Racing Disney: The 2016 Tinker Bell 10k Recap

So for the race itself, my mom, Kenny and I met in the hotel lobby. We enjoyed some pre-run eats, and made our way down to the start line area. Since our hotel was so close and my sister and dad would be at the hotel, we chose to not check a bag. This made the whole getting to the start line much easier. We still had to go through two separate security bag check points to get to the start line. We had our quick port-a-potty break and then made our way to our corral.

Inside the corral, we had one final costume adjustment to make. We had to add our wings so we could fly through the course! We took a few pre-race photos and got ready to take flight! My brother-in-law and I originally were hoping to run quickly enough to get him a sweet PR. We were prepped and ready to fly. However, shortly after starting, we realized that we weren’t going to be able to make that wish come true. We started in corral D and from the moment our corral started we were easily running 7-10 runners across. We made it to mile 1 and we were still a good 7 runners across the road. This kept up for all the miles we were on the road before entering the parks. Once we entered Disneyland Property, it was still pretty much 5-7 runners across the road at any given point. Since we had decided that PR’ing was no longer an option, we decided to have a blast instead.

My sister was back at the hotel with her kids and had been sending us text messages while we were waiting to start. She was also tracking us via the runner tracking in order to see us at the finish line. Well, we soon realized my sister was still awake and was sending us encouraging text messages, so we decided to return the favor! Every time we ran by something we thought my sister or the kids would like to see, we snapped a picture! My brother-in-law who typically isn’t a fan of pictures got really in to all of the pictures we were taking! We ended up taking a lot of selfies with iconic rides and “landmarks” within Disneyland and California Adventure. In fact, there were very limited character stops on the course. They only had the fairies and there were only 3 stops that we saw where you could snap a picture on throughout the entire 6.2 miles.

But back to the race course. We entered Disneyland Park around mile 2. We flew past some fun places and then ran back into the backstage area to cross over to California Adventure. The mile 3 sign had our friend Fawn on it so of course we had to snap a picture of Kenny with it! Mile 4 occurred right in front of Terror of Tower (a thought for another day, but I much prefer the East Coast version of this ride over the West Coast version). Mile 5 brought us to Cars Land. As you all know, my nephew Luke LOVES Cars, so we had to take quite a few pictures in this area. Mile 5 into mile 6 brought us upon our awesome bear statute from the 5K. This meant Kenny and I had to snap a picture with it for Luke. (He loved it by the way!) Prior to the bear statute, it also looped us through a Bug’s Land which brought about a Fairy stop! We snapped a picture with Iridessa and Rosetta. And then, we found our friend Fawn and we were able to wait for a picture with her! We then flapped our wings to get us to the finish line!  We flew through Downtown Disney and turned in front of the Disneyland Hotel and made our way to the finish line.

Kenny even got a sweet shout out from the race announcers for being a male fairy! As soon as we crossed the finish line we were able to see my sister and the kids cheering loudly for us! Kenny and I were able to sneak in a quick hug before making our way over to get our medals. We then hung out in the finisher area waiting on our mom to cross the finish line! We all met up, snapped a few pictures and then made our way back to the hotel in order to get ready to have another magical day in Disneyland!