RunDisney in Disneyland- Coast to Coast

Another Disney Race in the books.

 This time we got to travel to Anaheim and visit Disneyland! And we brought along Ryan's mom, Char, to hang with the boys in the hotel while we ran the race, which was an added bit of fun!

Ryan and I ran the Tinkerbell Half, and it completed our "Coast to Coast" RunDisney challenge, so we got an extra medal! Too bad for Ry that it's pink. Sorry dude.

A RunDisney Coast to Coast Challenge is when you run a half marathon at Disney World and a Half Marathon at Disneyland in the same year. Since our two races were the Princess half and Tinkerbell half (both "girlie" races), the Coast to Coast medal we were given was pink, not the usual blue.

Ready to start!!

We'll also be doing the Wine & Dine half again this November, which we could have used as our second race for our coast to coast (to avoid Ry getting a pink medal), but when we signed up for Tinkerbell Half, we had no idea we would be doing the Wine & Dine again this year.

Neither one of us thought we would actually be running this race...... We thought we would be walking.

2 weeks before the race I threw out my back, and it appeared to be a slipped disc. 2 nights before the race Ryan was playing softball and tore a quad muscle (the massive hematoma that appeared on his leg 2 days later definitely solidified that diagnosis for him). We were both super disappointed and bummed. And hell, I was in corral B alongside Ry for the first time ever, so I was super bummed!!

We decided to try to start out running and see how it went. To our surprise we actually ran most of it. I had to stop a few times because since I hadn't gone for a run in over 2 weeks, my legs were tired. Oh so tired. I had to fight very hard to finish that race, and Ryan was motivating me the whole way; each and every time I wanted to quit. It was actually funny, because he thought that he was going to hold me up, but it was the opposite, lol.

We both decided that we loved the race course. We went through California Adventure, then right into Disneyland, ran through downtown Anaheim, then back around California Adventure and to the finish line right outside Paradise Pier.

The corrals were literally outside our hotel, and we finished in the parking lot behind our hotel.

There were no buses that you had to catch 3 hours before race start, which was nice. We walked to our corral with about 15 minutes to go before race start, and it was plenty of time! It allowed us to sleep in way more for this 5:30 am race than we did for Princess Half, where we had to catch a bus by 3:30.

(Being on Central time didn't hurt either, hee hee)

We made it back to the hotel after we finished and had some Mother's day drinks with Char, then headed out to our first choice of the 2 parks: California Adventure.

First ride we did was Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, which was super cute, and the queue was themed like the adventures from Mater's Tall Tales....an absolute favorite of my boys'.

We were fascinated by this water fountain over at the Cozy Cone (Which has awesome snacks, y'all. Mini churro bites with chocolate dipping sauce and flavored popcorn, oh my!)

Mother's Day themed props over in Cars Land

It was fun to see so many different things to do compared to all the stuff we're used to at WDW. The Bugs Life-themed area was perfect for their age group!

The next day we headed to Disneyland, and had an absolute blast. It's definitely smaller than Magic kingdom at WDW, but we barely waited in line for anything! We got in all the rides we wanted to do before lunch!!!

First up....Star Tours for Daddy, Char, & Aidan, while Mason and I rode the Astro Orbiter for the first time (he's not tall enough for Star Tours yet).

Ryan even went on the teacups with us (which he never does...he's not a fan of all the spinning).

We were also super stoked to be able to visit Toon Town again, since WDW got rid of theirs when Aidan was a baby to replace it with the new Fantasyland.

We rode a few more things after lunch, then called it quits and headed back to the hotel to swim before heading to our dinner reservation. 

ps- Steakhouse 55 was really yummy, but the service was terrible slow, considering the place was practically empty.

Since we only had one more day in the parks, it was a tough call to decide which of the 2 parks we wanted to go to the next day. In the end, we decided on California Adventure, which all 5 of us loved. My favorite part was most definitely Cars Land. I've loved that movie since before Aidan was old enough to even sit through it. Being in Radiator Springs, and seeing how perfectly Disney themed it was a blast!!

Radiator Springs Racers was my absolute favorite!!!!!

I took this video on my 4th ride so Mason could see what it was like, since he wasn't tall enough. He watched it a dozen times.

We even ate at Flo's V8 Cafe!

At night, they play "Life could be a dream", and turn on all the neon lights,  just like in the Movie. It's pretty amazing!

That day also happened to be Char's birthday! Since mine is 2 days after hers, we wore Happy Birthday buttons during our trip and got free dessert each night at dinner!! woot woot!

Birthday Girls & their Birthday buttons!

The boys got to meet Buzz and Woody, which was actually pretty neat because we were in line to meet Woody only (because we never wait in line for him at WDW), and when it was their turn, Buzz came out to switch places with Woody, and we were the only family able to snag a pic with both of them!

From there we walked the rest of the way through Paradise Pier, and since the area was totally empty, we stopped and got the photos in front of Mickey's Fun Wheel that I was dying to take!

While I'm not usually one for fireworks shows and such, I really wanted to see World of Color in front of Mickey's Fun Wheel. It was amazing. We even got to get into a special seating area because of our birthday buttons!!

So to sum it up, I am a Disneyland convert. I loved it. Every frigging minute of it, and I can't wait to get back there!!!

Not only was the race course better than most at WDW (Wine & Dine is my favorite so far, Princess was the worst), but the parks were less crowded, lines were shorter, and weather was much nicer. Our hotel (Paradise Pier), as well as Disney's other two on-site hotels are walking distance to the parks; we didn't have to spend time waiting for/and riding buses.

Disneyland gets two thumbs up from this Disney Diva!

Disney Princess Half Marathon- 2015

Way back in Nov 2013, when I finished the Jingle Jungle 5K at Disney (that race was the race that actually got me started running), Ryan offered up a "challenge", if you will.

He said that if I upped my game and trained for a half marathon (which I swore I would never do, haha), then he would run the Disney Princess Half with me.

Challenge accepted.

I even ended up running 2 other Half Marathons before we got to the Princess Half!

For the Princess Half we convinced my brother and his wife to do it with us. Sandra was skeptical, but I promised her she could do , and do it she did!!!

My time was only 5 minutes slower (2:32) for this race than it was for the Wine and Dine (2:27) in November, but that was also the official "chip" time through RunDisney. It doesn't take into account the bathroom breaks and photo stops I did. My Nike App said I did it in 2:25 (it pauses the timer when you stop moving), so I was happy with my pace!

I had a great time at the race, but I will say it was a lot more "highway" running than park running compared to Wine & Dine. For this race we started at Epcot, ran 5 miles to MK, one mile through it, then the rest of the way back to Epcot, where I think maybe we ran another mile through there. I found that with Wine and Dine, you were almost always in a park, and the race went by so fast because you were always looking around at something in the parks. I found myself fighting to keep running about halfway through this race. I think for now we'll say our favorite RunDisney race is still the Wine & Dine, but we still have to get through the Tinkerbell half in CA in May so we'll have another race to compare it to!

Once the race was over, we finally got around to having some fun with my brother and his family! We spent the rest of our night at MK, and the boys of course wanted to visit Tinkerbell again (who can blame them, she's pretty cute). 

Plus, we had to get our traditional photo with Buzz! I have one from every single visit the boys have ever made to Disney!

The next day we all went to Epcot, and Zoey met her first character....and wasn't really a fan!

Not only did we get to spend a ton of time with Larry, but we met up with our oldest brother Jim too. he lives in Tampa and made the drive to spend the day at Epcot with us!

When Larry & Sandra left, we had plans to stay for 2 more days so we sent our stuff over to Animal Kingdom Lodge while we spent a fun day out!

Mason saw Sofia at HS and said "Mom, I just want to hug Sofia!". SO of course we had to get in line to see her, and when she heard that was what he wanted, she hugged him forever! It was the cutest character experience ever! 

Aidan was pretending he was too cool to visit  and take a pic with Sofia, but she won him over in the end! (she was quite proud of herself, too)

I even got to meet up with Katie & Scott for after dinner drinks that night! We tried to meet up before heading to our corrals at the race, but we just never managed to make it happen, so I was glad we got to meet up at House of Blues!

Our stay at Animal Kingdom Lodge was our very first, and it was so neat. The boys loved having the Animals right outside their windows for their "anytime" viewing pleasure.

We actually spent so much time the following day checking out the resort, we never ended up going to a park at all that day. There was certainly plenty of cultural activities for the boys to do around the resort! They got their faces painted, they did some stamp art, participated in an animal knowledge session, traded some pins with the King Pin, then we had a really nice dinner at Jiko, followed by some night vision goggle animal viewing!

As usual it was sad o leave, but nice to be come home!

Until next time, WDW!