Race Review: Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon (Part 1)

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To read about our 1st day at Disneyworld & the Expo go here.

On the morning of race day we did our best to sleep in. We had a reservation at Ohana at the Disney Polynesian Resort at 9:30AM. After wearing sandals the day before (Birkenstocks) and getting a blister which I've never gotten before with those shoes, I decided my new Run Disney shoes were the safest to walk around in pre-race (I needed to break them in anyway so I could wear them during the race!).

Breakfast was the typical breakfast food including Mickey-shaped waffles, all served family style at your table. The pastries and pineapple orange guava juice were delicious! I didn't want to eat TOO much because the race was, of course, later that same day. We hung around for a bit to get our token picture with Mickey and Stitch and watched the kids do their Hawaiian parade around the restaurant.

After our delicious and relaxing breakfast, we headed on over to Hollywood Studios to check out another park. I'd never been there before so I was pretty excited. We made our way to Tower of Terror immediately after entering the park and probably waited about a half hour which wasn't bad at all. For the rest of the day we walked around checking out the various rides/shows. Unfortunately we never made it on the Aerosmith Roller Coaster because the wait was 160 min and there were no more fast passes available. I still enjoyed this park a lot, possibly more than the magic kingdom. I loved the Great Movie Ride, it was about 15 minutes long and you literally tour through some of the greatest movies of all time, totally up my alley having gone to film school.

We only stuck around until just after 3:00, at which point the plan was to go to Downtown Disney and get something small to eat. When we got there, Downtown Disney was a lot busier than the parks had been. It was almost overwhelming, but we trudged on through the crowd, bought some souvenirs for family and went to Earl of Sandwich for something to eat. I had eaten there in Las Vegas and loved it. The line was about 20 minutes long but we waited anyway. We were both satisfied with the sandwiches (Caprese for me & Hawaiian BBQ for Cindy).

Finally, it was time to go back to the room and get ready for the race. It seemed silly getting ready at 5:30PM when the race wasn't until 10:00PM, but we had to be on the bus by 7.

Cindy was dressed as Rapunzel (Tangled) and I was supposed to be Minnie Mouse (minus the ears cause I just couldn't run like that). The shuttle picked us up at our hotel right around 7:00 (there was no line!) and it only took a few minutes to get to the ESPN zone. At that point, we had just under 3 hours to wait. We immediately headed to the bag check lineup which wasn't long at all. After that we noticed some extremely long lines and I realized that you could get pictures with some of the characters while waiting. We got in a line, not entirely clear who we were lining up for, but hey, we had time to kill! About 30 minutes later, we found the chipmunks! (We must have totally missed this at Tinkerbell)

Next, we just moved right on over to the next line to get another picture, this one was for Minnie so it took longer. Thankfully, they had an awesome DJ and a huge screen with pre-race entertainment including a surprise wedding engagement! That seems to happen at every Disney race! It all helped pass the time.

And then again we stood in line... In case you wondering, this is a general theme at Disney races, well actually, at Disneyworld/Disneyland period.

We also met lots of cool people while standing around. Runners are awesome that way, we can always find something to chat about!

Here is Darrell from Winnipeg, we saw him during the race too and nicknamed him "Winterpeg"... For all you non-Canadians, it's a lot colder there than here on the West Coast or in Florida for sure.

We also found another "Cindy"!

After all those lineups we headed to the bathroom lineup which didn't take very long. At this point they were calling everyone into the corrals. We had talked lots about the race in the days prior and of course while standing around. When we did the Tinkerbell Half Marathon back in January, we had pushed pretty hard in hopes that we might make the top 3 mother/daughter teams (we made top 6). This time around, we wanted to take advantage of everything a Disney race has to offer which, in our minds, not worrying about our time. I really shouldn't have brought my watch but I did anyway out of habit. The plan was to basically stop for every photo and run in between each stop.

Note: If you're going to buy the photo package with all of your photos from Marathonfoto, it is $65 whether you have 3 photos or 30 (this time we were going to get our money's worth). There is usually a cast member there to take your photo with your phone or personal camera but, in my experience, they are almost always blurry (likely on purpose) and the lighting sucks because it is dark (either early in the morning or at night).

So with all of those things in mind, we headed into corral E. I was originally supposed to be in D but Cindy was in E and we weren't going for time anyway. I love the lead-up to the Disney races, it really is a celebration! There were fireworks with every corral start and a huge champagne bottle on the side of the start line where they had a bubble machine to make it look like bubbles were coming out of the bottle. It might have been lame, but I was totally impressed!


Photo courtesy of Run Disney's FB Page

Photo courtesy of Run Disney's FB Page

As we edged to the start I had some of what I thought were hunger pains in my stomach... I didn't have much time to worry about it though because within about 8 minutes we were off in the sea of people headed towards Animal Kingdom.

You'll have to wait to hear about the rest in part 2 of my review!

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!