Part one of earning the special pink Coast to Coast medal this year was the Tinkerbell Half Marathon out in Disneyland. It was my first time going there, so Aimee enlisted her college roommate to be our tour guide for the weekend since she lives nearby. We stayed at the Marriott Hotel down the street, which was around a 15-20 minute walk to the expo and parks. Disneyland also has a great shuttle system that runs constantly between all the local hotels (not just Disney ones) and the parks.
The expo was the usual Disney awesomeness with tons of vendors selling lots of spandex and tulle. We were on a mission though, so we got a quick picture and hightailed it across the street.
Our mission? California Adventure! We had a strict bedtime of 9PM, so we had to get to the park to try and do as much as we could before 8:30. We were able to ride everything on our wish list (except for Monsters Inc.) thanks to good fast pass strategy and single rider lines. We could have done everything, but we couldn’t resist riding California Screamin twice since the line was pretty short, so we decided to save Monsters Inc. for next time.
We were showered and in our jammies by 8:45, so we watched the fireworks from our balcony and drifted off into a Benadryl coma until our 3:15 wake up call. Usually for our race costumes we try to be a little different, but for this race, we decided to go with a pretty popular theme and go as Mr Smee and Captain Hook (Aimee’s friend even made her own crocodile costume as well!):
My costume was easy. I made a headband from the Hooray for Headbands pattern, a teal skirt from the Jalie running skirt pattern, bought reading glasses from Dollar Tree and popped the lenses out, and bought a Lululemon tank top that was (thankfully) on clearance. I thought about making a stocking cap, but my head gets so hot when I run, so I decided against it. I don’t think anyone had any trouble figuring out who I was!
Aimee’s costume was where I focused most of my energy. I used Simplicity 1535 for the dress and Simplicity 3685 for her cravat. I changed the hemline of the pattern to look more like Hook’s waistcoat, but mostly followed the pattern other than that. For the cravat, I couldn’t find any stretch lace that wasn’t itchy, so I made a ruffle with a long strip of white spandex and sewed it to the long edge of the cravat to floof it up a bit. I think it came out great, and Aimee said it didn’t bother her at all to run in. And instead of a giant pirate hat, I opted to make her a purple headband based on a BIC band that we clipped a white ostrich feather (from Joann’s) to with a roach clip.
The race was so much fun. A good part of the race is running through the parks, which is our favorite. They had the Wheel of Fear lit up like it is during the World of Color light show:
And Small World was still had their Christmas lights on:
But the best was running by the carousel and getting BOOED by the lost boys! They cracked us up! Unfortunately we were laughing so much we forgot to take their picture. But we did manage to remember to get one with our AWESOME new Tinkerbell medals:
We were so cute runDisney even put us in their video recap! (around 2:20)
We finished up our day at the Magic Kindom while sporting our new bling and then caught the red eye back to the east coast. It was a completely crazy whirlwind weekend, but luckily we’re into that sort of thing.
My Favorite Disney race so far. Low humidity, not too crowded.
I agree!