Once arriving to Orlando, the first thing I wanted to do was get my Running Packet from the ESPN Expo. Of course, I HATE these lit up running signs that you see on the raceway, BUT it was kind of cool it had a count down to the race time. Yeah, I had to steal a picture infront of it. Why not 🙂
The expo was really cool, I always love expos that give out a lot of samples. We sampled bananas, apples, cheese, yogurt… I think that was it.
Brian only has one food that he detests. Yup, you guessed it- BANANAS! But, he couldn’t resist the cute Chiquita lady, could he?
Here are some of the Disney race medals. The Mickey 5K they had during the Wine & Dine weekend, but I did not participate. The Epcot medal is the medal I would receive after completing the Wine and Dine Half Marathon. It is a REALLY nice medal!
The shirt that came in the packet had long sleeves, and I never race in long sleeves for half marathons (or even shorter races!). It is just pure torture after your body heats up. So, it gave me an excuse to get a short sleeved shirt.
After the expo, we headed straight to Downtown Disney to look for a tasty place for dinner and also to do a little Disney shopping. What a beautiful waterfront!
I wasn’t expecting for Disney to have all of their Christmas decorations up, but they did… and it was beautiful! They were selling santa hats with Mickey ears, and I thought how perfect would it be if the kids were with us… I could have gotten a picture of them infront of one of the Disney themed Christmas trees with the santa hats and it would have made an awesome Christmas card!
For dinner, we decided to eat at Fulton’s Crab House. I love seafood! It was a perfect dinner, and our table was right by the lake.
The breading was so delicious on the cod, shrimp and scallops. They had a really good crab spread for the hot bread they brought to our table. Yum!
The lego store in Downtown Disney was AMAZING! They had one whole wall with dispensers and you could get ANY color or shape of lego you needed! They also had a lot of neat Lego sculptures.
We checked out a lot of Disney stores, I got the kids some mouse ears and stuffed animals. Brian REALLY wanted to make one of these, but didn’t… ha!
Our hotel was really nice, we used Stacey Burns as our travel agent and loved her! Unfortunately, all of the Disney hotels were booked one month prior to our trip (yes, we booked REALLY late, although I did sign up for the race last in April!)… which meant, we did not get ‘race’ transportation and had to use a cab a few times to get to ESPN Sports. However, we did have transportation in between the theme parks… but, still, Disney hotels have the best transportation, SO when we go back this summer with the kids we will be staying at a Disney hotel! Here is the view from our hotel window, we stayed at the Carib Royale.
Just some generic photos of our room… not sure why I always take these! It really was a spacious room, we just did not spend a lot of time in our room… but, if you are looking for a non-Disney hotel, this place is wonderful! I wish we would have had time to check out the pool and hot tub!