While I agree with a bunch of the posters - I think that there is probably, at best, a 30% chance of a live race happening - I'm thinking that there are definitely ways of making the race happen IF Disney wants it to.
- If I'm looking at things correctly (I haven't done a Star Wars race yet), this is a race that traditionally has separate start and finish lines. My point above was if you let people park at both the start and finish (Disney surely has enough parking areas available to make this happen) - instead of forcing people to park at the finish and bus to the start - you can reduce the transportation load.
- With the park opening times of 9 a.m. (Animal Kingdom), 10 a.m. (DHS) and 12 p.m. (Epcot), there will be more time than usual to get the runners clear of the parks. If they backed up the start time to 5 a.m., you have 3.5 hours to get the runners out. Depending on how many runners are started at a time (how wide is the road to Animal Kingdom?), it might be possible to use that course.
- In a similar vein, if Epcot isn't opening until noon, there is a TON of time to run the 5K.
My point is that, with creative thinking, it is possible. I know A LOT of people and businesses that have faced stiffer challenges this past year and managed to make remarkable things happen. But it is definitely easier for Disney to say "we can't do it" - no, you don't WANT to make it happen - and go virtual.
Like I said in my post it is possible to run *A* race. can it be run like normal? not a chance.
1) you are correct but unless you have people meeting you at one end or the other somewhere you have to move to where your car is.
2) As I said in my post, star wars does have the advantage of not having to deal with MK which has very strict times of getting people out. That does help. The question is can you stagger people enough to make it work? That is the big question. I haven't run the math so I'm not sure but I still think it would be pretty tight. You say 3.5 hours but the start line is typically magic kingdom parking lot. So at an AK opening of 9am, you still have to get people from MK to AK and have time to remove all the cones, water stations, etc. by 9am. You don't leave AK until mile 4. At 16 min/mile that is still a little over an hour.. you'll still need half an hour probably to clean things up so you'd need people out of AK by around 7 probably. So now you are down to 2 hours to start racers. Even though AK is mile 4... HS you leave around 10.5... At a 16 min/mile pace. There is a 1 hour opening between AK and HS but runners need 1.5 hours now so you cut another half hour from your start times.
The later opening times help but the numbers still get very tight very quick especially at HS. Could you hit those numbers? Maybe but it isn't easy. I'm not saying it can't be done but it is very very tight especially when you add in time to clean up things before park open.
3) the 5k and the 10k can definitely take place. There is always enough time for those. The half is where the times get tight.
Is it impossible? No. Is it very very tight time wise for disney? yes. and the problem is if they mess up the times they have an issues with park guests which they don't want. It is the same issues races like NYCM are going to face. Can they stagger starts over a long to make it work? sure. Can they keep roads closed for that long to accommodate that? Likely not. Disney is even worse since it isn't just roads but guests into the parks as well. There are a ton of moving parts that marks is very tough.
Even with the later park opens, I think they'd have to push back to a 3 or 4 am start to have a chance.