Princess Half Marathon Weekend Thoughts/Recaps: Part One (The runDisney)
As a reminder, my travel party for this trip was me, my sister Beth (who you may remember from my previous trips), Beth's friend L, and L's fiance R. This was my first time meeting L and R, and they were great - definitely good Disney companions and good people.
Expo:
We were originally planning to go to the expo when we first arrived, but after a delay in getting to the hotel (it involved a Starbucks run and a long DME wait), we decided to do park first then expo. Which is a good thing, because we spent a lot of time at the expo. We got there around 5:20ish and stayed until closing.
Sparkles = Sea Salt (Ariel was weird)
We went to the official runDisney merchandise building first. Vanellope and Ariel were out for pictures - we got pictures with Vanellope before the shopping and Ariel after. We tried on the purple race weekend jacket (sizing was ridiculous - I'm normally a small/medium and the large fit me perfectly), but ended up not getting it because we got the half marathon jacket (which had a hood and zipper pockets and is actually the right size) instead. I probably should have gotten the 5K jacket too, but dang those things ain't cheap. In addition to our jackets, I got a keychain and a Pandora bead, Beth got a few pins, we got a magnet for my parents, and we both got Tervis mugs (the coffee mug shape with the handle). I can't remember what L bought, but I do remember that R arrived while she was waiting to pick up her pre-order stuff and Beth and I were buying more things.
Once we had our merchandise haul and had met our princesses, we went to pick up our bibs. We took some pictures with some race-related statues, then headed out to pick up our shirts.
We picked up our shirts, tried them on, and then did some shopping. I stopped at Sparkle Athletic and got a rose gold skirt. We stopped at Raw Threads but wasn't really impressed by the selection. Beth was looking for something to "princess" up her outfit, but didn't really find anything we liked.
5K:
The plan was to do the 5K as a group. The weather was nasty (cold, windy, rain), so we were out there in our mylar blankets being entirely grumpy about the weather. We were waiting in line for a character (I want to say it was Cinderella or Snow White) and they took the characters inside because of the rain. We stayed in line until it became pretty clear that the characters weren't coming back out, then we went to our corral. Hung out there for a long time and listened to a lot of announcer nonsense and Disney advertising. Carissa told us to take off our mylar blankets before we crossed the start line because of the timing chip. Oh, Carissa. Thankfully, John Pelkey clarified that we could leave our mylar blankets on for the 5K ... and we may want to because the weather was terrible.
We eventually made our way to the start. Plan for this race was to walk the whole thing and try to stop for characters. The first character was Moana, and since L and R were Moana and Maui and Beth and I were HeiHei and Pua inspired, we had to stop. We also stopped for Lilo and Stitch, even though they weren't that exciting of a stop, because why not. We stopped for Rapunzel and Flynn in Germany, and man that line was long (basically all the way into Biergarten). As we were on line, the character attendant said that the sweepers were coming and if we were in line when they passed, we'd get swept. Some people left the line and we moved closer to the front. Then I saw the bikes, so we got out of line and sprinted like hell. We also skipped Belle and the Beast because of lines. I'm bummed about missing both of those stops, but it is what it is. We stopped for Frozone and Mexican Donald because their lines were shorter and we weren't as afraid of the sweepers by then.
I enjoyed the race, but definitely wish we had skipped Lilo and Stitch so that we could get Rapunzel/Flynn. Whatever. It was a fun experience over all and I'm glad we did it as a group. I just wish the weather had been a little better.
Half:
Three of us were doing the half - Beth, L, and me. L had a really good POT, but she wasn't trained for a half and was planning to walk the whole thing (don't worry, she stayed off to the side out of the way of the runners). I used the same POT as last year and was placed in corral D. Beth was in corral F. I decided to start with Beth, but I wasn't sure leading into the race what my approach would be. Ultimately, I decided to start with Beth and separate from her at the first character where I wanted to stop and she didn't.
We were on one of the first buses from Pop (they had a few buses pull up all at once) and got to the start area relatively early. They had some princesses out, and we decided to get a picture with Princess Minnie (okay, fine, I'll allow calling Minnie a princess). We decided that we didn't have time for another line, especially because Beth wanted to be at the front of the corral, so we started the long dark walk to the corrals. I forgot how long it was ... maybe because I was too freaked out about the marathon last year. When we got to the corrals, Beth and I went to F and L went to B. We waited a while, but Carissa wasn't super annoying and they interviewed
@stacy~** (who we did not get to meet up with at any point
), which was cool. Eventually, it was time to go.
Beth and I started pretty close to the front of F. We skipped the first stop (Suzy and Perla) with plans to hit it on the way back, but stopped for the second stop (all the Tremaines). Beth's phone was dying far more rapidly than expected, so we took most of the pictures on my phone. I wanted to stay with Beth until Magic Kingdom. Her reaction to running into Magic Kingdom was exactly why I wanted her to do this race and why it was so important to me that I stay with her for this part of the race. Seeing her emotional reaction reminded me why I love runDisney so much.
In Magic Kingdom, we skipped some kid from
Meet the Robinsons but stopped for Dopey and Snow White. I believe Chip n Dale were also in MK, but we skipped them because we wanted to make up some time. I think right after MK was one of the floats from Festival of Fantasy, so we stopped for that. The fairies from Sleeping Beauty were somewhere after MK, but we decided not to stop for them either. We stopped for one of the characters from A Bug's Life (can't remember her name right now), but skipped the bad guy from Mulan. Then came Cinderella and Prince Charming, which was our longest line, but also a stop we were very excited about. We stopped for Jafar, then a little bit later Suzy and Perla, who had a much shorter line than they did at the start of the race. We stopped for Panchito the creepy stalker bird in Epcot, and then Tinkerbell and one of the new fairies. Our last stop was Bolt, who were were excited to see because we missed him at the 10K in 2016 (we saw Mittens the Kitten instead). And that was it. After Epcot we mostly walked until we got close to the finish line.
Beth did great. She was doing walk/run intervals, and we did walk a few of the runs, but we also ran a few of the walks. For someone who only got up to 7 miles in training, she really did amazing and had a good attitude, and I'm super super proud of her. As much as I wish that my first runDisney half had been done on my own terms, I wouldn't trade the experience of seeing her through her first half for anything, and I'm glad we did it this way.
L had finished a few minutes before us, so after we finished and stretched, we went to find her (and R, who had been at MK but may have left right before we got there ... or at least we didn't see him, which we were bummed about). We found them and R had a congratulatory rose and balloon for each of us, which was super sweet. And then we waited in a long line for the bus back to the hotel.
