Princess Half: The Price Never Bothered Us Anyway
The Princess Half Marathon sold out yesterday in less than 2 hours.? Even Active.com crashing for a good 45 minutes at opening didn’t stop the flood of registrations. Price too high? Apparently not yet. Harumph.
Despite the concerns and discussions over the way prices keep climbing, we aren’t staying away. What’s up with that, Princesses?
We whine, we moan, we scream and yell that we are NOT going to run this race again!
Yet… it sells out. In record time. Again.
As someone who invests a lot of time and energy covering runDisney it’s fascinating to me how this plays out.
The pre-registration talk (this post) is interesting, but it’s the post-registration social media fallout that blows my mind.
Total soap opera time, y’all. As seen on Facebook and Twitter:
1. I decided to register after work only to discover it’s sold out. How can it be sold out?
No offense, but do you live in a cave? They’ve proven that even in remote locations you can get online. I’m not trying to be mean, but all signs pointed to a fast sell-out. I don’t understand how this comes as a surprise.
2. Man, that was FAST. Of course it was. People planned for this morning all year. They blocked out time in their schedules to be online at the stroke of noon. I read reports of princesses taking the day off from work and sending their kids to daycare to make sure they could focus on the first race of the Princess weekend: the race to register. Credit cards were memorized and proof of time information was ready to go. Registering takes almost as much training as the actual race!
3. But I’m usually able to register months later! I don’t understand what happened.
True enough- in 2011 I registered my sister in November. In 2012 I think she registered as late as January. But that ship has sailed, y’all.
runDisney has simply exploded in popularity not in small part due to people like yours truly. My blogging career (and those of many of my friends) started with the desire to help runners become Princesses. When searching for information on my first Princess Half I discovered there was very little online about running the Disney races.
So the next year I kicked off my little blog and started hanging around social media groups hoping to share information and learn from other experiences.
I joined one group with about 400 people in it. In less than 2 years it’s grown to just over 9,000 people. All talking about runDisney.
The more we wrote, the easier information was to find, and the more people wanted to be part of the Magic.
The word is out, people. Genie is not going back in the bottle.
4. Anyone that signed up is a FOOL anyway.
Yeah, then there are these people. The ones who decide to berate Princesses for spending so much money ($170 is pretty pricey, I’ll agree) on a race that’s crowded and crappy anyway. All we are doing is lining a corporation’s pockets with our hard-earned cash.
You know… supporting capitalism.
I don’t understand this argument. You may not put value on this race experience, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value in it for someone else. Why must you (general you) rain on people’s hopes and dreams? Do I need to bring out the Worry About Yourself video again?
The good news? It’s over for another year. If you chose to skip the race this year the temptation is over. Mostly.
There are still charity options and travel operators to explore. And possibly a 2nd chance coming via runDisney directly. Rumor has it the Active snafu also double and triple-booked registrations for some Princesses. If those are reversed it might open up additional slots.
So make sure your cave is internet ready and watch social media for the news. If I hear about any additional slots opening up, I’ll be sure to post it here.
What did you see discussed in the Princess Half aftermath? Any regrets about your Princess Half decision?
Patty Holliday is the owner and creator of all things No-Guilt Universe. As a lifelong fangirl and pop culture connoisseur, she’s been creating online since 2009. You can find her work at No-Guilt Disney.com, No-Guilt Fangirl.com, No-Guilt Life, and as host of the top-rated No-Guilt Disney Podcast.
No regrets til they pull out a super cute 5K T-shirt!!
Ha! I know, I know! They sucked me in last year with that one!
This is AWESOME, great insight, I agree. Seriously I need that tee shirt. Does it come in DriFit?? This could be a sellout tee!!!! Gonna go search for it on FB right now.
Oh, the drama. I registered for the GSC and the 5k and have to try very hard not to get sucked into the drama. Would I have been bummed if I didn’t get in? Of course, but there’s more to life-and there’s always next year! There’s so much info about runDisney out there that there’s not really an excuse to say “oh, I didn’t know!”
I will say, I have a friend who has never done a Disney race before and has never tackled 13.1. She simply wasn’t aware of the need to rush. She tried to register yesterday and it was sold out – she was so disappointed after she had gotten the courage up to commit to this race with a friend. I think a lot of first timers just don’t understand how these races sell out like this.
I do feel bad for those who wanted to run for the first time but could not get it. My sister and I were both at our (separate) computers by noon and it took us both an hour and 20 minutes to finally get through the Active site. I am not kidding you when I tell you that I filled out that Active form SO many times that by the time it actually went through, I honestly didn’t even know what race I registered for. I was in a panic until I printed my receipt out and saw that I indeed did do it correctly. I could go on and on about my thoughts on this but I don’t want to hijack your blog…lol. Will you be running in February?
It was crazy to watch it unfold especially when the AP/DVC didn’t sell out (except GSC).
I do think a lot of the problem was with active itself. I saw on Facebook and Twitter, people were getting in not signing into their active account and just using a guest. Active and rundisney are going to have to work something out especially when everyone is saying to log into your active account (which I did and it didn’t auto fill anything for me).
And honestly I doesn’t bother me if it sells out. If I want to do it, I need to know that early. Like with the 5k-I had to make that decision immediately and I did! The days of running races and registering right before are over. Even with my local races-running is just really popular now!
Less than 2 hours?! Wow. Think they’ll implement a lottery system one day?
Great insight! This was my fifth time registering for a Disney race and it was by far the most stressful. I met three friends to register. We had 5 computers ready to go. It took an hour and 20 minutes to get registered. The most stressful point was when one of us got in and rest still weren’t in. She was totally freaking out. We had to promise that if we didn’t’t get in we would still go. Finally 20 minutes later, we were all in. What a way to start our race experience. Training will be easy compared to that.
I’ve never done a Disney race and I’m undecided if I want to. I’ve heard they are fun but crowded and expensive. From your post it seems this year will be no exception! Maybe I’ll wait a couple years until the hype has died down! Good luck runners!!
I was able to sign up during the AP process (and had to sign in as a guest to active). I was at work, walking my mom through the process. This will be her 1st Half Marathon (super excited). While she had some problems, it wasn’t near as bad as the posts I was seeing on runDisney’s fb page. We are making it a huge family/friend trip with our East Coast family. I am so glad she was able to get in. Now we get to do it all over again in Aug for Tink (Pink C2C here I come).
Oh my goodness, I laughed SO hard at that first bullet point. If you have any runDisney dreams, surely you’ve done research/read blogs enough to know how fast these races sell out!! You can’t just wait 4-6 hrs after registration opens to sign up lol!
Great post! 🙂
At first, I thought the added frenzy might have something to do with runDisney hinting about a Frozen theme for 5k and kids races, but the 5k is only now showing 65% so that’s most likely not true. Crazy day yesterday. Even though I registered early, I was stressing for all my Facebook pals who were having trouble!
lol. True. When I ran in 2011, I registered Nov/Dec I think. My friend registered for Donald and I registered for Princess.
But … inspite of me doing Dopey, my days of runDisney may be over. Maybe when the munchkins are old enough to run with me!
As someone who has given my share of money to Disney, I have to say the Princess Half has never even tempted me. For one thing…February. Theoretically, going from one sunny state to another sunny state should be easy, but…well…there’s the airline system that places major hubs in places that get terrible weather and the entire system gets affected.
Moreover, though, I can’t deal with grown-ass women referring to themselves as “princesses.” And I can’t deal with a sub-culture encouraging it.
I do have to disagree with you on the attitude that everyone should know they’re going to sell out fast. I hate the snarky comments on the runDisney FB page at registration time. There are people who don’t stalk running FB pages or Disney social media. So, in that respect maybe they’re living under a rock. They simply hear about the race, maybe through an ad in Runner’s World or through a friend who has done it in the past and decide to register. When I first did Disneyland, you could register for several months. Then a few years later, I went to register and was surprised to find it sold out. Not everyone stays on top of runDisney. Some people just think it’s another race that would be fun to do. They quickly learn.
Even when I registered for the 2012 half, I registered right when registration opened. I didn’t know how popular the race would be and I wasn’t going to take a chance. Honestly all that drama is why I don’t follow rD on social media anymore. All the whining and trolling was enough to make me hurl.
I am sucked back in for PHM 2016 ! Due to scheduling conflicts I am out for 2015 but DH seems to want to do it again…and to think he begrudgingly did PHM 2013! Just going to lurk here on Patty’s blog and the DIS boards and train along with everyone!
Although the Disney Princess half marathon did sell out fast, it actually took a little over 5 hours. It was only the Glass Slipper Challenge that sold out in 2 hours. This will be my first RunDisney race, but thanks to people like you, I was on my computer the minute registration opened. It took my daughter and me an hour and 10 minutes to get registered, but we’re in!