Disneyland Paris Half 2017

Well, at the US races you get both wristbands at the expo, BUT the 10K races are timed in the US. Once I realized that the 10K in Paris isn't timed, it made more sense.

Not to pick nits, but the only wristbands you get stateside at the Expo are for Coast-to-Coast (Pink or Blue) and ChEAR Squad. They haven't done wristbands for Challenge competitors in at least two years - it's just based off your bib.
 
Parks indeed incredible busy, I did a few rides in the morning after the race, but after lunch it was too busy to do anything, I relaxed in the lobby of the Disneyland Hotel and then went to see the parade. We left the park around 7:15.

But the 10K was fun :) Got my picture with the complete Sleeping Beauty cast, very neat they used the Maleficent dragon float from the parade as a backdrop, Emporer's New Groove and Sally & Jack, but that's mainly because there was no queue and I literally ran into Jack :P They say they had 100 characters out, but as they switched you couldn't see them all. I missed the Sultan again this year. Last year with the Half I skipped the Sultan as he was near the beginning and I had no idea how long I would take nor how strict they would be with the time limit. And this year, when I passed it was only Aladdin and Genie. I hope more luck tomorrow and I seriously hope to see Clopin & Esmeralda.

Furthermore saw the 3 little pigs, Gepetto/Pinocchio/Jiminy, White Rabbit/Cheshire cat, Stitch/Angel, Merlin/Fairy Godmother, and of course Mickey/Minnie/Donald/Daisy at the finish line. There were over 6,000 participants in the 10K and if I remember correctly, they said this weekend in total there are 22,000(?) runners.

I was surprised to see a handful of CMs/volunteers from the US to help with the Castle to Chateau Challenge, not something I had expected. There was indeed some confusion about the wristbands for the Bibbidi Challenge, but we shall see tomorrow!

Good luck everyone!

Oh btw, on Friday evening they ran out of shirts for the Bibbidi Challenge for women. As the shirts were all really small a lot of women changed their order to a larger size, so those who ordered a larger size and picked it up late, didn't receive it. I have 3 shirts now in S and they are very tight, so I'm not going to wear the half shirt tomorrow. And my friend will hopefully receive her shirt in the right size in the mail at some point in time.
 
Oh btw, on Friday evening they ran out of shirts for the Bibbidi Challenge for women. As the shirts were all really small a lot of women changed their order to a larger size, so those who ordered a larger size and picked it up late, didn't receive it. I have 3 shirts now in S and they are very tight, so I'm not going to wear the half shirt tomorrow. And my friend will hopefully receive her shirt in the right size in the mail at some point in time.

Interesting ... are they not the usual Champion Double Dry shirts that are used for other race weekends?
 


Interesting ... are they not the usual Champion Double Dry shirts that are used for other race weekends?
I'm not an experienced runner so I am not sure what you mean, but I'm going to say yes :)

In regular clothes a size S is fine for me. But with these... I now wish I changed it for a larger size as well. And you would think the same size for each shirt (different print) would fit the same. But the Half shirt is definitely smaller than the 10K

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Last year's shirts ran small as well, but they warned us ahead of time that European sizes would warrant ordering one size up. I'm a WDW/DL women's small and a DLP women's medium, although that medium is a bit more snug.
 


Agreed that the parks have been really busy - I took a nap after the 10K and then went back in in the evening and the wait times weren't great! Though they got a bit better towards the end of the night - BTM was maybe around 20 minutes at that point compared to whatever crazy time it was earlier in the day.

I actually really like the design of the shirts but hate how off the sizing is. :( I also really like the "I did it" shirts - but wow, I got a 10K (which is only men's sizing) and a 21K shirt (women's sizing), and the men's S is slightly bigger than the women's XL...
 
I actually really like the design of the shirts but hate how off the sizing is. :( I also really like the "I did it" shirts - but wow, I got a 10K (which is only men's sizing) and a 21K shirt (women's sizing), and the men's S is slightly bigger than the women's XL...

On Friday when I picked up my shirt there were 2 women who needed a xxl (I think) and the girl got them men's M...

Today was my 3rd run and 2nd half marathon. I enjoyed it and even though I had less time to train, I did lose about 20 pounds between this year and last year. Finished after about 2.5 hours, about 25 minutes less than last year. And this time I did stop several times for characters
We are not on our way for some gourmet dining at Chez Remi! Food festival! :)
 
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OH MY GOSH I DID IT! I finished my first half! :)

An amazing race, with no problems whatsoever, although I do believe that there were more characters last year. Everything was amazing, the CMs deserve their own medals, it's entirely thanks to them that I finished this quickly. I was also surrounded by great, excited runners and the atmosphere and cheers seriously got us through. That's true pixie dust to me. Nobody wanted to stop, we all wanted to just keep running, it was so great. Everyone was cheering everyone else on, even though we didn't know one another at all and we got plenty of water, food, smiles and high fives. My boyfriend and I went to cheer the last runners on after we got our medals. It was so emotional to see them there, not giving up after so many hours spent walking or running. We tried to give back some of what we got.

I'm close to tears. 5K last year and half this year. I trained three times a week without fail for an entire year to prepare for this and finished in 2 hours and 21 minutes, one minute before my boyfriend (!!) I absolutely never went in thinking I would finish this fast and didn't care about anything but crossing that line, the amazing music (THEY PLAYED THE APRIL 12TH MUSIC AGAIN!!!!!), cast members and characters clearly gave me wings. It was my one resolution this year. Mission accomplished. See you next year for the challenge (10K + half) and one day, I hope, for the Princess Half and the Castle to Château :)
 
What time did the kick-off party actually start on Friday night? We were in line at the Studios gate by 8:45pm, waited until around 9:35pm with no announcements from the cast members and decided to head back to hotel to get some rest for the 10k. Didn't feel it was worth it to ride a few rides and pay for it the next the morning.
 
I went to the Expo on Thursday just after 7pm and I managed to get bibs (6 in total for my children too), t-shirts, pre-ordered pin and a bit of merch in about 40 mins to give you an idea of how long things took. This was also after being directed all around the tent for my Castle to Chateau wrist band even though it was right near the original person I had asked about it! I found the staff at the Expo really friendly, if a little clueless about the challenge wrist bands and whether I could change corral to be in the same as my daughter. I eventually found an American member of staff who had spoken to the race director who agreed I could go down Corral but my daughter couldn't come up (same as in the US). However in the 5km corral I saw a woman in front of me who had a corral C bib on and was in corral B?

I went back to the Expo on Friday around 11am to change my t-shirts as they were skin tight. The ladies L in the US is ample for me which is the fit I like. The ladies L in France was ridiculous, however the staff changed my t-shirts no problems at all and again I didn't have to queue for more than a minute to get them changed.

The 5km did have a couple of areas that were far too dark especially as they knew children were going to be running. The character queues were also massive, I've not seen lines that long even to meet Tinkerbell at the Tinkerbell races in California! We managed to get our medals (as I heard some didn't) and had a great time.

The 10km was also great fun but again lines for the characters were a bit too long. It was chaos trying to find out what I was supposed to do about the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo challenge medal, there were too many people milling around and thankfully another American member of staff found me and explained that I no longer needed a wrist band.

I loved the half marathon, it has been my favourite out of the Princess in Florida and Tinkerbell in California. The character lines were large, I waited almost 25 minutes for Mickey and Minnie for a cast member to take pretty rubbish pictures which isn't ideal. Also this "selfie only" was a bit ridiculous, i think it is more efficient if staff take the photos so you aren't trying to get a good angle where you and the character is actually in the picture! I absolutely love the fact that they give you actual food on this race, this makes all the difference for me. During Tinkerbell I was so hungry and ran out of energy and was just miserable. I can't stomach the gels and even though I take my own food it is nice to have the boost of food as you are going along.

If the organisation is better next year I will definitely be signing up again!
 
What time did the kick-off party actually start on Friday night? We were in line at the Studios gate by 8:45pm, waited until around 9:35pm with no announcements from the cast members and decided to head back to hotel to get some rest for the 10k. Didn't feel it was worth it to ride a few rides and pay for it the next the morning.

Must have been right after you left, we finished the 5k about 9.30PM and there was a queue waiting to get into studios, by the time we took a quick finisher photo and walked out the gate and in there was no queue to get in.
 
I saw the 10K art on one of the rD FB groups and laughed so hard! Talk about a screw up with characters that were so particular about their colors. :rotfl2::rotfl:

Congratulations to everyone who ran and made it through (what seemed like online at least) a very disorganized race weekend (between the expo and then the races running out of medals)!!!!!
 
Not to pick nits, but the only wristbands you get stateside at the Expo are for Coast-to-Coast (Pink or Blue) and ChEAR Squad. They haven't done wristbands for Challenge competitors in at least two years - it's just based off your bib.
I had two wristbands at Tink but realized they were for the pink and blue coast to coast.
 
So I've been back from Disneyland Paris for a few days now (and still rather jet lagged)! My thoughts on the race...

Expo
Bit disorganised and crowded the first couple of hours when it opened. The ladies shirts were way too small! If I had to do it over I wouldn't have bothered queuing for the start of the Expo but would have gone after the crowds thinned out a bit - I went back on Thursday night and it was so much calmer and nicer then.

5K
I was in Corral C - you could see the corrals stretching all the way around the lake! Thought it was generally a good race and loved the CMs cheering along the way. A couple of really dark areas though which seemed a bit unsafe - what was really annoying was that they actually had street lights in some of those areas that weren't turned on.

10K
I think they put the elite runners in Corral A, and everyone who was doing the challenge in Corral B. I took my time and stopped at characters along the way. I loved how the course was almost all park time!

Half marathon
This is the one I was really nervous about, as I didn't train as well as I should have leading up to this weekend - I knew I could run a 10K with no problems, but wasn't so sure about the half. At home I was even trying to see if I could walk fast enough to meet the 16 minute/mile pacing requirement just in case!

But I think the weather helped a lot. I'm used to hot and humid, so the cool and non-humid weather we had on Sunday was perfect and I could run for faster and longer!

I got a really good pace for the first few miles then decided to stop for a photo with Mickey and Minnie. I got a fantastic photo, but the wait meant that I spent the rest of the race regretting it and trying to see how fast I would need to run to still get in at under 3 hours! The last couple of miles were terrible as I started to realise that I would have some bad chafing (not enough Body Glide apparently), and I was getting tired, and I really had to drag myself through them. But I made it in 2:59, so I was pretty happy about that!

Course wise - I liked the fact that there was plenty of park time. Hated the bit around the lake in the middle with the gravel path, kept feeling like I was going to slip and fall there. Liked that it ended back in WDS!

Overall thoughts
This was my first runDisney event, and I thought it was really fun! Where else do you get to run through Disney parks and have Disney CMs cheering you on and get to take photos with characters along the way? The CMs along the route were fantastic - I loved the Crush's coaster guys who had signs that said "Just keep running", and they had lots of really rare characters out on route including Merlin and the Fairy Godmother together!

I really liked how they had lots of bottles of water, Powerade, and milk at the end. The food boxes were really nice too and it was a nice selection of snacks!

There were/are quite a few organisational hiccups though. This started with the bib-only registration which was delayed. Then them taking forever to process registration and medical certificates. Then they sent me an email saying my registration was incomplete right before they sent an email linking to the vouchers! Also of course the fact that they ran out of T shirts in some sizes and ran out of medals for the 5K/10K/kids races! And right now, photopass pictures that were meant to have been released today (6 days after the last race) have now been delayed a few more days.

I was also really surprised and annoyed by the amount of pushing and shoving there was during the race itself. The one that I got the most annoyed with was one of the runners who was with one of the wheelchair runners, who actually stuck his hand on my shoulder from behind me and pushed me out of the way - not hard, but enough to give me a shock and make me stumble.

I don't think I'll be back next year though. While I enjoyed the races themselves, I didn't enjoy the parks anywhere near as much as WDW. Didn't help that I was in WDW earlier in the month so I couldn't help but compare the two. Would really like to do another runDisney event in WDW/DL though if timing works out!
 
Did anyone do the photopass of the run and parks? My run photos are up but no park photos. Also, I cannot figure out how to download/order the run photos. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Did anyone do the photopass of the run and parks? My run photos are up but no park photos. Also, I cannot figure out how to download/order the run photos. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

THe website suggests that downloads and the rest of the photos will be all ready by Wednesday.. most of mine are missing :(
 

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