On April 22nd, after the return of the Disneyland runs for only sixteen months, runDisney, the official organizer of all Disney parks runs, released this announcement:
“Due to upcoming construction impacts, runDisney races at the Disneyland® Resort will be placed on hiatus in 2026 after the conclusion of the 2026 Disneyland® Half Marathon Weekend presented by HONDA. We will continue to offer races at Walt Disney World® Resort, as well as virtual offerings.”
Construction impacts?
Let’s discuss what this could possibly mean.
Of course much of the buzz about the Anaheim parks over the last year has centered around the City’s approval of Disney’s DisneylandForward project. I covered that in painstaking detail here, but the TL/DR is that Anaheim has made the zoning of Disney’s property much more fluid than is normal for cities. They have said that Disney can break up the square footage of their theme park, hotel, and commercial zoning and redistribute it across their property willy-nilly.
This does not give the company any new square footage for theme parks or additional hotel rooms, it simply redistributes the current allocated zones, which means that Disney will have to do a lot of sliding-block puzzle moves to get things where they want them.
Here’s why I don’t think that the “construction” mentioned in the announcement is related to DisneylandForward.
DisneylandForward will begin with one of two projects that we have seen no sign of yet.
To get the pieces in place for their ultimate goals, the DisneylandForward project will be initiated with either a new parking lot structure east of the resort or construction in the empty space to the north or south of the Disneyland Hotel itself. (For details about why these are the two moves, see my article prior.)
Construction of the parking lot could impact the finish line/reunion area (which has moved over the years) for the races, but not the course at all. And read on to see why now might not be the time they want to start down that road.
DisneylandForward is a multi-year, extraordinarily expensive, project.
A lot of construction work will have to happen before they even begin to see their ultimate goal, which is, primarily, to turn the Toy Story parking lot into a Disney Springs-style experience.
This is not a time when the Disney company is likely to saddle themselves with a series of high, long term, costs is California. The economy is unstable, work is already in progress on several major projects in Florida, and international tourism — about 20% of Florida’s guests — is dropping like the original Tower of Terror. It would be difficult to imagine the company committing to any more long-term CapEx right now.
There are a few, much smaller, projects that could give them some small wins right now.
These changes would most certainly disrupt the races.
We cannot know when, or indeed if, the runDisney races will return to the Disneyland Resort. It is possible that the Anaheim parks, staring at an unpredictable economy for the company and for Anaheim, wanted to get out of the business of having to negotiate for use of the city streets twice a year — to save whatever good will they’ve banked for bigger construction issues. We really don’t know. Whatever comes of it, as a participant in these events, I’ll miss seeing the runDisney community at Walt Disney’s original theme park.
For now, the last chance to sign up for a Disneyland run will be next Tuesday at 7AM Pacific Time. The races will take place over the weekend of January 29–February 1.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times
