Disney Trip Part Three

Somehow I survived the first day at work after daylight saving time.  The irony of it is that I drank a cup of regular coffee, instead of decaf, and so at 10:30pm when I crawled into bed I was wide awake.  Yes, a cup of coffee at 8am will keep me awake at 10:30pm - I don't have caffeine very often.  So, I was still up late again, just this time I was in bed.  I am trying a new method where I make a slow cooker meal or cook the night before in hopes of reducing dinner prep time.  It was a complete success yesterday.  Evan and I played for a while when I got home and we still sat down to eat at around 7:30pm and all I had to do was microwave a few things and dinner was ready.  I'm not sure how long it will last though.

Ok, onto Disney!  It's the last Disney post in case you are tired of hearing about the "happiest place on Earth"!

The Disney Princess Half Marathon

The half marathon was the sole reason we had even embarked on a ridiculously expensive vacation to Disney World in the first place.  My sister had wanted to run a half marathon for her 30th birthday and I agreed to do it with her (so she wasn't doing it alone).  She chose the Disney Princess because it sounded fun and not as serious as a regular half marathon.  And people dressed up as Disney Princesses and she thought it would be fun to dress up (it was fun actually).  So, we paid the outrageous entry fee of $165 back in June and there was no turning back.  I was a bit skeptical about paying so much money because it's not like you got free entry to the park or something.  You got nothing extra actually - just the same old stuff like a t-shirt and a medal.  I'm not quite sure why the race is so pricey, but it was fun.

On race day I woke up at 2:30am to catch a shuttle to the race start.  The first shuttle left at 3am and I knew I wanted to be at the start with plenty of time to spare.  Mission accomplished - I was one of about 50 people there!  I had my costume on that my sister had made and I walked around, used the potty, and stretched a bit while waiting for my sister to arrive.  There was not a lot going on, but they did have a DJ and he was playing some motivating tunes, so I was jamming along by myself.  Finally my sister showed up!

First things first - getting our picture taken.  As you may or may not know from our costumes, we were Anna and Elsa from Frozen.  My sister made our costumes, which you can see a little better in the pictures we took when it finally got light out.  Remember, it's only 4am right now so it's still plenty dark!

We eventually headed over to our corral, F, to start stretching and get ready for the 5:30am start.  My sister was a bit nervous because she hadn't trained that well and was worried about finishing, but I figured we'd be just fine.  I was initially put in corral C but decided to run with my sister so ended up just going to F (just in case you're not race savvy, you can usually move down corrals but you are not supposed to move up corrals because the front corrals are for faster people).  While waiting for the race to start we find Olaf!

We didn't actually know that guy at all, but it was fun getting our picture taken with him.  And do you see that cape I'm wearing?  That was actually my niece's cape and I had to run with it the entire time.  My mom had made a shorter cape for me to run with but it got lost in the mail and didn't arrive in time, so instead I borrowed my niece's cape and ran in that instead.  I can tell you - it was a bit hot!!  And it occassionally pulled at my neck.  However, it worked fine and everyone was able to recognize that I was Anna, so that was a huge positive.

We started out the race running like a normal race.  My sister was puffing a bit beside me so I kind of figured we wouldn't be keeping that pace the entire time, but we started out strong.  The beginning part of the race was just along highways and through parking lots.  We started in the parking lot of Epcot and had to run to Magic Kingdom, so that was a good bit of distance.  We finally hit Magic Kingdom about the time the sun was coming up!

There's the lit-up castle behind me!  All the pictures are a bit blurry because they were from my sister's iPhone, but they are better than nothing.  And way better than paying $100 for race photos!  Here's a closer picture when we ran through the castle:

As you can see (on the left of my sister's head), the castle was under construction a bit and the person who took this photo of us didn't think to crop our bodies out for more of the castle.  Oh well.

 

From about this point on we started stopping to take pictures all the time.  Disney had a bunch of characters out on the sides of the race where you could get photo-ops and so it was fun to stop  and get pictures taken.  Especially since during Disney hours you have to wait for hours and hours for a photo with a character!  Don't get me wrong, the lines were really long at times but I think the longest we waited was 15 minutes for Mickey and Minnie mouse.

But it was worth it!

I think my sister enjoyed the pictures because she got a chance to relax, take a break while waiting in line, and look forward to the next character coming up!!  So, we got a lot of character photos.

 

The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland:

Mary Poppins and Bert, from Mary Poppins:

The Genie from Aladdin:

 

 

On the side of the road there was this sign:

 

"Let it Go" is one of the main songs from Frozen so we had to get our picture taken with it.

The Disney Princes!

Notice how my sister is flexing her muscle but if you look closely at me you'll see that I am carrying her water bottle.  Yup, that's what older sisters are for - when the little sis gets tired the big sis carries her water bottle.  So I actually had my water bottle in one hand and her's in another.

Princess Dot from A Bug's Life:

As you can see from the photo above, it was very hazy and foggy out during the race.  It was great actually because it wasn't too hot but it wasn't cold either.  We were perfectly comfortable the entire time.  It got really sunny and warm after the race ended but it was nice that the weather stayed cooler for the race (of course we finished a little after 8:30am so it was still early).

 

 About mile 10 there was a decent sized hill and about half way up the hill they had this green army man yelling at everyone to keep running and do push-ups!  It was cute, so we snapped a picture.  It was a little sad because there were no lines to get your picture with him - I guess princess racers aren't interested in army men!

 

Towards the end of the race they had this big set-up with Jack Sparrow and the ship from Pirates of the Caribbean.  Too bad it wasn't Johnny Depp!!!  

 

In Epcot, within the last mile of the race we found Sofia the First!  My nieces love her (she was their favorite until Frozen came out), so we had to snap our picture.  We were hoping Elsa and Anna would be on the course, but they were not.  Actually, there were hardly any princesses on the course - just Snow White, Princess Dot, and Sofia the First.  What happened to Belle and Pocahontas and Aurora and Ariel and all the others???  I think I remember Princess Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, but I hadn't ever seen that so I didn't know who she was until my sister mentioned it.

And then we were done!!!  13.1 miles and 3 hours later!!  Yup, it took us THREE HOURS - it was the longest half marathon of my life!!!  I guess that's what happens when you wait in a million lines for photos with Disney characters....

I had a ton of fun though - it was fun running with my sister, not caring about the time, stopping to get fun photos all the time, and just relaxing through the entire thing.  And we didn't do too badly, I think we were in the 9000 out of more than 24,000 runners so we finished before more than half of the people out there (scary thought, huh).  Plus, I wasn't out of breath or tired after the race and I wasn't even sore the next day.  It was like I had dreamed the entire thing!

 

All in all the race was really fun and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun race, especially if you don't care as much about your time.  I'm not sure it would have been worth the money if I had just run straight through and hadn't taken any photos - what made it worth it were the fun photos and the actual experience.  I was disappointed that more of the race wasn't through the parks though.  We only ended up doing about a mile through Magic Kingdom and then a mile through Epcot - but the race was 13.1 miles - so that means more than ten miles were just on highways and through parking lots.  Not that exciting.  Sure, they tried to make it more exciting by having the characters along the highway, but the park and characters together would have been way better.  We could have looped through Hollywood Studies and Animal Kingdom if they needed more space.  Not sure why they limit the park part so much.

After the race I took the shuttle back to the hotel, showered, packed, and we checked out.  Our resort was nice enough to give me a late check-out so we didn't have to be out until 1pm.  Then our friends from Tampa (they used to live in near us and are Evan's godparents) came and picked us up and we spent the rest of Sunday and all day Monday hanging out with them.

They had giant legos at the entrance to the hotel so evan had a blast playing with them while we waited for our friends to arrive and figure out how to pack all our luggage into their car.

We had a lot of fun staying with them - Ivan really loved it because he went golfing Sunday afternoon, fishing Monday morning, and golfing Monday afternoon again!  Evan and I hung out at the condo, took a nice walk along the mangroves, and went to the beach Monday afternoon.

Evan looks SOOOOO old in this photo.  Where is my baby???

Evan thought the best thing in the world was their screened-in porch.  He loved hanging out there and looking at everything (they were on the 6th floor and looked out to the water).

On Monday I made a huge boo-boo that ended our trip on a high-panic note.  I thought our flight left at 8:45pm so we were about to leave the condo (at 6:15pm) and I checked to make sure and our flight actually left at 7:45pm!!!!  Yikes!!!!  It took at least 45 minutes to get to the airport and we weren't sure we'd make it.  We decided to try because we didn't have a lot of options (changing flights would have cost a small fortune).  We got to the airport at 7:15pm and by the time we got our luggage out, put the car seat in its travel bag, and made our way to the check-in it was 7:20pm!!!  The woman was doubtful we'd make it but she said we could try if we wanted.  So we checked our bags, raced through security, and made it to the gate!!!  They had even printed out our gate-check tags already!  Plus, we weren't the last ones on the flight - two people came on after us.

It was a bit hectic and crazy, but I was so happy we had made it.  

And just like that we got home and I went to work the next day.  

 

Disney?  Done.  

 

Half marathon?  Done.  

 

Bank account?  DONE!!

 

The End.