Mandy and I had a different strategy for The Princess Glass Slipper Challenge 10K this year. We were going to skip the character stops on the course outside of Epcot and save our time for when we are in Epcot. Especially in France because that is where Lumiere and Cogsworth were last year and we especially wanted to get Beauty and the Beast-themed photos.
The corrals were also released quicker this year. I was in corral B but she and Kenny were in C so I joined them in their corral. The last corral was F. They released the corrals every 3 minutes and did section the corrals into halves. Luckily we were in the first half of our corral. We started running at 5:41 a.m. I arrived at the Epcot parking lot at 4:50 so I had plenty of time.
The characters we chose to pass up were Princess Elena, Tink, and her friends, The Evil Queen with the poisoned apple (which we now wish we had taken). Inside there were the entertainers on stilts backstage. When we entered Epcot we passed Pinnochio and Gepetto in Italy, Dopey, and then approaching France there were cast members with champagne bottle props along with Marie the cat. Mandy and I were disappointed that Lumiere and Cogsworth weren’t there like last year. Had we known, we would have gotten in line for the Evil Queen. We did take photos with the topiaries of Lumiere and Cogsworth along with Belle and the Beast. I also found Faith Dority while we were waiting in line. It was great to see her again!
We continued over the International Gateway towards the Boardwalk and there was a thick fog hanging over the Swan and Dolphin. It looked really cool. Outside of ESPN was vacation Genie so we chose to skip that photo stop. We knew there was a Royal Minnie as we were going to be heading backstage back into Epcot so we had time to decide if we wanted to stop for her.
We continued to run around the Boardwalk to the Yacht and Beach club and approached the area where Minnie was, but decided not to wait in the long line for her. I was lucky to get a photo of her waving to us. We ran through the UK, Canada, and up the middle towards the fountain. We stopped there for a photo with Spaceship Earth in the background. We decided to do a jumping photo. We laugh when we look at it now, but hey it was fun and we did something different. We continued on towards the front entrance and back under Spaceship Earth towards the back area to the finish line.
As we were approaching the end of the race there was a mom with her daughter in a special wheelchair and I asked her if she was being highlighted by runDisney she said yes. I introduced myself to her daughter and noticed her name was Tea (as in Tea Leoni). I saw them again close to the finish line and Tea was yelling out “You’re my Rock Star” to other runners, so I told her, “no, YOU are my rock star and I can’t wait to see you with your medal!” After we finished and I got my medal I saw that runDisney was interviewing them so I waited and got a picture of Tea with her medal and asked her mom a few questions. I’d like to find out more about their story and do a separate inspirational blog post, so look for that in the near future! There was something about Tea that reminded me of Lyla. I think was her curly hair but she touched my heart. And I was so proud of her mom and her best friend for pushing that stroller all those miles and for all the training she did for this race. It’s a beautiful thing.
I had breakfast reservations with Team Shenanigans at Kona, a #werunsocial meetup, and tea with Mandy and Kenn in the afternoon, so I was looking forward to my fun-filled day ahead of me. Stay tuned for a recap of that fun I had!