So, my first trip to Disneyland has come and gone…and it was AMAZING! I loved it so much more than I was ever expecting.
I have to admit that I went into this trip a bit skeptical. I had spoken to so many people who told me that having been to Walt Disney World so many times I’d be disappointed with Disneyland, that it was smaller and there wasn’t much to do. I’m not sure why in my 31 years I haven’t been to Disneyland yet (especially growing up in a family that took annual Walt Disney World trips) and I’m not sure how much longer it would have taken me to decide to go on my own if it hadn’t been for my addiction obsession love of the runDisney events!
After the Walt Disney World Marathon in January, my 2nd runDisney event, I decided my next would be the Disneyland Half Marathon. It seemed like perfect timing for several reasons:
- I had never been to Disneyland
- Cars Land and Buena Vista Street in California Adventure would be just opened
- I could get my runDisney Coast to Coast medal
- I’ve recently decided if you want to go somewhere new, just find a race to run and suddenly you have a perfect excuse reason!
So, with that brilliant logic I quickly registered for the 2012 Disneyland Half Marathon!
It was such an odd feeling planning a Disney trip in a completely different and unfamiliar Disney, but lucky for the rest of my traveling party (mom, dad, sister, husband) I love bossing people around planning vacations so I took charge and had a great time researching everything and learning about Disneyland as I planned our trip.
By the time we set foot on the plane to fly out to California we had a nice little TripIt itinerary (have I mentioned I LOVE TripIt?!?) full of activities, park times, dinner reservations, shows and races.
Yup, races plural! Sometime during the planning my mom and sister decided they were going to sign up to run the 5k on Saturday! I was already doing the half marathon on Sunday, but what’s an extra 3 miles when you’re already running 13 (not to mention it ended right int he middle of Cars Land!) so I signed up to join them!
Our 5 days in Disneyland flew by (as I’m writing this I’m sitting in the airport in Los Angeles to head home). I honestly was worried about having 5 days and only 2 parks but we were busy morning to night every day and I’m pretty sure we saw just about everything (not that I was crossing stuff off the park maps as we were doing it or anything…).
Posts about Disneyland, the 5k and the half marathon coming soon! Not much else to do on a 5 ½ hour flight!
P.S. – all trip we kept saying how we really needed to see Brave when we got home since we hadn’t seen it yet…how excited was I to see this playing on the flight home:
Thank you JetBlue for giving us free movies on the flight home to make up for the hour delay!
Live, Run, Grow 
Awesome job as usual !!
Sent from my iPhone
Great job Dani with the planning and itinerary…
U can plan my trips anytime …
Love the pictures! I really wish I could have been out there with you all! Funny how DL seems to intimidate us WDW folks! Thanks for tweeting with #runDisneyBlogClub!
Thanks Erin, lots more pictures to come! I’ll be sure to include the hashtag so you see them!
Looks like you guys had an amazing trip. I am running the Tinkerbell Half Marathon in January. I can’t wait.
I loved the movie Brave!
The trip definitely was amazing and I love going through my pictures and recapping everything when I get back! It’s too bad Tinkerbell is sold out already or I would be very tempted to register!