Yes, we went to Disney.
AGAIN.
We already made a trip this past Feb but as soon as we returned home from that trip we joined the Disney Vacation Club, setting us up with a fresh set of vacation "points" to cash in. So when I decided I wanted to run a 5K at Disney, we were able to book another trip to enjoy the Wine & Dine Half Marathon Weekend.
Mason insisted I buy him this small stuffed Minnie Mouse at our hotel gift shop when we arrived, and he carried her around the entire vacation…he's hugging her here.
As soon as Krysta & Ry arrived, we headed to the race Expo to pick up our packets and check out the race related merchandise. I've had my heart set on a pair of RunDisney Minnie Mouse sneakers for over a year, and they ONLY sell them at the race expos.
And I got them.
And they're glorious.
Daddy & Mas on our way in
race expo view from the entrance upstairs
My glorious Minnie sneakers
Seriously, if you ever get a chance to attend the EPCOT International Food & Wine festival…DO IT.
But make sure you bring plenty of cash you're willing to part with because it is not cheap. There were tons of extra food "kiosks" set up all around the World Showcase (almost 30 countries represented I believe). Each stand had 3-4 foods you could try along with specialty beers/wines from that country as well.
Each plate of food that you would get was slightly more than a tasting, allowing you to sample from many countries. However at $5.75-$7 a pop, if you want to taste lots of stuff and try tiny glasses of wine or beer (same price as the food) then it's going to add up. We practically blew through our entire Disney Rewards Card (if you have a Disney Chase Visa you get Disney points back instead of cash back, and it works like cash at the parks and Disney stores)! (I believe you could use the meal plan to buy most of those too, but personally I don't think it would be worth parting with a meal credit for the small sampling you would get for it)
Basically one "plate" wasn't really enough for Ry and I to share, so you could easily double the food cost at each country as we did.
Wine in France (wearing my hand made bead necklace that I bought in EPCOT in Feb)
Lamb Meatballs & Venison Sausage in Norway. Aidan loved the venison (as well as the salmon from Scotland)
The first night that Krysta, Ry & I were all together we spent our time at the food festival. It rocked. We met characters, ate, drank, and just had a grand ol time!
You'll notice Mason kissing Minnie while holding his new stuffed Minnie here.
The next morning was The Jingle Jungle 5k, and Krysta and I woke before the damn birds to get all Princessed-up and out the door to catch our bus to the race start. Ryan was sweet enough to wake with us to make sure he got a couple of pictures for us, but went back to bed after we left.
There was a DJ, fake snow falling, and fun places to take your pic while we waited to get in the corrals to start the race.
The line for a pic with Minnie and Mickey was seriously like a mile long, so we never did that, but before the race we did meet up with my friend from High School Eric Brown and his wife Katie and they ran with us too. They happen to live in Orlando (and Eric even works for The Mouse himself) so it was a quick trip for them, and was fun to have some extra friends to hang out with!
Mickey & Minnie waved us all on at the starting line!
Along the way we stopped for a bunch of photo ops…because that's what running disney is about! Not having the best run time, but the FUN!
We were even back to the room practically before Ryan & the boys woke up!
We spent the rest of the day having lunch at the Food & Wine festival (trip 2 to Epcot for food), and Ryan headed back to nap (his half marathon wasn't until 10pm) while Kre, myself and the boys went to Hollywood Studios. It was going on 8pm when we got back to the hotel and by then Ryan was getting ready to head out to catch his bus to his race.
I had some sort of tracking system set up so that I was getting texts/emails/facebook notifications about Ryan's status every 5k. I had the info on how fast he was running and what his estimated finish time was. I left our room with almost an hour to go until his estimated finish. I must have waited 45 mins for the damn race shuttle. Many other ppl were there waiting and complaining about missing seeing their runners cross the finish line.
Long story short, I was running through epcot like a lunatic trying to find the finish line when I heard my phone go off with the notification that Ryan had finished. Grrrr I was so angry. I was less than 5 minutes late to see him finish. He made great time (even if he doesn't think so) and I finally found him and we headed off to the Finish Line After Party at Epcot.
This basically turned into round 3 of the Food & Wine Festival for us, only MUCH less crowded since you needed a ticket to be at this party. We were kid-less and both on a post-race high, and had such a great time. We even stopped to take pictures with almost all the characters we saw, and they were all over the place since it was sort of a "private event".
We even came across Pinocchio and Geppetto having some sort of dance-off. It was hilarious and I'm not sure it would have been something those characters would have done during the day with kids around at the park….it WAS about 1am at this point.
Ryan even got in on the dance-off party !
Stay tuned for part 2……..
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