I went to GE's opening last week... and I now really NEED these races to go through Batuu!!! Paths are plenty wide enough, so no issue there. And older courses used more of DHS, so I'm sure they can create a new course to do it. The big potential problem is that ROTR will be open by then, which may mean early opening times for the park and hoards of day Guests to navigate... or it may not. At least they'll have had a few months to look at things and decide. Hope springs eternal and only the ancients know!
I completely agree. Honestly, they can make the 10K and Half courses go through Batuu if they really want to. At least based off the
Disneyland version of the area, you can easily enter in at the old outpost where the Resistance base is located and go along that path. It's very doable. I don't know that all runners can go by the Falcon as that area is a bit tighter on the west coast, but they can easily set up a brief detour for anyone who wants to get their photo in front of the Falcon during the race.
And given that it's a Star Wars themed race, I think they almost need to make the course(s) go through Galaxy's Edge. They would take a lot of criticism from runners if they have a Star Wars race that does not go through Batuu. I get why they may well want to keep the 5K at Epcot. But they can make the 10K and Half go through Galaxy's Edge. Those distances have already gone through DHS for Star Wars races before it opened.
All they really need to do is make sure the course is cleared of runners before DHS opens. They can simply not hold extra magic hours at DHS the day of the 10K and/or Half. It's not going to be the end of the world. I'm a slower runner and I normally finish the half marathons at Epcot between 9 and 9:30 depending on how much time I've spent waiting for photos along the course. I really think they can find a way to make the course go through Galaxy's Edge without too much trouble.
I don’t think it has sold out since the inaugural year.
Do we read too much into any given race not selling out? Does runDisney have enough supply to meet demand? On the Disneyland side of the things, the inaugural Star Wars Half Marathon sold out. The subsequent 2 Star Wars Half Marathons did not sell out, but at least one of them featured
more runners than the inaugural year. So technically it didn't sell out, but they still had enough spots available because they increased capacity.
runDisney has such a volume buying power advantage, I don’t think they need the buffer that tiered pricing gives. It also doesn’t make sense when you have a history of trying to discount or fire sale bibs to get them sold as race day approaches.
They used to have tiered pricing many years ago. I think it basically went away during that period when races sold out within hours or days and they haven't bothered to bring it back since. I don't think runDisney needs it either because they are a destination race. I think most runners plan out the race weekend in advance because of the travel and lodging logistics they need to figure out that come with traveling to either Disneyland or Disney World.