Disneyworld Day 1/ Wine & Dine Half Marathon Expo

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We arrived to the Port Orleans resort at Disneyworld after midnight on Friday. We not-so-promptly collected our magic bands (they had some printer issues) and headed to our room.

The magic bands are a new program they're rolling out where you use these as a room key and to pay for anything at the resorts and/or parks. If you order them in advance, you can pick the color. I have to say that they were extremely convenient and we had 0 issues with them during our stay.

We briefly unpacked some of our things and then tried to get some sleep anticipating a big day ahead. We planned to get up early so we could line up at the expo and perhaps have a chance to get the limited edition Run Disney shoes! I think we woke up around 7:00am to get ready and the expo wasn't set to open until 10:00AM. We arrived at the ESPN Wide World of Sports shortly after 9:00AM.

We were delighted to see a very short expo line when we got there. They had it separated between those lining up for package pickup and those lining up for the expo. We chose the expo line as we knew our packages would be waiting for us no matter what.

The expo opened early, just after 9:30AM. We immediately headed to the New Balance booth for the shoes and I was overflowing with excitement knowing that with only a few people in line, the shoes would soon be mine. New Balance had me do a survey while I was waiting and I won a pair of socks too!

This was the last chance to purchase this edition of the shoes. In 2014 they will be entirely different. At $125 they aren't cheap, but I wore them most of the weekend and they are very comfortable and overall I'm happy with the purchase.

After visiting New Balance, we stopped by Raw Threads where I picked up a castle-to-castle shirt and then Team Sparkle where I finally got to meet Kelly from According to Kelly:

Though we weren't there in time for me to make the Run Disney Wine & Dine Meetup the night prior, the expo felt a little bit like a blogger meet-up with all of the people I recognized. Hopefully one day I'll get to go to one of the official meetups!

After checking out the official Run Disney merchandise and purchasing an "I Did It" shirt we headed back over to packet pickup where we obtained our package and then had to go back to the expo to get our shirt. The one thing I noticed missing was that we didn't get a bag other than plastic bag check bag. I can't remember if we got the Tinkerbell one when we bought something or if it came with the package but it's always a nice touch.

Next up, we went to Magic Kingdom to enjoy the rest of the day in the parks. I decided that we should head to Be Our Guest right away if we were going to try to eat lunch there. The wait was about 30 minutes so we decided to wait. This seemed reasonable to me because even at 180 days out (the earliest you can book a dining reservation) I was unable to get a dinner reservation here. It is pretty neat, when you arrive, there is literally a cave with a castle coming out the side of it. And as always lots of magical touches that make you feel like you are walking into Beauty and the Beast such as these gargoyles lining the walkway to the gates of the cave.

 



Lunch is a bit different from dinner in that it is quick service as opposed to table service. We picked out our food items and then headed to our table, because of our magic bands they are able to locate the table you choose and the food arrives promptly after being seated. We both had French onion soup and a cupcake. The "grey stuff" which is actually on the menu is a chocolate cupcake with grey icing.

The food was delicious, the best I've had at a quick service Disney restaurant. We both agreed that going to Be Our Guest was the best part of Magic Kingdom that day. Just seeing the inside of the restaurant is worth the trip. There are 3 dining rooms, we sat in what could only be described as the Beast's room which was very dark complete with lightning and thunder and of course the magical rose.

We went on a few rides and toured the park which felt very similar to Disneyland's Magic Kingdom. We didn't buy tickets for Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party which was beginning at 7:00PM later that day because we had made plans with my mother-in-law's family who lives in Orlando. We went to their house for dinner and didn't make it back to our hotel until after midnight and we were definitely ready for bed. Up next is Disneyland Day 2 and the first half of my race review!