Sunday, Jan 13 - Walt Disney World Marathon 2013/Goofy Challenge and Visiting Epcot

Sunday morning, Joe's alarm went off crazy early again. This time, though, I got to stay in bed and sleep in! His plan was to get dressed and head over to Pop Century to meet Scotty, since they had a joint costume for the race and figured it would be best to travel together (and they're a bit inseparable when it comes to things like this anyway!)

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum!

Their costumes were a hit, and according to the guys, a number of people stopped to take pictures of or with them. 

Joe at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom

Trying to finish the race faster...

 The guys weren't planning on pushing crazy hard for the race; the goal was just to finish the Goofy Challenge. Scotty PR'd the half marathon on Saturday, so Joe was hoping that he might be a little tired, but I don't think that was the case.

The guys stopped to take pictures with a few of the Disney characters, and runDisney actually took a picture of them with the Disney villains and tweeted it!

Scotty checking Twitter to find the above mentioned tweet.

The kids woke up early enough that I knew I had plenty of time to make it over to Epcot to watch the finish. Joseph wanted to hang out with Mimi and Papa, so I took Madeline in the stroller over to meet up with Tricia. Joe had anticipated running the marathon in about 4 hours, but it ended up taking them closer to 4 1/2, between the heat, character photos stops, etc.

My parents and Joseph arrived about 5 minutes before Joe and Scotty came running down the finish chute, so they at least got to see him finish! Afterward, it took a while to meet up with Joe, simply because there were so many people. I brought the rest of Joe's medals from the weekend, and Joseph was amazed at how many Joe had hanging around his neck.

Look at all that bling! Family 5k, Donald Half Marathon, Mickey Full Marathon, Goofy Challenge, and Dopey Challenge, thanks to Lisa and Linda.

 The two Dopeys after the race! Scotty hadn't brought all of his medals out for the finishers picture, but I'm sure he took a few later.

Joe wanted to shower, relax and eat, but since we were already at Epcot, Mimi, Papa, Joseph, Madeline and I opted to go tour the park and meet up with Joe later. So we said our goodbyes and parted ways for a few hours.

Although the race went through Epcot and there seemed to be a decent amount of people in the park, there were virtually no waits at any of the attractions (at least the non Fast Pass rides!). Joseph started out on the Nemo ride, and since Madeline was sleeping, I opted to wait outside with her. Of course, she woke up just a few minutes after they went in to the ride, so I snapped this pic of her, hanging out where she spent the bulk of her time at Disney World:

It was nice to be able to go on the rides over and over when Joseph declared something his favorite and asked to go again. We grabbed Fast Passes for Soarin', as the return time began 5 minutes before our dinner reservations at the restaurant next door, and headed over to the World Showcase. We had a quick lunch in Norway, took a ride on Maelstrom, and then headed back to ride the boat ride in Mexico. By this time, we determined that it was getting too late to go back for a nap, as we had early (4:25pm) dinner reservations, so we just hung out and waited to meet up with Joe.

He and Joseph went on a few rides again, then we headed back to The Land where my parents rode Soarin', and we waited for our table to be ready for dinner. I had planned on a character dinner for Sunday night, figuring that it would probably be our first real meal, and that the family style, all you can eat dinner would be good for Joe, who would have a serious calorie deficit to start making up! I also picked this one because the restaurant rotated above the boat ride in The Land, which I figured Joseph would like, and the characters were Chip, Dale, Mickey and Pluto.

Joseph wasn't too sure what to make of the characters as they made their way to our table. Luckily, the restaurant was small enough that we got to see everyone multiple times.

Checking Pluto out from a safe distance away.

 Madeline was wide awake for all of dinner, and couldn't take her eyes off the characters when they came by. We tried to use her as motivation for Joseph to get the nerve to say hello, but he wasn't falling for it.

Here comes Mickey! 

As we ate dinner (which was really quite tasty, by the way!), Joseph became a little better about visiting with the characters, and worked up the nerve to give them high fives. The hugs he talked about non-stop at home for Mickey never materialized. ;)

At least he was in a good mood and ok with taking a picture, as long as he was being held.

As dinner was wrapping up, Joseph decided Papa needed a new hairstyle. He rubbed and twisted and pulled until it looked just right!

The whole gang with Mickey. The lighting was really tricky, so many of the pictures didn't turn out well. At least there's proof we were there!

After dinner we took Joseph on Spaceship Earth, and then headed for home. He did really well, considering how off his schedule he was, but we figured it would be best for us to get him down for bed at his normal bedtime and not push things. We also had lots of laundry to do and packing for the second part of our trip, which included moving to the Wilderness Lodge to be closer to the Magic Kingdom!

If there's any doubt about how much fun we had running during race weekend, Joe, Scotty and I were among the lucky 5,000 to sign up for the Dumbo Double Dare, which is a 10K race on Saturday and half marathon on Sunday of Labor Day weekend at Disneyland this year! Disney does a neat thing where you can get a special medal if you complete a half/full marathon in the same calendar year at each park, called the Coast to Coast Challenge. We are all set to start training to get our next round of medals in August/September!