Did I manage to finagle our honeymoon being the same dates as a rundisney weekend? You know it! It truly wasn’t intentional as well, we just headed out for a week after our wedding, and the first weekend of November is the same weekend as Disney’s wine and dine half marathon weekend.
Now, everyone on planet earth (basically) told me that I shouldn’t run a marathon the week after my wedding- which is why I didn’t register for the NYC marathon this year. But no one said a thing about half marathons! Or rundisney challenges for that matter.... so when registration opened up, I registered for the two course challenge- a 10k on Saturday morning, and a half marathon on Sunday morning. RunDisney races are always very early, so Den would even be able to sleep through the whole run. So, totally fair game in my book.
I didn’t need to go to the race expo Thursday, but I was excited to check out all of the RunDisney excitement - so we planned to go Thursday afternoon, to avoid the opening crowds but get there before the locals got out of work that day.
We headed out to the bus stop at the beach club resort just after 2 pm, and after waiting for about 20 minutes, an expo bus pulled up..... and promptly left without stopping. Come on! After speaking with another runner who was waiting for the bus, who told us the last bus did the exact same thing 30 minutes before this bus, I headed into the resort and spoke to the front desk, who started to call the bus operators to see what was up. We had fastpasses that evening I’m Hollywood Studios that we didn’t want to miss, and she offered to call us a complimentary taxi to take us to the expo, so we wouldn’t loose any more time.
So a few minutes later, we were in a cab and on our way. When we arrived at the ESPN wide world of sports, our first stop was the arena, where the official rundisney merchandise was housed, as well as the bibs. I headed into the merch area first, as I had read online that things were already selling out - apparently there was an extremely limited number of pins made for this weekend, and I wanted to make sure I got one for my backpack. By the time we arrived, all of the medal replica ones were already sold out, but I was at least able to grab the logo pin and an “I did it” pin for the challenge.
I picked up an assortment of merch other than pins- a hat, a travel mug, a wineglass, a jacket, a magnet, a half marathon “I did it shirt,” and a shirt for den that reads “I support my wife’s runDisney obsession.” What can I say, I’m milking this newlywed thing.
I don’t normally buy the “I did it” shirts that rundisney sells, but I have one from this weekend two years ago, and somehow managed to stain it recently, so I wanted a replacement. Plus, this year they were tech shirts, rather than cotton shirts, so it’s something I can actually run in.
When we went to check out Den surprised me and took care of all my purchases for me, as my birthday is next week. We may be home by then, but at least I’ll have a little Disney Magic to look forward to.
Once we were done with the merchandise, we headed into the bib pickup area, which was also in the arena this time around. There were no crowds, and I was able to walk right up to my designated pickup location. I missed the first corral by 30 (!!!!) bibs, but was kind of excited that my number fell into the first range of pickup line numbers. I’ll just have to work harder next time, corral A is so close! As always, they were taking photos of runners who were signed up for the challenge, so that they can be verified at the finish line of the half.
Once we had checked all of the required boxes and snapped a few photos, I hopped in line to get a photo with chef Mickey before making my way over to the visa center, where I would be able to retrieve my race shirts.
Again, there was no line to get into the visa center, so we walked right in and headed through the vendors to shirt pickup. I did buy one thing at the expo, but it’s a super secret surprise for Mike, so you’ll have to wait for the big reveal on that one.
When I got my shirts I made sure to try all three on, and they were a good fit. I am a big fan of both the colors of the shirts and the art style that they used. I was hopeful that it would be cool enough in Florida to wear them around the parks after the races, as they’re all long sleeve shirts.
Once we had all of the goods we left the expo, and had time to head to Disney springs to grab earl of sandwich, before making our way to Hollywood studios. We had fastpasses there to ride slinky dog dash for the first time, and the crowds were even light enough that we got onto toy story midway mania and alien swinging saucers.
All in all a successful day, both in the parks and at the expo, and I was feeling excited for the race weekend ahead!