B and I got to Orlando a little later than we wanted to. A snowstorm on Thursday caused the cancellation of our early Friday morning flight. We were able to rebook our flight which now would include 2 layovers and 14 hour of travel. Luckily, Mr. B has quite the mileage status and we were the lucky 2 able to get spots on a new flight via standby at our first layover.
Once we got to Orlando, we headed over to the expo. The expo was held at Coronado Springs resort, which I had never been to. Since parking at the resort was at a minimum, we were required to hop a bus at Downtown Disney to ride over to the expo. I read that a lot of people were unhappy about this and had issues, but we had no problem at all. We walked right onto a bus when we got there and had about a 5 minute ride over to the hotel.
The expo space was large and I didn't experience any issues there. I thought I would have to wait in line to pick up my number, but not so much the case. I walked right up to pick up my bib for both the half marathon and 5k, then proceeded to pick up my goodie bag, with again no wait. The booths at the expo were a bit small, so we didn't stop at too many booths. I did purchase a really cute New Balance top that has an image of high heels and a running shoe..could I have purchased a more perfect shirt? I also picked up another Run Disney Princess shirt that I had my eye on. In order to get into the official Run Disney merchandise area, you were required to wait in line since the area with the apparel was quite small. I waited maybe 5 minutes in line before getting in. I didn't have a problem waiting..it is Disney World after all where you wait in line...A LOT!
The expo had a huge wall with all the names of everyone participating in the 5k and/or half marathon.
After the expo, B and I had dinner at Downtown Disney and spent some time walking around down there. We had an early morning filled with traveling and we wanted to get to bed early since we had to get up the next morning at 4:30 am.
Our number bibs for the race..how stinking cute are they?
On Saturday morning, we both participated in the Mickey and Minnie Royal Family 5k at Epcot. We got up at 4:30 and were on our way to Epcot by 5 am. We had a short drive to Epcot and had no issues with traffic on the way there. Once there, we stopped by bag check, walked around and took some pictures and by 6 am were in our corral. We got into corral A and we think it's because of my half marathon qualifying time. There were about 8,000 runners on Saturday and there were I believe 8 corrals with the stroller division being the last.
Start line of the Royal Family 5k
The 5k was a fun run which meant no official time but my Nike + app said we did it in 34 mins which was fine for us. Once we reached the finish line, we received our medals, water/Powerade and also a box full of refueling snacks. I thought the box of food was a nice touch since it had a good variety of snacks in it.
They also had an area set up where you could have your photo with Mickey and Minnie too and we took advantage of that since the lines weren't too long.
It was a really humid morning so we were drenched in sweat and couldn't wait to get back to the hotel to take a shower then explore the parks the rest of the day. If you ever go to Disney for a half marathon or marathon, I highly suggest doing the 5k or whatever shorter run they have along with it. It was a nice lil warm up for me since I had a few days off of running in anticipation of the half marathon but it was also a fun thing to do with B.
