Disneyland Day 1: Expo & What I Forgot

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We have arrived at the mouse's house! I was pretty stressed today about getting here, checking in, and picking up our bibs. All in all it didn't go too badly, we were late feeding the Griffster dinner but he was a trooper and was only mildly perturbed. We are staying at a Disneyland resort hotel, and I have to say that even though the price was shocking we had a great experience checking in even though it was very busy. The second we walked through the doors you could tell that it is a family-oriented hotel, in the lobby they have a "story time" area with mini lounger chairs for the children. We were immediately directed to the desk by the staff members with iPads at the front door, the lady at the desk offered Griffin a colouring book right away and had us all checked in in less than 5 minutes with personalized room keys for each of us (including Griffin lol). We then made our way up to our room, it's nothing super fancy, but it is very clean and comfortable and kid proof of course, well so far... I also noticed that if you have older children you can get a room with bunk beds, cool!

After settling in we were off towards the expo. The closer we got the more runners I could pick out of the crowd carrying bibs and other Tinkerbell merchandise. Though I got flustered it actually was a very well organized packet pickup and it didn't take long to locate our bibs. It was more the fact that we had to also pick up our discounted theme park tickets, "ChEAR squad" packets, and Griffins kids race packet so we visited almost every booth. We then had to test our chip, they're the ones that go on your bib so that's great, and they had volunteers cheer you across the test line which was kinda funny! Also because we booked our hotel through the travel organization "Get Travel" associated with the "Run Disney" races we received an awesome run Disney rolling duffel bag with wheels for free!

So next it was on to the actual expo and to see the official race merchandise. I stopped at a couple notable booths. "Team Sparkle" was there so I couldn't pass up that opportunity and bought a silver skirt for some of my future races this year. Hmm, maybe a costume for New York! We also stopped at a booth that had all these light up arm bands, shoe laces, and rings. Nikki from Slow is the New Fast asked me to grab some more of the rings for her (she saw them last weekend at WDW for the Goofy Challenge). Since we were there anyway I grabbed some orange and black flashing arm bands to add to our costume. There was lots of other great running products that I didn't really take the time to look at because I wanted to check out the official merch before buying anything else. I left a little disappointed, they had a kids shirt that said "My Mom ran the Tinkerbell Half" but it was very girly so I couldn't buy it for Griff. I settled on a tank top and a hat for summer. I've got my eye on a Coast to Coast sweatshirt for November though. In case I haven't mentioned it, the coast-to-coast challenge is part of Run Disney; basically if you run two races, one at Disneyland and one in Disneyworld in the same calendar year, you receive a special medal. We are aiming for the Disneyworld Wine & Dine Half Marathon in November. If I can swing it that may also be race #13 for the 13in2013 challenge.

So here we are, ready to settle in for the night, I was unpacking some of my running things and I noticed once again that I've forgotten something very important. The charger for my Garmin watch, not the wall part but the cord that connects to the USB charger, and if you have a Garmin you will know how odd it is. There was a Garmin booth at the expo though so I hope I can buy the cord there tomorrow. On the bright side maybe I can look at some more stuff that I frantically ran past today.

Well better tuck myself in, we will be up bright and early to prepare Griff for his 100m dash (a Run Disney Kids Race)!

P.S. sorry about any missing links, I'll have to add them next week, I have limited functionality on the iPad. And don't worry I didn't buy the crazy Tinkerbell ears...