The Magic Kingdom!

I got in bed at 5:05 a.m. Sunday after the race. We all woke up around noon. We got dressed & had lunch. We had tickets to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party Sunday night. The party officially starts at 7:00 but they'll let you in at 4:00. 

When you went in the park you got a wristband because at 7:00 if you don't have one you don't get to ride. They sell a limited number of tickets to the party.

I love Main Street, especially at Christmas.

Have to have a pic with the Castle in the background!

Our first stop was Starbuck's. LOL. 

We got to ride everything that we wanted to except Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. It was broken.

I love Big Thunder Mountain!

Once the party started there was some of the most delicious hot chocolate ever & snickerdoodle cookies. So good! They're free too! It's not often you can say you had something free at Disney.

There was a parade & a very cool light show on the Castle.

How many pics can you take of the Castle? Apparently, about a zillion judging by how many were on my phone. The light show projected all sort of different things on the Castle. My favorite are the ones that are just lit up. 

The party lasted until midnight. We made it until 11:00. We did everything we wanted to so we went back to the resort & got all of our stuff ready for luggage pickup in the morning. Seriously, that's one of the best services Disney offers. You call the luggage people - there's a button on the phone in your room - tell them what time you're scheduled on the Magical Express & they tell you what time someone will be to your room to get you. They come & take you & your luggage to the luggage center at your resort & you check it with them & they handle it from there. You see it again when you get to your final destination. 

I've read a lot of blog posts about this years race & Disney. There seem to be some differing opinions. I love Disney. I'm not one of the people that go multiple times a year or even once a year but I do really love it when I'm there. Some of the reviews I've seen seem to be written by people with unrealistic expectations. Disney is the happiest place on earth with the most unhappy people you've ever seen. There's nothing wrong with that. It's actually pretty funny. There's so much to see & do, you are totally exhausted every single day. Kids are on sensory overload & exhausted too. If you go in knowing that you'll be fine. Especially, at the Magic Kingdom. 

People complained that the race was shortened. While it wasn't ideal, I see why Disney chose to do it. There was a party scheduled. If the race would've been a Half after starting over an hour late, there wouldn't have been much of a party. Some people didn't care about that, they wanted to run a Half. My thoughts on that are that if you're that serious about it, this isn't the race for you. Disney is FUN, not the place for a PR.

 People complained about the price of registration. It's $200. Yes, it's expensive but that included entrance into Epcot for the party which allowed you to ride rides. I would've spent the same amount of money if not more had the registration been cheaper & I would've had to buy a ticket to Epcot. I'm not sure what people expect.  

I saw a few complaints about the number of people that ran & that you couldn't actually run. Maybe that was the case if you started in the very back but it wasn't my experience. We didn't start at the very beginning. We were in Corral G & it went to something like P. There were some spots that were more crowded than others but we never had to stop running. 

Disney is very strict about the corrals. Times are to be submitted by a certain date in order to be in a corral other than the last one. If you choose not to submit a time, you're in the last corral. They will let you move back to a slower corral but they will not allow you to move to a faster one. 

I saw a review about how long the food line was. Again, not something I experienced. We stood in line less than 5 minutes to get our picture taken after we finished & we just walked up & got our box of food & fruit. Water & Powerade was lined up on tables & there was no line for that either. Even when we got our beer, wine & Cokes there wasn't a line. Again, this may have been because of the corral I was in. 

The only complaints I had were that the water & Powerade weren't cold. It was hot & humid & I always want my drinks cold but that wasn't a huge deal. The one thing that did annoy me was that there was only white wine at the finish line. I don't know what the reason was for this because the wine they gave us was the same wine that they sell in Disney (with the exception of Magic Kingdom - no alcohol there) and they had red everywhere. I thought that was weird.

I've been asked a lot if I'd do it again. Based on my experience I absolutely would but there are a bunch of other places I want to go. I had a fabulous time & loved the race but Disney isn't cheap. Even just going with the girls & sharing a room. I've been 3 times in the last 6 or 7 years & I've loved every minute of it but there are other places I want to go. I'd love to run the Rock 'n Roll Half in Vegas! Maybe that will happen next year!

Toodles!

Wine & Dine Part 2

I had to post a pic of this cute little extra bed we had in our room.

It folds down from the wall & when it's closed it just looks like a piece of furniture & you don't know it's a bed. 

We managed to sleep until 10:30 Saturday morning. Our goal was to sleep a lot so we wouldn't be tired for the race. We headed to Downtown Disney to have lunch at Splitsville.

Of course I said yes when the waiter asked if I wanted to upgrade my regular fries to "loaded" fries. Why isn't this an option everywhere???

After lunch we grabbed a drink at Starbuck's (they're all over the place in Disney - it almost made up for the fact that there's no Dr. Pepper. Almost.), checked out a running store & headed back to the hotel to relax. Splitsville is on the opposite end of Downtown Disney from where the bus stop is. Don't let anyone tell you there's a stop by the parking garage. That was in only for off property shuttles. Since we were trying to rest our legs & feet & Cindy sounded like an 85 year old woman who's been smoking her whole life we weren't really into hoofing it all the way back to the bus stop. Once again, that's where Uber came in. I can't brag on them enough. Pulled up the app & someone was picking us up within 2 minutes. Since we'd used Cindy's free ride that she got with my referral, I had another free ride so we used it. Another good thing about it, is that the Uber driver drops you off at your building, not the bus stop. 

Once we were back at the resort we just hung out in the room & ended up taking a nap. 2 hours later we got up & started getting ready for the race.  There were special buses bringing runners to the Wide World of Sports Complex where the starting line was. 

We were ready to run! It was HOT. Like really hot & really humid. All of a sudden there was a nice breeze & everyone was commenting on how good it felt & then someone uttered the dreaded words - I think a storms coming. NOOOOOO. Well, a few minutes later it started raining but it only lasted a few minutes. Thank goodness!

We took a ton of selfies!

We were supposed to be in our corrals by 9:15 for the 10:00 start. We got there around 8:00 to make sure we weren't late. A stage was set up with basically a host who would lead dances - the chicken dance, macarena, the wobble, etc. Surprisingly, there was no whipping or nae nae'g. It was pretty funny. They interviewed people in the crowd & we got to see a guy propose to his girlfriend who was COMPLETELY shocked! It was great!

There were some characters taking pics.

The lines were soooo long but they moved pretty quickly. 

We were one of the last groups to take a pic with Minnie.

 Next up was what I really didn't want to do - get in line for the porta potties. YUCK!

There were about a million of them I swear but the lines were still long. Cindy & I were the only ones that needed to go. Normally, I would skip the bathroom talk BUT this is where everything got a little crazy. A Disney worker was walking around with his bullhorn saying in his very happy Disney worker voice that there was lightening in the area & we were seeking shelter. WHAT??? A ton of people got out of line but we decided to take our chances since we knew there was no way we'd get to a bathroom once we were inside. Imagine 12,000 people in a building. We had our turn & all was good. We made our way to shelter. A Disney worker told us they'd hold the race an hour before cancelling it.  

We weren't happy to hear that. We overheard another worker say that if they cancelled they'd need all the buses to bring us to Epcot. At least we'd still get to go. There were lots of rumors flying around about shortening the race, cancelling it, etc. I couldn't check FB or Twitter for updates because so many people were on their phones nothing would connect. I could text so between Dean & my friend Vicki we found out that bad weather was in the area & that we would race but it would only be 7 miles & we were skipping Animal Kingdom. Not ideal but better than a cancelled race. Cindy was so sick with sinus & upper respiratory crud that it worked out good. We were scared she wouldn't be able to run at all. 

They made the announcement that we were allowed to go to our corrals. YAY!

The starting line. Each corral got fireworks to start!

And we were off! It seemed weird to actually be running. We'd been planning this for so long!

That's Hollywood Studio's in the background!

I LOVED running through the Osborne Family Lights.

Purple & gold lights? We had to stop! Even though at that moment LSU was losing to Alabama.

I really like running along the boardwalk too. Everything was lit up & really pretty & there were a ton of spectators in different spots along the route. 

We didn't have a goal for this race. Originally, I was planning to start in my corral, Cindy in hers & the rest of the crew were in theirs. They were in the same corral. With Cindy being sick & me not wanting to run a fun race by myself, I started with her. You can move to a slower corral just not a faster one. We were going to run/walk based on how Cindy felt. Well, she rocked it. The only time we walked was through water stations & that's only like a few seconds & then towards the end there was a hill & we walked up it & then started running again. 

We finished!

Sweaty selfie!

There was beer, wine, Cokes, water, Powerade & fruit at the finish line. After they gave you your medal there was someone handing out the towel things that you wet that get cold & we got a little box of snacks. There was also a band playing. I completely forgot that Mickey & Minnie were at the finish line so no Mickey pic. Oh well. 

All weekend there were signs all over the place about how there would be intense heat for the race & take precautions. Well, if you're from up north, yes. If you're from Louisiana it's no different than running in August or September. 

We ate our snacks, drank our wine & then hit up the rides. Spaceship Earth, Test Track & Soarin' were all open so we got to ride & then we went to the countries & experienced some of the Wine & Dine Festival. I wish we would've had more time here. I would've liked to have tried more food & drinks. 

Love this picture! No filter & at 4:00 am when the party was over! 

Everything was so much fun & there's still a little more for later!

Have a great weekend! 

Toodles!