forgot something critical), getting to the airport, and staying sane on a flight with three young kids, there's still so much anticipation in knowing at the end you'll be at the happiest place on Earth!

We wanted to fly in the night before the Expo to avoid any travel complications and have an easy first day at Disney. We scooped up our kids from school on the Tuesday before Marathon Weekend and headed to the airport for our 6:30pm flight. Everything at the airport and on the flight went smoothly, and we arrived in Orlando with a tired crew just before 10pm. Normally we fly into Tampa where we stay with family for a few days before driving to Orlando, but we wanted to limit how much school the kids were missing (another good reason to take your kids before they get to elementary school).

From MCO you have three main options to get to Disney World: rent a car, use a rideshare/car service, or take the Mears Connect bus. We opted to try the Mears Connect this trip. As I mentioned, we were in pretty late and my kids were a mix of worn out and hyped up (any parent of young kids knows what I mean), and we quickly regretted not opting for the rideshare. Apparently Mears Connect drops down to one bus per route (each route being from MCO to a group of about five WDW resorts), so if your timing is off you end up waiting in the bus area for quite some time. In our case we waited about an hour for the bus to pick us up plus another 20 minutes sitting and waiting for stragglers. The driver warned us that with all the stops at other resorts it would take extra time getting to our final destination, but luckily Pop Century was the 2nd stop just around midnight. With rideshare we likely would've made it to our resort by 11pm, so I'd recommend using a rideshare or car service if your flight to MCO is getting in late. We unloaded our stuff and dragged ourselves to our hotel room for some sleep.

We slowly got going the next morning and made our way to the lobby for breakfast and luggage transfer. We were staying at Art of Animation for the week, but I wanted to check out Pop Century and figured it was a much cheaper option for a place just to rest our heads for the night. I was thankful to move to a much more spacious family suite at AoA, as the Pop Century room was really tight for five of us plus a rollaway crib. We had a lazy morning and breakfast as I didn't want to rush my family around already (one of my Disney challenges is always pulling back a bit on how much I push in the parks). As a result, we got on the bus to the Expo a little later than I anticipated and we arrived around 10:30am.

The Expo was already packed when we arrived at ESPN Wide World of Sports. I kept an eye on my Virtual Queue group for the merchandise area as we quickly found the end of a very long line for bib pickup. I have only ever shown up to the Expo in the early afternoon when it's much easier to walk in and out in under an hour. Here we snaked through a long line both outside then inside until we finally reached the floor for bib pickup after close to an hour. I went first to get my bib and was disappointed (though not surprised) to find myself assigned to Corral G, the last corral, for the Half Marathon and Marathon. I say not surprised because my bib number was among the higher end when comparing with those on social media, and typically the higher the number the lower the corral. I had submitted a proof of time of 3:39 from the Philadelphia Marathon in late 2023, so I knew I qualified for an earlier corral on time. I took my son, who was running with me for the 5k, over to get his bib before I split off from my family to head in the Runner Relations line (another line!).

Mickey and Minnie were in the bib pickup area for photos, so my family waited in that line while it took me another hour to get to the front of the Runner Relations line. Throughout my wait I got to chat with a few other runners as runDisney Cast Members repeated several times they would not upgrade any 5k/10k corral assignments, only (potentially) those whose POT warranted faster corrals. I was nervous I would run into issues getting my corral fixed, and it was while waiting in line and pulling up my Philadelphia Marathon result that I realized my issue: I was "Skylar" (my preferred name) for the Philly Marathon, but my runDisney profile listed my name as "Kenneth", which is my first name. So another word of caution: make sure your POT name completely matches the name on your runDisney registration. If runDisney can't fully confirm your POT, they'll put you in the last corral. Thankfully Runner Relations quickly confirmed the POT and stuck an "A" sticker over my corral assignment, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I walked over to the character line just as my family got to the front and was able to get a family photo with Mickey and Minnie. I also got a front row seat to my youngest (about 19 months at the time) give a huge hug to "Min Mouf" (her name for Mickey), a trend she continued for pretty much every character we saw throughout the week.

After the bib pickup we were surprised to see an even longer line for shirt pickup. The line moved pretty quickly, but meanwhile my VQ spot for merchandise came up and I was nowhere close to getting over there. Fortunately I had a friend who happened to be running the Half Marathon already in the merchandise area, and he snagged me one of the last Dopey car magnets on the shelf.

By the time we finally got our bibs, our shirts, and a little swag, it was already after 1pm and we decided to skip the merchandise area. I already had the magnet I wanted and I'm not big on "Finisher" shirts before I actually finish a race. Besides, the six race shirts (plus one for my son) were plenty of merchandise for me. We had planned on going to Disney Springs for the afternoon, but it was later than we anticipated and the crew was a little tired from traveling the day before so we headed over to Art of Animation to pick up our luggage and settle in. We took an afternoon ride on the Skyliner to the Boardwalk area where my daughter got the biggest corndog I've ever seen (unfortunately it wouldn't be the last we'd see of it), and we looped around and headed back to our resort for a pizza and early bedtime. Dopey was finally upon us!

Next Section: 5k and Epcot