by Michelle Scribner-MacLean
As part of Team AllEars, I can tell you that I’m part of a group of people who love our gadgets and data collection, in addition to running. Lots of us use different gear to track our training progress including running watches, GPS apps on our phones, and satellite running watches. They are all great tools for collecting data and analyzing our progress.
During a recent trip to Walt Disney World, I thought it might be fun to spend a few days collecting data about how far we traveled during the day. We all know that any visit to WDW involves a lot of walking (my frequent blisters are evidence of this)”¦so I wondered how far my son Liam and I would travel during some of our days at the parks.
Each day we arrived, I turned on the watch and let it run during the day, recording our walking and, when the satellite was available indoors, some of our riding for the day. When I got home I uploaded the info onto my computer and, with the help of Google maps, found an interesting “story” of what our days were like.
One the day we spent about 12 hours at the Magic Kingdom, the GPS indicates that we “traveled” over 18 miles! Now when I say “travel,” that doesn’t mean that we walked the whole way”¦One the right you can see that we were in Tomorrowland, “traveling” on Space Mountain and on the Carousel of Progress (traveling on attractions was included in our overall mileage). I found it interesting that the GPS picked up the two times that we road the Jungle Cruise, that we were technically “outside” of the guest area in the separate building where part of Pirates of the Caribbean is housed, and the fact that we realllllly love Splash Mountain.
For another day at Animal Kingdom, it was also clear what our favorite attraction is there”¦.
Did you guess it? Yup! Expedition Everest”¦over and over again!
Another day at Future World showed that we really didn’t plan our time well”¦we were walking everywhere with no apparent goal. Sometimes that’s nice to do at WDW.
It was a fun exercise for us to track what we did and review what we had done. We might try it again and pack lots of extra BandAids for the dozens of blisters I got (but every one was worth it).
How interesting! I want to try this next time I go! I know my pedometer numbers are always in the 20,000’s!
Michelle, my husband and I have been doing this for our past several trips. I love being able to relive our day and see all the things we did. It’s a great way to record our trip. Keep up the fantastic work!
Yes, what kind of GPS device did you use that even picked up a signal inside many of the structures????
How cool!! What sort of GPS unit did you use to do this?? I would love to try it out.
Wow, Michelle. What a cool article and photos. Thanks, Ray 🙂
Wow…how interesting! I loved all the “twists and turns” on your maps…especially the Test Track portion of your trip! 🙂
And, my doctor says walking around EPCOT does not “qualify” as exercise! I beg to differ!!