Disney Princess Half Marathon: Pasta in the Park Party 2014

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical spending $52 on a ticket for dinner, even if that ticket meant I could have as much pasta as I wanted in Disney World.
All said and done, it was well worth the $52, and i'm not just speaking in terms of pasta...

As always with Disney, it's about the experience! As a runner at Disney this is an experience you do not want to miss out on. Sure, we could have easily gotten pasta elsewhere and spent significantly less money, but we did buy the tickets ahead of time so it felt like it was almost free, ha! Okay so obviously that doesn't mean that it was free; for me, once money is gone it's gone and I don't even know where it went...sad but true.

So here is a list of why you should consider Pasta in the Park - so far:
1. Unlimited pasta in Disney World
2. It works as a built in meal because you bought your ticket months ahead of time

If 1 & 2 aren't convincing you to fork over $52, then maybe you don't enjoy "free" things and pasta as much as I do.

The reason I enjoyed Pasta in the Park so much was that I was surrounded by runners the night before a big race and every single one of them was a wonderful human being. I was actually inspired by this experience.

We met a man named Gary, who works in special events for Disney. He was an older man who was really just working there for the fun of it! He had his 16 years of schooling and his fancy career, but look where he is now - The Happiest Place on Earth! He was loving every minute of it too. I think that is my favorite part about Disney World, there are wonderful people who love what they do.

We met a woman, her husband, and her son. While the wife and son were in a picture line I had to ask the husband what his favorite race was, I had hunch that he did Boston before. Turns out, he did do Boston as a charity runner with his medical practice, but his wife was actually the fast one! When she came back to the table she told me all about Boston and her training, I was so inspired. Oh also, she was 63 years old and training for a half iron man. No big deal!

We met two best friends who actually went to the same college as me! They were the sweetest girls and they were also very inspiring; it was one of their first half-marathons and the other was holding all of her expo merchandise that said 13.1 hostage until they officially finished it together. I thought that was pretty funny, also great motivation.

We met a woman who went to Disney World completely alone. She kind of broke my heart because she had a three year old daughter that she didn't bring with her because she wanted to do something just for her in celebration of her 30th Birthday, except she actually ended up being really sad and lonely, which you just can't have in Disney! I really hope she had a great time on the rest of her trip- I honestly wanted to tell her she could hang out with us, haha.

And how could I forget! Dessert is ice cream, in Disney that means Mickey Ice Cream Bars! Yes, unlimited Mickey Ice Cream Bars, although, if you are running the next morning you might want to cut yourself off after 1, unlike me...oops.

After dinner there is reserved seating in the World Showcase for Pasta in the Park attendee's to view the showing of Illuminations. This isn't until about 9 pm, so depending on your ability to wake up at 2:30 am to run, you may want to skip this and go another night. We stayed, but I am also a bit of a night-owl/insomniac.

We went back to our hotel and got ready for the next morning...

Oh, that's right...we came to Disney World to run, not just for vacation. 

Run Happy, 

Ali