Hi everyone!
We’ve just returned from a hectic, way too short weekend at WDW for (obviously) the 2011 Princess Half Marathon!
The cast includes:
THE RUNNERS: myself (Princess Shannon, 26) and my brother Craig (aka Princess Craiggy, 24).
And
THE BUMS (just kidding): our mom Kriss and my husband Will (25).
A little background on our Disney history…this was my and Will’s 3rd trip to WDW together after our honeymoon and a short November 2009 trip that apparently I didn’t deem trip report-worthy…for shame! This also marked Will’s first time traveling with my family…what a trooper! As for my mom and brother, this was their first return visit to the World since our first family vacation to WDW, a miserably hot week at AS Sports in August 1995 (although I believe my brother did take a day trip to the Magic Kingdom sometime over the past 2 years. Now that I think about it, I remember him calling for tips on how to work the Fastpass machines and claiming that they wouldn’t work without a Key to the World card since they apparently weren’t taking his one-day paper ticket). :hammer:So he and my mom were, for all intents and purposes, Disney newbies!
This trip has been in the making for quite awhile. I’ve been running off and on for almost 3 years now just to try to keep somewhat active (I sit in a cube all day for my job) and use local races as motivators to keep up with it. I started out using the Couch-to-5k plan (really great for beginners) and entered a few local 5ks (3.1 miles), eventually working my way up to a 10k (6.2 miles) in 2009 and a 10-miler in 2010. A half seemed like the next logical step, and I really wasn’t aware of the Disney endurance series until I read Holly’s marathon report…like a lot of people here on these boards that report got the wheels turning (Holly, they really need to give you a cut of their profits!), and this trip - and consequently this admittedly wordy trip report - was born.
I mentioned the race to Princess Craiggy, and he was in! Will was in too, but in cheerleader form only – his hatred for running far outweighs his love of character photos :shrug: Once my mom (a biker, not a runner) got wind of the trip she wanted to come too…hooray! My brother moved to Florida from home (Ohio) about 7 years ago (he currently lives in Western Florida) and we don’t get to see him very often - maybe twice a year - so I was pleased that the trip could come together this way.
Being the hyper-organized, borderline-OCD planner of the family, I immediately began to work out the trip logistics and signed up for the race the minute registration opened
. Will works in education, so he cannot take multiple personal days in a row or use them to make 4-day weekends , which restricted the trip to a jam-packed 3-day event (3.5 days if you count Friday evening…which I don’t, since we had no park time that day). We would fly down on Friday the 25th after work and return home Monday evening (the 28th), with Will taking just that Monday off. With the flight times available to us, that would only leave us 2 full days and some change in the World. I whine, but for awhile it looked like Will wouldn’t be able to make the trip at all due to school conflicts, and I’d much rather have him there for a shorter trip than go on a slightly longer trip without him. WDW just wouldn’t feel right without him there with me. Plus we’ll get our longer trip soon…we have our next trip (June 2011) booked and paid for!
Anyhoo, less whining and more planning! We would, like I said, fly down Friday after work and check into our digs at Port Orleans Riverside, probably not until around midnight (ah, the best laid plans…more on this later :dazzle. My mom actually flew down Thursday to check out my brother’s apartment and see where he works…together they then made the trip to Orlando, about a 4-hour car ride I think. Here’s a text message conversation I had with my mom about their plans for that first day (if I could take a screenshot of this conversation on my Droid, I would…I’m just not savvy enough):
Me: What are your plans for Friday?
Mom: gonna rent a car & leave as early as possible & go to the afirca thingy
Me: …it’s called Animal Kingdom!
Mom: oh yeah…hope we 2 c off kilter
Etc. etc. :ROFLOL:
Initially I was bummed that I wouldn’t get to be there with them during their first park visit – I really wanted to see their reactions – but it ended up sort of not mattering. More on that later, too.
Oh, right…I also started using a training plan. I’ll address that a little later on in the report…lots of coming attractions!
A few weeks before the trip, my mom called to tell me she’d fully paid off the trip and was starting to get really excited! I was relieved to hear this because until that point I’d had a hard time gauging whether or not she was looking forward to it. I think the reality that it was so close had finally hit her…I should have known though. She really enjoyed looking at the pictures from our honeymoon trip and kept saying she was jealous, it looked like so much fun, etc. Then I saw her the Sunday before we were due to fly out and she had a file folder labeled “Disney” with every crazy planning email I’d sent her printed out, along with a highlighted copy of the half marathon course. Ah-ha! So that’s where some of my urge to plan comes from! In the weeks leading up to the trip I realized more and more that I kind of felt some pressure to make sure the trip was great for everyone, especially the sort-of newbies, since this whole thing was my idea (eek!), so it was fun to see that she was excited, too.
Maybe it was good that I could focus on these concerns, because it helped distract me from being nervous for the race itself. That nervousness inevitably crept in, but at the same time I was, of course, REALLY looking forward to it after almost a year of anticipation and weeks of training for it. I didn’t have any goals beyond finishing within the pace requirements while not feeling like death, and of course, getting loads of character pictures! And like everyone else that runs these things, I was super excited to get that finisher medal! It’s all about the bling.
So here we go! Thanks for reading so far!
We’ve just returned from a hectic, way too short weekend at WDW for (obviously) the 2011 Princess Half Marathon!
The cast includes:
THE RUNNERS: myself (Princess Shannon, 26) and my brother Craig (aka Princess Craiggy, 24).
And
THE BUMS (just kidding): our mom Kriss and my husband Will (25).
A little background on our Disney history…this was my and Will’s 3rd trip to WDW together after our honeymoon and a short November 2009 trip that apparently I didn’t deem trip report-worthy…for shame! This also marked Will’s first time traveling with my family…what a trooper! As for my mom and brother, this was their first return visit to the World since our first family vacation to WDW, a miserably hot week at AS Sports in August 1995 (although I believe my brother did take a day trip to the Magic Kingdom sometime over the past 2 years. Now that I think about it, I remember him calling for tips on how to work the Fastpass machines and claiming that they wouldn’t work without a Key to the World card since they apparently weren’t taking his one-day paper ticket). :hammer:So he and my mom were, for all intents and purposes, Disney newbies!
This trip has been in the making for quite awhile. I’ve been running off and on for almost 3 years now just to try to keep somewhat active (I sit in a cube all day for my job) and use local races as motivators to keep up with it. I started out using the Couch-to-5k plan (really great for beginners) and entered a few local 5ks (3.1 miles), eventually working my way up to a 10k (6.2 miles) in 2009 and a 10-miler in 2010. A half seemed like the next logical step, and I really wasn’t aware of the Disney endurance series until I read Holly’s marathon report…like a lot of people here on these boards that report got the wheels turning (Holly, they really need to give you a cut of their profits!), and this trip - and consequently this admittedly wordy trip report - was born.
I mentioned the race to Princess Craiggy, and he was in! Will was in too, but in cheerleader form only – his hatred for running far outweighs his love of character photos :shrug: Once my mom (a biker, not a runner) got wind of the trip she wanted to come too…hooray! My brother moved to Florida from home (Ohio) about 7 years ago (he currently lives in Western Florida) and we don’t get to see him very often - maybe twice a year - so I was pleased that the trip could come together this way.
Being the hyper-organized, borderline-OCD planner of the family, I immediately began to work out the trip logistics and signed up for the race the minute registration opened
. Will works in education, so he cannot take multiple personal days in a row or use them to make 4-day weekends , which restricted the trip to a jam-packed 3-day event (3.5 days if you count Friday evening…which I don’t, since we had no park time that day). We would fly down on Friday the 25th after work and return home Monday evening (the 28th), with Will taking just that Monday off. With the flight times available to us, that would only leave us 2 full days and some change in the World. I whine, but for awhile it looked like Will wouldn’t be able to make the trip at all due to school conflicts, and I’d much rather have him there for a shorter trip than go on a slightly longer trip without him. WDW just wouldn’t feel right without him there with me. Plus we’ll get our longer trip soon…we have our next trip (June 2011) booked and paid for!Anyhoo, less whining and more planning! We would, like I said, fly down Friday after work and check into our digs at Port Orleans Riverside, probably not until around midnight (ah, the best laid plans…more on this later :dazzle
. My mom actually flew down Thursday to check out my brother’s apartment and see where he works…together they then made the trip to Orlando, about a 4-hour car ride I think. Here’s a text message conversation I had with my mom about their plans for that first day (if I could take a screenshot of this conversation on my Droid, I would…I’m just not savvy enough):Me: What are your plans for Friday?
Mom: gonna rent a car & leave as early as possible & go to the afirca thingy
Me: …it’s called Animal Kingdom!
Mom: oh yeah…hope we 2 c off kilter
Etc. etc. :ROFLOL:
Initially I was bummed that I wouldn’t get to be there with them during their first park visit – I really wanted to see their reactions – but it ended up sort of not mattering. More on that later, too.
Oh, right…I also started using a training plan. I’ll address that a little later on in the report…lots of coming attractions!
A few weeks before the trip, my mom called to tell me she’d fully paid off the trip and was starting to get really excited! I was relieved to hear this because until that point I’d had a hard time gauging whether or not she was looking forward to it. I think the reality that it was so close had finally hit her…I should have known though. She really enjoyed looking at the pictures from our honeymoon trip and kept saying she was jealous, it looked like so much fun, etc. Then I saw her the Sunday before we were due to fly out and she had a file folder labeled “Disney” with every crazy planning email I’d sent her printed out, along with a highlighted copy of the half marathon course. Ah-ha! So that’s where some of my urge to plan comes from!
In the weeks leading up to the trip I realized more and more that I kind of felt some pressure to make sure the trip was great for everyone, especially the sort-of newbies, since this whole thing was my idea (eek!), so it was fun to see that she was excited, too.Maybe it was good that I could focus on these concerns, because it helped distract me from being nervous for the race itself. That nervousness inevitably crept in, but at the same time I was, of course, REALLY looking forward to it after almost a year of anticipation and weeks of training for it. I didn’t have any goals beyond finishing within the pace requirements while not feeling like death, and of course, getting loads of character pictures! And like everyone else that runs these things, I was super excited to get that finisher medal! It’s all about the bling.
So here we go! Thanks for reading so far!
