Disney's Wine and Dine Half Marathon

This race was magical! But seriously, it was a lot of fun. We flew to Florida on Friday afternoon and got in pretty dang late. It was one of the hardest flights I have had due to the coming ons of an awful cold. In the morning we got up and went over to the race expo. This was at the ESPN Wide World of Sports. After some good General Conference watching, carb loading (Macaroni Grill), and grocery shopping we returned to WWS. The race started at 10pm but they asked us to be there a few hours early. My mom and I tried to make the time pass by looking for the fastest runners and trying to locate someone who looked like they might win.

The race included some fun spectators. Along with the workers in the parks there was also a green army man from Toy Story, Lightning McQueen, Russel, Doug and a few other characters waving to us. The mile markers were billboards that were lit up. There were also DJ's along the way and music playing in the parks. One of my favorite things was a light up snail about the size of a small car driving in a parking lot. We only got a couple pictures on the bus that night.

Notice the creepy guy behind us..

We ran through Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, ending up at Epcot. Running in the evening was great but it made planning eating and drinking a little harder. I didnt really like having to be there so early and lining up 30 minutes before. It seems like there should be a way to alter that process to make it better. It was a huge run too so I was always surrounded by people. It never spread out or felt less crowded. My mom and I finished within an hour of each other which was a first. My time was 2:00:15 and her's was 2:59:45. Good job Mom!!

We returned to each of the parks on Monday to explore them. It was fun trying to remember where we ran. We wore our race shirts and got a lot of comments from people. We saw others wearing their shirts or medals and bonded with them. Here are our favs from Animal Kingdom, baby monkey and baby elephant (a month old).

We stayed at the All Star Resort, Movies section and loved it. It was so cute! Each of the buildings had a theme and great decorations. We were assigned to  the Mighty Ducks building. We spent Sunday evening just exploring the hotel and especially enjoyed the Toy Story buildings. We also enjoyed the Sports buildings. The football one had a miniature field out front with turf. There were a couple guys out running plays.

Tuesday we took it easy. We went to the temple, went to lunch (Maccoroni Grill again), explored down town Disney and then went miniature golfing. The legos were amazing! There was nessie in the lake and a scene from Sleeping Beauty. The family behind us golfing was from Ireland and they had the most adorable little girls with red curly hair. They were making me laugh the whole time. "Granpa, where did the ball go?!"

 

Last day was HP, that will be another post. :)