So needless to say, Dopey and his six dwarven cohorts remain near and dear to my heart. So deep was my four-year-old self-identity wrapped up in the mute Dopey persona that I declined to answer to any name but “Dopey” for months, which led to a number of situations in which my mom had to scream, “DOPEY! GET BACK HERE!” across a crowded grocery store in order to summon me, and potentially child services. Naturally, right? What little girl wouldn’t want to assume the identity of a stubby, hiccupping buffoon perpetually exasperating his elders? It didn’t hurt that as a child I had one Disney character obsession, and that was not with the glamorous princess canon but with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ Dopey. So obviously I had to sign up for the Dopey Challenge. That doesn’t mean running those races is actually easy-we’re still talking about 26.2+ miles here! I’m simply describing what it feels like to sign up for a runDisney event, which is to say when presented the option to register for a 48.6-mile expedition through Disney’s hinterlands, all other combinations of distances start to sound like a turkey trot. But this year runDisney cursed us with the 48.6-mile Dopey Challenge, which had the strange effect of making the Goofy Challenge seem like a breezy, everyday color run, and the basic Disney Marathon like a walk across the room to pull a beer out of the fridge. Last year I ran the ludicrous-to-me-at-the-time Goofy Challenge, which consisted of chasing a half-marathon with a full marathon the following day. You just can’t fight the power of Big Mouse to overload your senses with delight. Yet once again the Happiest Place on Earth cut through a good 90 percent of my cynicism, and I found myself on a one-way Magical Express ride to joyous delirium and childlike wonder. I flew to Orlando determined not to get too caught up in the calculated-nostalgia engine driven by Mickey and associates, and just to be safe, forced two coworkers to solemnly swear on a copy of Disney’s Bible Classics that they would physically stop me from getting a Fantasia tattoo during our deployment at Disney. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to playīut this year I was better prepared to face those animated corporate overlords at Disney.
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