This was my 5th running of the Princess Half Marathon, which in Disney’s books makes you a “Perfect Princess”.  With it came some fun swag including a pink sash that said “Perfect Princess” on it and a crown to wear.

One big change this year was that the expo was moved to the Coronado Springs resort instead of Wide World of Sports.  This made travel to the expo tricky as they were not allowing parking or guest drop off directly at the resort.  To get to the expo you needed to park at Downtown Disney West side.  Steve and I were talking about doing lunch at the Polynesian so we went there with the intentions of parking then using the monorail to get to Magic Kingdom then we were going to use resort transportation to get to Coronado Springs.  As luck would have it as we were walking into the Poly we saw a woman holding a clip board that said “Disney’s Princess Half Marathon” on it.  We asked if we could use the resort transportation from there to the expo and she said yes, so we joined the growing group of runners waiting for a bus.  The bus took maybe 10 minutes to arrive and we were on our way.  We made a new friend on the bus so the ride went by very quickly.  We pulled into the Coronado lot and about 30 minutes after the expo opened and the line was still very long leading into the ballrooms.

Our usual routine when we get to an expo is to head for the Official Merchandise first, but it seems almost everyone had the same plan so they line was already an hour long when we got there.  I left Steve in the merchandise line with one direction, to get me the medal replica pin, then I headed over to pick up my packet.  Of course my line was the longest in the room, but once again I made some friends and the wait wasn’t bad at all.  When my turn came I walked up and announced myself as a “Perfect Princess” as the runDisney twitter had told us to do.  The volunteer looked a little disappointed and said she was going to surprise me, then showed that we had a little pink oval on our bibs that said “Perfect Princess” on them.  She handed me my crown and sash and I was on my way to collect my swag bag.

Things had taken a drastic turn when I left Steve and the lines for the swag bag pick up were now running into the line for merchandise as well as the vendors opposite them.  I felt really bad for the vendors as lines had swarmed their merchandise and they were looking a bit stressed.  I weaved through the crowd to make my way towards my shirt size.  This is one even where being a big girl had its advantages because I was able to walk right up and get my shirt with no line.  I didn’t want to even attempt to go into the merchandise tent so I met up with a MD friend and started texting Steve to see where he was.  Luckily he was checking out and he remembered for me that I needed a mini-medal for my runDisney Vinylmation and grabbed it while he was in there.  Yup, he is a keeper.

We decided to only make one more stop in the expo and that was at the runDisney booth to register for two more 2013 races: Tower of Terror 10 Miler and Wine and Dine Half Marathon.  We made our way back out to the buses and happened to run into more MD friends on the bus and decided to have a nice lunch with them back at the Polynesian.

Overcrowding at the expo was my only real complaint about our overall experience.  There were lots of complaints about transportation but we got lucky with our stop at the Poly and being able to use their report transportation to get there.

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