Time to head back to Walt Disney World for the 2016 Princess Half Marathon Weekend. This is the 8th year for this event, and the third year for the Glass Slipper Challenge. My fifth time running the half marathon, and third year for the GSC.

I really enjoy this event, even though I don’t care much for either the 10K or the half marathon courses, LOL! I find that there are advantages and disadvantages to it being a women-focused event. I think the character and other photo ops are a lot more fun for this one – there seem to be more of them, and a wider variety of characters than during the other weekends.

Without so many men in the race, my proof of time gets me a much better corral here than for any of the other WDW races, too. 🙂

But the Expo and the merchandise…not so good. There have been several disasters associated with Princess weekend – and this year had its challenges, too. But I’ll get to all of that.

Given previous Expo “issues” in the past I intentionally did not go to the Expo on Thursday, the day it opened. This turned out to be an excellent idea. Reports from people who were there early in the day were that the lines for packet pickup (which is usually pretty efficient) stretched out the door of the Field House! It was taking close to an hour just to pick up bibs. And over in the Official Merchandise area, there were some actual blows exchanged as people fought over merchandise. Wow. Unbelievable. I do not understand why Disney does not impose quantity limits. Or offer additional merchandise for pre-order.

Friday, February 19 – Expo

Lee and I ended up going to the Expo, held at Wide World of Sports, on Friday afternoon around 4:30. I was disappointed that the banners for the various races weren’t at the entrance to Wide World of Sports as they usually are. Just a couple of generic weekend banners. No lines to speak of for packet pickup – it was as easy as it should be.

The main Expo floor was still plenty busy, but not horrible.

There was no line to get into the official merchandise area.

There was still a fair amount of merchandise available, but it was obvious that some items had sold out, and a number of the merchandise bays featured generic runDisney items. For the “I Did It” shirts, they were already down to limited sizes for the 10K and Challenge shirts.

In protest for the poor way that I believe merchandise is handled, I did not purchase ANYTHING. Though to be honest all I really would have purchased would have been a magnet and maybe one of the mini medal pins.

There was this cute runDisney shirt – but I have waaaaay too many running shirts already.

And of course, I got three more for this race weekend! I’m very happy that they all have short sleeves.

Lee was unimpressed with the color of the half marathon shirt. 🙂 (I was, too.)

There were a few of the coveted wine glasses left – it sounded like this was the last of them, though.

The rest of the Expo was pretty much the same as it always is. If we’d been looking for some last-minute costume pieces, or race gear that we’d forgotten, there were opportunities to purchase those sorts of items. But we’ve found lately that all of the Disney race expos look the same to us.

Saturday, February 20 – 10K

We’d decided to drive ourselves to the 10K instead of taking the bus. And since it’s a smaller race than the half marathon (about half the number of runners), we allowed ourselves to sleep in until 3:00, and left the room about 3:45. We still had very little traffic, and were parked by 4:10. It was a coolish morning (52 degrees) – great for running, and not too bad for standing around. I had a trash bag and gloves for warmth while I waited, and that was fine. Really, I couldn’t have asked for better weather. Very comfortable for running.

There was a security checkpoint, but we didn’t have any bags, so were able to go through the “No bags” line. Though I think that was actually longer than the line for people who had bags! They had plenty of people checking us to make sure we didn’t have bags, and it moved quickly.

We met up with the Mickey Milers prior to the race – nice to see some familiar faces!

The race started at 5:30, and they sent us to our corrals around 5:00. One very nice thing about the 5K and 10K races is that, because there are fewer runners, the corrals are in the Epcot parking lot just next to the pre-race area. No 1/2 mile walk to get to the start area.

We were in Corral A, and it’s always nice to be up front. We didn’t have a very good view of the stage, though. Not much of a show – though the Fairy Godmother started us off.

I unfortunately had come down with a bad head cold the week before the race, and I was not 100%. I knew I wasn’t going to get a personal record this year. I hadn’t run in a week, and wasn’t even sure how I would feel. Though we started together, Lee quickly outpaced me. He was also coming off a cold, and didn’t PR either, though he finished in under an hour.

While this course isn’t my favorite, it’s still a pretty fast course, and fairly easy to run. The first three+ miles are not very interesting: all on roads outside Epcot. I didn’t stop to take any photos, but there were a number of photo opportunities. Elsa and Anna were on the overpass, talking to the runners, and it was snowing. Tinker Bell and several of the other pixies were near mile 1, and Pocahontas and Meeko were near mile two or three.

Finally, about mile 3.5, we entered Epcot. Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio were posing for photos in Italy, and Lumiere and Cogsworth were posing at France. I was dressed as Belle, so I wish I would’ve stopped for that one…since I was early in the race the line was pretty short, and I was trying to take it easy.

After we went out the International Gateway, the Genie was posing outside ESPN Club. We ran all the way around Crescent Lake and turned left at the International Gateway to head backstage. Sophia the First was there. Once we came back into the park next to the Imagination Pavilion we went left and ran in front of The Land and The Living Seas, then through the Innoventions breezeway. Across the park, under Spaceship Earth, and backstage again, where it was only .2 miles to the finish line.

I finished in 1:01:51. All things considered, I was happy with that. Lee came in at 58:15.

Since the 10K was added, each race weekend has featured a different princess – this year it was Ariel, so all of the medals and neck ribbons had an ocean theme. That’s been nice to see.

We got our usual runDisney MRE boxes. Not a bad variety, though I miss the Almond Roca!

We didn’t hang around the post-race area very long. While walking back to the car we met Lisa, a long-time reader of this blog. We’ve corresponded a bit, and it was great to finally meet her in person! Hi Lisa – and congratulations on your excellent race (she placed in her age group!).

We tried to mostly rest and relax for the rest of the day, since the half marathon was the next day.

Coming up: The Disney Princess Half Marathon

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