How to squeeze in a half marathon in the middle of three pub crawls?!?! 15th Anniversary Trip

[Cruzmom]

Hi all! After reading trip reports for the last ten years I thought that for this adult only trip I should give it a whirl and try my (hopefully our) hand at entertaining/educating people on our trip.

The Characters:

Me! Sarah aka Grace and Dustin's mom. I'm excited that for this trip I will just be Sarah wife of Derek! The last trips we have taken have been with anywhere from 4 to 16 people, so I have been Mom, Daughter, Sister, Daughter-in-law, Sister-in-law, Major General Trip Planner!

We live in Michigan and love to travel, we have a 15 day California trip coming up in June, and just bought a new travel trailer that I am trying to figure out when I can take it down to Fort Wilderness! I have a home-based travel business that works nice with my real job of being a stay-at-home mom!

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Derek: aka fsupharm77 - My hubby, partner in crime, and indulger of all my whims. I never dreamed when we married that he would be more obsessed with Disney than I was!! I'm hoping he will hop on and put his two cents in this report! Though he wishes his real job was Disney Research Professional, he is actually a pharmacist

The backstory:

Derek and I met my senior year while he was a freshman in college and we got set up for prom and we started dating. Four years later we were married on Thanksgiving weekend. One of my only reservations was how well and how willing he would be willing to travel! I had been to Europe 3 times before graduating high school, which is how my first trip to Disney was actually Disneyland Paris! I started doing selfies back in 1992 in Boston well before selfies were selfies!
We had not even been out of the state together before marrying and I was quite insistent about a 7 day cruise for our honeymoon, which I found within our budget and to my delight we had an amazing time and worked well together when traveling. We added to our family sooner than our original "plan" of flying to Paris for our five year anniversary trip and starting our family while there. God laughed at our plan and in reality I was 4 weeks out from delivering our second child on our 5th anniversary and wasn't cleared to fly anywhere!

Our first family trip to Disney was 6 hours spent in California adventure when our daughter was 2 after a panama canal cruise. She was in the thrall of Playhouse Disney and I wanted to take her.... not knowing the coast of a one day ticket! I thought Derek was going to have a apoplectic fit when we got the total for those few hours of fun...... but I gave him the big brown eyes and in we went. And it was magical, and we were bit by the bug and hard!

By the next June we spent 6 days in WDW to celebrate Grace's 3rd birthday before Dustin was born just the three of us. We knew nothing about planning a trip, booked it 3 weeks before we left and had another magical time!

Since then we have been to WDW 4 more weeks and have 3 days planned at Disneyland this June.

We love to celebrate our anniversary in style. For our 3rd we stayed at a B&B in a winery in Northern Michigan, 5th I was too preggo to do anything, 7th we took a cruise:

And for our 10th we hit Hawaii and did 10 days with a seven night cruise

How this trip came to be:

In early November 2013 we were traveling with our kiddos and my mother and two nephews, while strolling through food and wine festival we kept looking at each other and whispering "How much fun would this be without the kids?!?!" They loved trying all the new foods, but oh how nice it would be to enjoy our drinks without counting heads over and over again!

BTW Derek surprised me in France with my repaired wedding ring with a photopass photographer in on the secret! It far exceeded the original proposal on my moms couch.

Fast forward to Derek beginning to run..... which he had been threatening to do since we started dating, "I'm going to start running" which never happened. Till July 2013 when we signed up for a Warrior Dash and he started a couch to 5K. And like Forest he just kept running and running and running! Last August he ran The Crim a 10 mile run in Flint, MI which had been on his bucket list when "I'm going to start running" was going on for the first 15 years we knew each other!

A few weeks after that first 10 miles..... he turns and says "well I might as well run a half-marathon now" which snowballed as fast your head would spin..... What about the Wine and Dine Half Marathon ?!?! A Disney Race?!? That would great! Oh wait, that's our 15th anniversary!?! Remember when we joked about going to Disney without the kids? Are we really going to do this? Oh yes we are!!!!!!


Next..... The Stress of actually registering for the race, and where are we going to stay?

Planning Race and Resort
How many different ways can we drink around the world?
Where should we eat?

 

[Cruzmom]

Now that the idea of the trip is firmly entrenched in our heads we began thinking about which resort we wanted to explore on our own. I am a travel agent so I do get reduced rates, but still how much time do we really spend on resort? We always dream about animal kingdom lodge, or staying on the monorail, but always end up being logical and choosing more trips to Disney rather than using our whole travel budget on a Deluxe resort. Anyone else with us on this?

So to make this trip a little more special we have decided on Coronado Springs, to give us a more vacation resort like feel and upgrade to a business class room. Grabbing a quick bite for breakfast before heading to the parks will be nice.

The next hurdle was to actually get Derek registered for the big race!!!

He had been on the boards reading about how fast the race sold out last year.... in the matter of 6 hours! Good news was that this years sign up was on St. Paddy's Day and he had already scheduled for the day off so we could spend the day together hopping from pub to pub around town. He had found a link to a backdoor into the registration that should allow him to register about 10 minutes before RunDisney actually opened for registration. He saved the links to his phone and we waited and waited, Registration was supposed to open at noon. At 11:30 we started watching the clock....... 11:50 he hit the link and was in! He got all registered and checked out by 11:55!! We were really doing this, 100% in. It soon became apparent how lucky he was to have found that link..... The race of 18,000 people sold out within 40 minutes.

While he is waiting for the big race He did Trail to the Victors a 5k which ended at the Big House on University of Michigan's campus.



He will be doing to 10 Mile Crim again this August, and who knows what else he can get in before November.

Now what to do? Where to eat? And how to still make sure he has a successful run?!?

 

[Chaitali]

Hi, I'm joining in to follow along. I'm planning on going down for the Wine and Dine half as well. That's awesome that you guys are going to take this trip for just the two of you

 

[Cruzmom]

So now for the title of thread "Crawling our way..."

We have some grand plans!

We are coming in Wednesday and leaving.. hopefully later Sunday evening. Original plan was Thursday-Sun but we soon realized that was not enough time!

Wed- "Monorail Pub Crawl" starting at the Contemporary for lunch then to the Polynesian, then the Grand Floridian and Dinner??? Maybe a late dinner at Animal Kingdom Lodge?

Thursday- "Drinking around the world" EPCOT Around the world. Starting right at 11 1 o' clock tequila lunch for our anniversary?

Friday- 4 Parks 4 Drinks 4 Rides 4 Photos one day! "Crawling Around the World" Super excited about this!
AK to start with a Bloody Mary Breakfast
HS by 11 (ummmm just realized I don't have a plan for a good drink here)
MK by 3 5pm reservation at Be Our Guest for Desert and Drink
EP last to start in Canada and finish up anything we didn't hit Thursday

Sat- Hang out at the resort and explore
Derek to Race
Sarah to ???? Try to be a little sober when he crosses the finishline!

Sun- DTD? I have always wanted to hit a restaurant here but have not managed it besides the Dinosaur restaurant.

 

[Chaitali]

Sounds like so much fun! For drinks at Hollywood Studios, what about the Brown Derby Lounge? It looks like they have some fun drinks there including a margarita flight, a martini flight, or a scotch flight. The Tune-In Lounge at 50's Prime Time also has some fun drinks. I really like Raglan Road at Downtown Disney if you make it there on Sunday.

 

[fsupharm77]

Sounds like so much fun! For drinks at Hollywood Studios, what about the Brown Derby Lounge? It looks like they have some fun drinks there including a margarita flight, a martini flight, or a scotch flight. The Tune-In Lounge at 50's Prime Time also has some fun drinks. I really like Raglan Road at Downtown Disney if you make it there on Sunday.

I was thinking Margarita outside of RnRC, but a Margarita flight is right up our alley!!

 

[Cruzmom]

180 days!!

Well I didn't have success this morning with the ADRs.

What we got:

11/4 Wed Boma @ 4:40 before our monorail pub crawl. Hoping this doesn't make Trader Sam's impossible to get into. I really want to hang at the Tiki bar, but we have also always wanted to try Boma!! "So much time, so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it."

11/5 Thur La Hacienda de San Angel @ 8:15 thinking we will end our "drinking around the world" day here check in a little early and try to get a seat to watch Illuminations from.

11/6 Fri Tusker House @ 9:10 This would make care of our ride photo and a mimosa all in one shot! The added bonus of throwing some good food in our bellies before more drinking commences.

This is where things went wrong, Be Our Guest was already filled at 6 am. I could get tables for Sat. but not Friday. As this is the only place to grab a drink in Magic Kingdom it throws a wrench in our grand plans of "4 Parks 4 Drinks 4 Rides 4 Photos one day!" I will continue to check for the next 180 days to try and score something! Hoping for some Otherwise a Dole Whip float will have to count...... just add rum?

11/7 Sat RACE DAY!! Kona Cafe @ 10:30 Derek would like a good breakfast, but not have to wake up early. We will be spending most of this day relaxing and exploring our resort.

11/8 Sun Sleep in Maybe 1:00 gospel brunch at house of Blues? Need to ask DH tonight.

 

[Chaitali]

I was down for the Tower of Terror 10 miler last year and wasn't able to get a reservation at BOG at the 180 day mark. I kept looking and I think I ended up finding a reservation around the 45-30 day mark. So don't give up hope

 

[fsupharm77]

Got our dining plans pretty much in order now. We did score BOG on 11/06 so now we can complete our 4 Parks, 4 Rides, 4 Photos, 4 Drinks day!!

 

[fsupharm77]

Ready to hit the airport bright and early. 5:30 am flight and hit the ground running by noon!

 

[Chaitali]

Glad you found that BOG reservation I hope you have a good flight and good first day!

 

[fsupharm77]

Got the text that room was ready while on DME. Walked right in to room!