Disney Princess Half Marathon Expo + Orlando Weekend

After about 7 months of training and anticipation, it was time to head to Orlando last Friday for the Disney Princess Half Marathon.  I was excited about all the fun that Joe and I had planned, as well as attempting my first half marathon.

We stayed at the Disney All-Star Sports Resort.  I've stayed there before, and it's a neat resort!  The price is reasonable for Disney, it's well kept, and the theme is lots of fun.  We were in the Touchdown! building, which featured a large football and football helmet on the opposite stair wells.  The building was also surrounded with pennants of football teams, and guess who I found?

My beloved Virginia Tech Hokies!

After getting to the hotel late on Friday, we just hung out in the room, watched TV, and fell asleep early.

On Saturday morning, I woke up early and grabbed breakfast.

Of course I HAD to get a Mickey waffle while in Disney!  So cute, and tasty, too!  After breakfast, I let my sleepy husband stay in bed while I took the shuttle bus to the Disney Princess Half Marathon Expo.

It was held at the Coronado Springs Resort on Disney property.  One thing I love about this race weekend is the shuttles provided.  If you were staying a host resort (which was about 11 different Disney resorts), they provided buses to and from all of the events throughout the weekend.

When the bus dropped me off at the expo, there was a HUGE line.  I thought it would take forever to get in and that the expo would be crazy insane inside.  Fortunately, the line moved fast, and there were not many long lines once inside.

I thought everything was set up very well.  The line to get my bib and shirt was not long at all!  I waited about five minutes, got my bag of goodies, then headed over to get my shirt.  That took maybe two minutes to get, and I was ready to check out the vendors.

Now THIS was the insane part of the expo.  There were so many people trying to look at so many different vendors that it was hard to see what all was there.  I picked up some Gu Chomps in Watermelon for the race and some KT tape to try out for my knee.

Old picture, but that' what I got!

There was also a huge wall with all 26,000 runners' names listed.  I found mine!

There was also an Amy Herrington running, which I thought was funny.

All in all, I had a good time at the expo.  Lots of great energy, some fun things to check out, and an organized check-in process.  Yay runDisney!

After making it back to the hotel, Joe and I hopped into the car and drove to the ESPN Wide World of Sports for the Atlanta Braves spring training game!

They were playing the Yankees, and even though Orlando is the Braves' home stadium, there was a TON of Yankees fans!  Joe blames it on all the Snow Birds (Northerners who live in Florida during the winter).

We had lawn seats, so we sat in the grass and enjoyed the game (despite the Braves' loss).  They even had the Home Depot Tool Race that they do in Atlanta!

Joe and I love to try to pick the winner and cheer our tool on.  I picked the Paintbrush, Joe picked the Bucket, and he won. 

Our baseball afternoon led to a cultured evening!  We got back to hotel, cleaned up a bit, then headed to Orlando for the musical Wicked. 

Before the musical, we ate dinner at the Sheraton across the street.  I got a plate of penne alla vodka with grilled chicken to carb load before the race (sorry, no picture...I was too hungry to wait before digging in).

The Bob Carr Performing Arts Center is beautiful!  We had balcony seats right in the center and had a great view.  I snuck a picture of the stage before the usher could tell me that no photography was allowed.

I absolutely love this play.  The actress who played Elphaba had an incredible voice!  I was so impressed with her, as well as the rest of the cast.  It seemed that Glinda might have had a little cold because you couldn't hear her as well, but she was still entertaining. 

Poor Joe is not a musical guy (he doesn't like the talking, then randomly breaking in to song), but I very much appreciated him coming to the play with me.  What a good sport!

We left before the finale (I'd already seen the play and Joe was ready to go) so that we could get back to the hotel without traffic.  We had to wake up at 3:30 AM for the race, and it was around 10:45 when we left.

Overall, we experienced a lot of fun in Orlando!  Surprisingly, we didn't go to a Disney park.  But, we live an hour away, and I'm sure we'll go back at some point in the next year.  Right now, I've got to go because it's time to teach (I get to school early enough that I had time to blog!).  I'll be back later with a full recap of the half marathon (FINALLY!).