2/28/2013 Disney Princess Half Marathon 2013 Weekend-Day 1 Part 1

I arrived at Disney late Thursday night. The drive took longer than I anticipated, and I arrived shortly after 11pm. The first night we were staying at Disney's Pop Century resort. I have never stayed at this resort before, and to be completely honest, I can't tell you much about it.

I checked in, and immediately went to our room in the 50s section. I was so worn out from the 10 hour drive that I immediately went to bed. The next morning, my roomie, Patty, left early for the highly coveted runDisney Princess Half Marathon meet-up. I slept in a bit, but was anxious to leave for the Expo. Conveniently enough, this year the Expo was moved from it's normal home at the Wide World of Sports complex to the conference center at Coronado Springs, where we would be staying for the majority of our trip. To avoid taking parking away from resort guests(thank you Disney!), they had everyone not staying at that resort take buses to the Expo from Downtown Disney. We didn't face this issue since we were checking in that day. I immediately left our room at Pop Century and headed over to check in early at Coronado Springs, before the Expo started. I got checked in and wandered around a bit. Our room would not be ready until that afternoon and it wasn't quite time for the Expo to start. We stayed at CS back in 2008, when we were just a family of 3, and I remembered how beautiful it was. All of the resort buildings are circled around a rather large lake. There are palm trees and sandy beaches with hammocks(not that either time I have been I have had enough free time to relax in one of these hammocks).

It wasn't much time and I was ready to head to the Expo. Expecting large crowds, I wanted to get there first thing to try and avoid them. My plan worked. I first headed to print my waivers. I kept telling myself in the days leading up to leaving for Disney that I needed to remember my waivers. Naturally, what is the one thing I forgot to do? Print my waivers. Lucky for me Disney sets up several computers outside of the convention room for people to go and print their waivers. No line, and it took me less than a minute. I hurried into the area where you pick up your bib. They have many booths set up according to your bib number, and I headed to my appropriate booth.

Again, very little waiting, and I had my bib.

I also took Patty's waivers and picked up her bibs. I then headed over to t-shirt pickup. Thankfully I also hit this area in time, I walked right up, and got all of our shirts with no waiting(I heard that in 10-20 minutes, the wait for this pick up grew and grew). Disney provided us with a large, clear plastic bag(to put things you need after the race in, that you check before you start). Inside the bags were our very nice tech t-shirts, a pink Princess Half Marathon mesh bag and a few other goodies. I loaded up our bags and quickly headed over to the official Disney merchandise booth. I heard it gets crazy and a few of things I wanted tend to sell out quickly. I heard correctly. I fought the crowd to pick up an "I Did It!" t-shirt, a runDisney Mickey vinylmation with mini-medal and an adorable tech jacket. I stood in line to pay, chatting with a very nice princess from Canada in front of me, and was out in about 20 minutes. While things were a bit crazy when I went in, when I left, there was a line stretching outside just to get in to the booth. After this I headed over to the KT tape booth, to have my knees taped, in hopes that it would help with the IT Band/knee issues I've been having for weeks. I stood in line there for nearly an hour, and during this Patty finished up with the Princess Half meet-up and met me at the Expo. We met up, I had my knees taped, and we left the Expo. Stay tuned for Part 2 coming later today!