I struggle with this because I AM the Disney gal. This was probably my least favorite marathon ever...Here's my story:
After a long day cheering on the half marathon and hosting the meet up, it made race morning feel even earlier. When our alarms went off at 2:00am I realized that AJ was still awake on the West Coast. He was in Disneyland with the boys closing the park. I couldn't believe he hadn't gone to bed yet and I was waking up to run a marathon. I gave him a quick call to let him know I was up and we were headed out to catch the bus.

Getting on the bus was SUPER easy. There were plenty of buses at our resort and they seemed to be leaving every 10 minutes. We left our hotel and headed down to Epcot. We got to the race area pretty early so we checked out the characters that were out for photos before the lines got too long. Daisy was out and she is my FAVORITE so standing in line for this pic was a no brainer.

After dropping our bags off at gear check we walked what felt like 5 miles to the corrals. I was really excited that they had fireworks go off during each corral start, not just for the elites. It meant for a magical start to the anticlimactic freeway run.

I felt like we were running forever before we reached the Magic Kingdom parking gates. And then we ran another stretch of forever before we reached the park. Once were in the Magic Kingdom I finally felt like I was running Disney again. The castle was so pretty, we stopped for a few pics on Main Street and headed into Tomorrowland. There we found Lilo and Stitch with a short line, grabbed a pic and were off again. We skipped the Princesses because the lines were rather long.

Once we left Magic Kingdom we were on our way to Animal Kingdom. We passed the Polynesian Resort again and there were some more great photo stops along the way.

Our game plan the whole race was to have fun since this was technically a training run. We figured we would hit Animal Kingdom about 10 minutes before park opening and if Everest was open we would stop. By got to the entrance of Everest 5 minutes ahead of schedule. It was open and had NO line. We walked all the way on to our ride car.

After a 3 minute break to ride a roller coaster during the marathon, I needed a few extra walk breaks. As someone who gets motion sick, riding a roller coaster that goes backwards was probably not the best idea. BUT it's all part of the experience.

Once we got our legs back, we were off again. Through Animal Kingdom and headed towards ESPN Wide World of Sports. Between the two parks, there is nothing. There were times I forgot I was running a Disney race because there was no Disney.

The Florida humidity came to play that day and it was something we were not used to running in. It didn't effect our running ability, but it messed with out skin. We stopped at med before ESPN to grab vaseline for the chafing that was happening. (I know, this is the unglamorous part of running)

Running in ESPN WWOS was strange because of the different terrains you run on. There's road, track, brick, stone and the dirt around the baseball field. Despite that, it had some of my favorite character stops!

We rounded out of WWOS and were back on the roads to Hollywood Studios. By this point we were SO ready to be done. We didn't stop in Hollywood because all of the characters that were out are ones we have in Disneyland. We kept running out of Hollywood and onto the Boardwalk, headed to Epcot. I spotted Genie on the Boardwalk grabbed a pic and then caught up with Kelley after. It was too good to pass up.

We ran around the World Showcase in Epcot and could only talk about food. That's normal for miles 20-26 in a marathon, especially when it's lined with food carts. We talked about stopping for snacks, but we were tired and ready to see the finish line. I tried to FaceTime AJ though the finishers shoot, but he didn't answer. So I tried my mom and she didn't answer either. Apparently nobody wanted to cross the finish line with me that day. Rudy called out Kelley's name as we finished, we grabbed our bling and we were finally done.
After grabbing out gear we sat on the ground, posted a few pics and then made our game plan. Kelley went back to the hotel and I was staying to try to find Erinn, Staci, Kara or Dani. Then...my phone died. I stayed for an hour, walking around gear check trying to find anyone. After an hour of no luck I called it a day and headed back to the hotel.

I have extreme mixed feelings on this race. I love it because it's Disney, but it was probably my least favorite marathon I've ran. There were a lot of long stretches of nothing and you had to be very mindful of the banks in the road. I commend everyone who runs this marathon as a challenge, I can't imagine ending my weekend with that race. And of course as I say that, y'all know that I will do Dopey, so that will be me one day. The time change is strange, but I don't think it messed with me too bad. I need another trip out to WDW because there were a lot of things that were unmagical about this trip. I'm willing to give it another try. I think Disney runners have their favorites, but this girl is DisneyLAND girl for sure.