Dopey Challenge Travel Planning--Hotels, Flights, Parks, Dining

My initial plan for Dopey was to go with my partner-in-crime, Jen. But she can't make it. So my Plan B was to go by myself. Then my mom cooked up an idea to turn this into a mother-daughter trip because she doesn't want me to go to Florida and run 48.6 miles without someone there to cringe as I lower myself in an ice bath each night. (Plus, she hasn't been to Disney in, oh, maybe 30 years, so the prospect of getting to ride It's a Small World probably appeals to her a little bit, too). So we're on to plan C, but that means some details.

As soon as I bought my race entry, I booked a hotel room at the Pop Century Resort. I did a little bit of kicking around on some running blogs, and I found that as a recommendation among the "economy" resorts. Our family stayed at the Fort Wilderness Campground this last go-round and at the Caribbean Beach Resort on our first trip there together, but I was thinking economy this time (I'm feeling guilty because I'm not taking my husband or daughter with me for this trip...). I think that's going to stick.

People on the Facebook group I'm on started talking about dining reservations. That's where things start to get a little tricky for me. The races are Thursday through Sunday. I'm going to get my mom and me tickets to Magic Kingdom for Thursday (the day of the 5K), so I made breakfast reservations for us at Be Our Guest at 10:25 after the 5k; I'm trying to think of places that will be a treat for my mom. I also made a reservation for Epcot on the night of the marathon, but I'm rethinking that now. I'm wondering if I should just play it by ear and see how I feel? I want to get my mom a walk around Epcot, too, and I think the day we would do that would be on the marathon day before heading home on Monday, but I don't know if it is wise to commit to dining reservations. This will be my first Dopey and my ....oh, I don't know how many marathons I've done. But every marathon has a different kind of tired after it. Still, I want my mom to get to experience the parks. Still thinking about this one...

And today I'm looking at flights. I live in NW Indiana. My gut tells me to book flights out of Indianapolis because the weather up here can be bad, and Indianapolis is two hours south. Midway is a two-hour drive, too, so there's not a real advantage in heading in to Chicago. There are so many layers of anxiety around flights for me. I don't like flying. I don't like booking flights because there are so many things that can go not-quite-right with the reservations and the weather at that time of year and... And then there's the whole non-refundable commitment. Kills me. But I found a pretty cheap flight out of Indy; I'm waiting on my mom to call me back and give me the go-ahead.

Planning for a family trip (how people do these both at the same time, I don't know) and this kind of trip are two different beasts. Just need to get some more boxes checked off in the planning process.