The Never Land 5k was held on Friday, May 6 with a 5am start time. The weather was pretty great - it was upper 50s at the start time with a bit of humidity. Though the start is still before the sunrises, if you are slower and take lots of photos you finish in daylight. When the sun rose it was mostly overcast, which I prefer.

PROS:
+ Organized Expo. Though lines for official merchandise lined up early and got pretty long, they kept the crowd inside the merchandise area to a minimum. There wasn't any shoving or rude behavior from what I saw. Very calm, friendly folks shopping.
+ Packet pickup is down the ramp under the Disneyland Hotel in a parking garage. You head to whichever race you need a bib for, show them ID, give them your waiver, they give you your bib, gear check sticker, program book, and pins/necklace if you preordered. Find your number/name in the booklet and sign that you received your bib, initial if you had other things to pickup. Pre-ordered Dooney & Bourke, Performance Jacket, or Bundle? Head over to the pre-order kiosks. All lines were very organized and moved pretty quickly. Head upstairs to the expo in the hotel to pickup your shirts. From right to left it was: 5k, PDC, 10k, half if I remember correctly. Need to exchange for a different shirt size? Head over to the table next to the half shirt pickup and you can do this. I tried on a size up, liked it, and exchanged easily and quickly.
+ Speaker Series and plenty of great gear/stores at the expo.
+ The start is INSIDE Disneyland on Main Street (or around the Main Hub by the castle).
+ 2 water stations - plenty of energetic volunteers to pass out the cups.
+ The Cast Members and VoluntEARS are always great.
+ Cute Finisher Medallion (5th Anniversary of the Neverland 5k!)
+ Organized Finisher Chute. You come out and get your medal, wrap around and get your bottled water (Dasani) and smaller bottle of Powerade. Then wrap around again and get your usual runDisney box of goodies and banana, then there are the photo ops before exiting the runner's only area.
+ There were a lot of PhotoPass photographers along the course. They were in neon green tents, so usually were pretty easy to spot. (Only issue is when people decide to stop to try and get a photo, even though they can get you while running.)

CONS:
- The 5k shirts are cotton. I think you all know how much I love tech shirts ;)
- There are no official corrals. They have A–D for wave purposes (about 5 minutes apart), however, it's on a first come first served basis. This means you have people of all paces together. Though I am on the slower end of the running spectrum, I still like to run. And when the start of Corral B happened, I was ready to go. I had no idea when the start actually happened, as no one was running at all. When I figured out it had passed, it was very disappointing to see no one in the corral (or at least the front) seemed to care to run or stay to the right. By the time we were able to move, it was the first character stop.
- Character Stops were AWFUL. Not the characters themselves, but we stopped at Hook and Smee and it took us, no joke, 25 minutes to get through the line. We were maybe only 1.5 corrals back from the start, so who knows what was going on. Once you commit maybe 5–10 minutes already, it's hard to get out of that line. We finally get towards the front, and they come by saying we might get swept. If that were an issue, you think they might have cut the line off much sooner, because there were still a bunch of people behind us. Luckily, the cast member that had been there with us told them that she was told we'd be ok, and that we could stay in line. I think the main hold up with the new PhotoPass photographers. They aren't as quick or used to moving such long lines quickly. I watched closely, and it was like a 2 minute process per person or group, and it just didn't run as smoothly as when Marathonfoto is in charge. I know it's a new implementation, and in theory it seems great (cheaper, you get all your photos from the parks + the race for $39/day), but they need to get quicker with the photographs in order to keep the lines moving during a race. Perhaps it was just this particular stop... one later on seemed to move a bit better, it's hard to say. I hope I don't sound too whiny, just trying to explain how the experience was from my perspective.
- We got held up at the first character stop, but caught up to plenty of people. From what I could tell there were only 2 official character photo opportunities (with a PhotoPass photographer) - Hook and Wendy/Peter. The Lost Boys were out in two groups of three, but that was for sefie shots only (maybe there was an official photographer there earlier and they left? Can't say for sure). Last year they had all the Lost Boys together and an official photographer, and that was the man photo I wanted this year, so was disappointed. I know there were some photo ops with some pirates (not sure if there were photographers there or not), on the pier, and with the Mile 3 marker/backdrop. If anyone knows of more that I missed, and if there were more character photos that I didn't mention (because I obviously missed them), please let me know in the comments so I can update!
- Course change this year - no longer finishes in California Adventure. Not a ton of running through Disneyland (run past the castle to your left and through Toon Town into backlots and then into DCA). A good amount of time in DCA, but I missed the finish being there.
- If you tried to get in the virtual queue for the New Balance runDisney shoes at 7pm... too bad. It didn't open till maybe 9:15ish, and there were no updates, warnings, or anything as to why it didn't go live on time or that it had gone live at all. The power of social media I'm sure came into play big here for anyone attempting to register.

Though the negatives take up half my review, I will say that I had a great time. I made new friends in the character photo lines, and though the wait was super long for the first character, we still managed a photo and didn't get swept, which meant more photos later on. There isn't a chip time, and I'm pretty sure this was my slowest 5k ever (I've done a few runDisney ones now, and none of them have been quick because of photo ops haha). Anyway, I had a great time, enjoyed myself and didn't take anything too seriously (even though I might have gotten a bit anxious about the whole first photo op haha).