I "kind of" did the Hot Chocolate in Chicago. I say kind of, because I signed up for the 15k, but ended up walking the 5k due to an ankle injury. I enjoyed and all my friends who did the 15k had a great time too.
We couldn't make it to packet pick up so our friend who was in Chicago earlier in the day on Saturday picked it up. The race pick up was in a large tent in a parking lot by Soldier field and the line went all around the parking lot. So people were cold. I read a lot of complaints on their Facebook page, but our friend who picked up the packages said it wasn't too bad. She said the line was intimidating but it moved fast and she had all our packages within 20 minutes.
The sweatshirts are nice and kept me warm on race day (I have never worn a race day shirt for the race but I forgot my warm outer layer at home and it was cold and I knew there was a chance I would be walking the race so I broke that rule). It was a good course and lots of fun people around. I heard people complain about having to wait an hour in corrals but having done a Disney race before it didn't seem bad, especially since they had double the people at the Princess.
I'm sad I didn't get to do the 15k as it went right through the museum campus and I would have loved to get some running pictures by the dinosaur skeletons outside of the Field Museum.
Chocolate mug was tasty and we had a great time! I would like to do it again. For real this time