Trip Report **COMPLETED** The Princess 10K (and other adventures) !

Hello everyone! We got back from Disney World yesterday and it is very cold here (and slightly depressing) so I am going to start my trip report right away!

Who?
The usuals - my Mom (Mary) and myself (Megan) - some people refer to us as the M and M's :)
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Where?
Wilderness Lodge :)

When?
February 22 - 27, 2019

Why?
Well - as the title implies we went down for the Princess 10K! It was originally supposed to be both of my sisters and us but for various reasons it ended up being just the two of us :)

Day 1 February 22, 2019
Since our flight was scheduled for very early in the morning my Mom and I decided to stay at a hotel across the street from the airport. We did this once before thinking it was a good idea and again it was not. Any sleep we hoped to save by staying closer was lost due to horrible beds and loud other guests :oops:
In any case, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 3:30 AM and got ready for the airport. The breakfast at the hotel did open at 4 AM so we checked it out but there was nothing good so decided to just head on over to the airport.
We look super duper awake...
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Anyway, at the airport we had some bagels then headed to our gate.
(oops sorry accidentally hit post before finishing this post)
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About 10 minutes before we were supposed to board we noticed that the time for our departure changed by like 15 minutes. I did not think much of it until they made an announcement that all the computers systemwide at Southwest went down and they could not tell us when we would actually leave and could not board because they could not get a accurate weight of the plane without the computer.
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I was beyond frustrated at this point as we have had many issues in the last several months with Southwest and delayed flights. Overall we were only delayed by an hour but it was still pretty annoying. This is also like the third time in two months that Southwest's computers went down . It actually happened the night before too and they canceled over 400 flights due to this and/or weather. The flight attendants more than made up for it though with their charm and witty jokes (one especially good one about Tom Brady which naturally an entire plane of Buffalo people loved).
Anyway, our flight was fairly fast which was good. I think we watched a bit of Netflix :)
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FONORAIL!
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Then, the usual picture...(don't worry we did not travel from freezing Buffalo in shorts we changed in the airport to help save some/aka make up some time).
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Next up: some Expo fun
 
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Doc Disney

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Me too! Yesterday I was listening to a podcast that had on Rudy Novotny who is a race announcer for some of the Disney races - when he said they pick him up from his hotel at around 1:00 in the morning for him to start the sound checks, etc for the races, my 3:00 am wake up for a couple of last year’s marathon weekend races didn’t seem as bad 😉

ONE AM?!!! why even bother going to bed at that point

Yay! I'm in! Can't wait to hear all about it!

thanks ! yay!
 

Doc Disney

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 1 continued
So we headed down to DME which was actually pretty crowded. However we got right on the bus!
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Much to our surprise the bus left almost immediately AND we were the first stop! That has never happened to us before! It really did make up for some of the time lost from the delayed flight.
Soon enough we were at the wilderness Lodge.
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We stopped at the front desk to change some credit cards around and our room wasn't ready yet but that was okay with us. We headed down to Roaring Fork to grab something small to eat since we were planning on eating an early dinner but needed something little to tide us over until then. So, we went with the healthy choice of Cheetos and a cookie ;)
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After our small snack we headed outside to grab the expo bus. We just missed one but another one came only a few minutes later. That was the awesome thing about the expo buses as we almost never waited for one.
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My sister made us these really cute tote bags :)
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Expo bus selfie
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The bus ride was a bit long (partially due to the weird drop off thing that was happening at the Cotemporary which required a big u-turn of the bus) but eventually we made it to ESPN.
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It was BEAUTIFUL outside. I legitimately could not tell you the last time we saw sun before this! The last 8 weeks here have been snow storm after blizzard after snow storm !
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Next up: more Expo
 

Doc Disney

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 1 continued
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The first order of business was to pick up our bib. We were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in corral D with 2 full corals behind us since we did not submit a time!
Then we headed over towards the main vendor building to get our shirts!
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We were happy to see the alert system at a low - despite the email we got the day prior about how hot it was going to be :)
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Next up: more Expo
 

Doc Disney

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 1 continued
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We did shop around a bit and got some magnets and some headbands to wear the next day.
Then we headed to the last building which was all Run Disney merchandise - this was a new building to us :)
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They had a red carpet outside :)
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We stopped for a photo with an Aladdin backdrop. This had zero wait as opposed to the character wait times :hilarious:
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We did buy another magnet that we liked better then headed out of the Expo and back to the WL!

Next up: MK!
 

Darstarr

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
Day 1 continued
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We did shop around a bit and got some magnets and some headbands to wear the next day.
Then we headed to the last building which was all Run Disney merchandise - this was a new building to us :)
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They had a red carpet outside :)
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We stopped for a photo with an Aladdin backdrop. This had zero wait as opposed to the character wait times :hilarious:
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We did buy another magnet that we liked better then headed out of the Expo and back to the WL!

Next up: MK!
Love the Cindy fathead!!!
 

Doc Disney

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Following along. Now if you decide to go back next Feb for race then I'll be over there too (not running though lol). We will be visiting our son who is going over to work in epcot for another year and it will be his birthday when we are over.

We are considering it! I will let you know!

Love the Cindy fathead!!!

Its so cute!
 

Doc Disney

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 1 continued
Forgot to post the picture of this awesome CM dressed up like a Princess in the Run Disney merchandise building!
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Hello bus stop
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I was a bit bummed that we still did not have a room and we had a ton of stuff from the expo we did not want to carry around the park so we decided we would give it a shot and ask the front desk about one.
The CM we had said it still wasn't ready but she would call and see if they could find us one.
I took some pictures while we waited
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Pictures can ever do this lobby justice!
I did not get my hopes up but the CM was able to find us a room! Hooray! It was actually the first time we were in the main part of the building instead of down past Roaring Fork.
I was saying as we walked to our room how I bet our view was just tress since it was just a standard view and we walked into this ...
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Oh hello monorail, Contemporary, Space Mountain!
Super cool!
Anyway we did not stay in the room long - just dropped our stuff off and headed back out.
More photos....
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We had FPs in MK and since we were on a bit of a time crunch we decided to take the bus instead of the boat.
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Next up: MK!
 

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