One July 6th I decided that the best and only way I could use my expiring Southwest Airlines standard award ticket was to fly somewhere and go running. The next thought in my head was "I am going to go running at my favorite place - Disney World!"
The trick was I could only fit in an overnight trip from Monday July 16th through Tuesday July 17th! The next thing to figure out was if anyone else wanted to get in on the fun with me. I let friends on Facebook and Twitter know what I was up to and people reacted in one of two ways: I want to go & I so wish I could go!
With six friends interested I came up with an itinerary and a name for the trip - DisneyRunFest2012! My flight was scheduled to get me into Orlando at 1:30 am, but lucky for me SWA was willing to switch me to a direct flight once I was at the airport (carry-on only pays off)! So I got into Orlando at 10:15 am!
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We always stop for photos outside of the EarPort!
A nice Disney Store employee took all of these for me! |
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2013 is the year of Goofy!
Of course I am going to add the 5k and go Dopey marathon weekend! |
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| Aren't we lovely! |
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| My photographer insisted on capturing the different faces on the mirror! |
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| She did a nice job don't you think? |
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Next she wanted to dress me up with a little store merchandising.
Too bad they don't sell runDisney at the airport! |
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| Then it was off on the Magical Express to Port Orleans French Quarter. |
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| Happy buses filled with happy riders! |
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| There I am on my way with my blue camera clicking away! |
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| These chaps were out to welcome the guests! |
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And here is where we were staying for the night.
Nice room on the first floor!
The resort was not busy at all and it was nice and quiet at night.
(Marcia's photo) |
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| Welcome to the room to me! |
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| And a nice hello from Mickey! |
I was sharing the room with another runDisney loving runner that I only knew through Twitter (Marcia Barton - @TravelRunEat on Twitter and Travelruneat.blogspot.com)
Marcia was coming down from Jacksonville. I was able to get settled and check out the resort with my bonus 3 hours from SWA before she arrived. We really hit it off - proving that splitting a room with an almost complete stranger can work out great!
So that brings DisneyRunFest2012 up through the check-in at the resort. If you want to see the itinerary check a few posts back at
http://lovedisneyrunning.blogspot.com/2012/07/disney-run-fest-july-16-17-2012.html.
Right now I need to get out for an evening run so more later!
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Love French Quarter :) sounds like a fun trip. Looking forward to hearing more about it!
ReplyDeleteFrench Quarter was fabulous. I had stayed at Riverside before with the family and really liked it, but FQ was so quaint and easy to get around. It could end up being my favorite resort. I checked out the food, but did not get anything. Have you eaten there Jen?
ReplyDeleteHow exciting! I can't wait to hear the rest!! I love your idea for a runfest! By the way, I'm running Goofy, too! Yay!
ReplyDeleteKaren - What made RunFest so great was that we got to run in places I have always wanted to run at Disney and discover new paths and views. We also had the benefits of being a small group so we could go wherever we wanted. Plus as I will blog about in a couple of posts...my run with Bob Hitchcock was priceless! I love race weekends too and can't wait to get Dopey in January!
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