May the Force run with you!

Why would anyone head to Disneyland in January unless there was a darn good reason? It's not exactly hot there then. January is when Disneyland holds their Star Wars Light Side half marathon weekend! And that for me is reason enough!! Our adventure to Disneyland was truly only focussed on the run and spending a few days park hopping between Disneyland and California Adventure. We signed up for the 10km run many months prior and with the frozen December we had back home, this run kinda snuck up on me. The week leading into it I was mentally convinced that I wasn't ready. 

Our good 'ole AC flight was delayed leaving and annoyingly delayed at arrival. Arrival wasn't necessarily AC's fault because the ground crew couldn't get the ramp to move towards the plane and we had to sit on the plane and wait for maintenance, but if we had arrived on time to begin with we probably would have ended up at a different gate that didn't have issues.

Our car rental was though Silvercar. This was a new experience for me, but Z had rented from them many times before. As the company name implies all the cars are silver and they all happen to be fully loaded Audi A4's. The car rental cost on par with renting from any other car rental company so really what an awesome deal for us! I took advantage of the in car WiFi! 

We arrived on Thursday and it was lightly raining. This didn't bother us much as we knew we weren't going to the parks this day and instead would be checking and settling into our hotel and immediately heading over to the run Expo. The Expo was quite good and had a large number of exhibitors. Disney also had an "official merchandise" section and here I got to experience my first line up of the weekend. I was quite disappointed with the selection of official merchandise for this race and didn't find anything that I liked. Z did find a pretty cool shirt for himself. I ended up buying a cool non official merchandise tank top though. 

That first evening we decided to walk to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. Lucky for us the skies decided to just open up and pour right as we were leaving. Even with a borrowed umbrella we couldn't escape getting wet and unfortunately we didn't have waterproof shoes with us so my feet got a little wet. Our steaks were cooked to perfection and very tasty and in typical American fashion our dinners were a lot more food than we needed. 

Friday was spent enjoying the day at Disneyland park. There were a few new and refurbished rides since the last time we were there. There is now an area in Tomorrowland that is all Star Wars; go figure it's just one of the biggest movies Disney owns! Space Mountain is now Hyperspace Mountain and remains an extremely popular ride. It's now a Star Wars themed ride and you are in the midst of a space battle. It was pretty cool. A fast pass in needed on this one unless you want to line up for at least 60 minutes. They have added a new attraction called Star Wars The Path of a Jedi. This is a short feature film that takes you through all the Star Wars movies to date. It was quite well done with some special 4-D effects. New too was the Star Wars Launch Pad which provides an inside look at the movie costumes and set pieces. Here you can have an interactive meeting with Chewbacca and/or Darth Vader. On another visit to this area we encountered a couple Storm Troopers on patrol and they stopped to take a photo with us. Needless to say I really enjoyed Tomorrowland and am really looking forward to when Star Wars land is built. Guess a trip back is in our future. 

You can't do a trip to Disneyland without riding Indian Jones or The Pirates of the Caribbean, and as annoying as it is It's A Small World. It's A Small World was still decked out for Christmas so it was worth going on despite having nightmares of that song for days to come. I also rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for the first time ever. Given the time of year, several attractions were closed for maintenance and refurbishment. 

Knowing we were running the next day and that we would have an awfully early wakeup call, we didn't go over board with too much walking, though we both still managed to get a record number of steps in. For dinner Z found a great Italian restaurant, called Carolina's Italian restaurant, about a 20 minute walk from our hotel and a little off the beaten track. They didn't take reservations for 2 so we had to just head over there and see what would happen. I of course was a little concerned because there were something like 30,000 people in town for the runs and I thought we'd be waiting forever to get a table. When we arrived, we were seated right away. The waiter told us it was a great time because they just had a bunch of people leave. As we were finishing up our once again way too large pasta meals, a rush of people arrived. The food here was incredible and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a tasty Italian dinner at an affordable price. It's located in the Garden Grove neighbourhood. 

The next morning our wake up call was 3:40am. Why?!?! would I do this to myself? Well the run was certainly worth getting up for. Disney does a great run experience in my opinion. Sure it's an early start at 5:30, but the route took us through both California Adventure and Disneyland parks and how else can you do that unless the parks are closed. They had plenty of staff on hand cheering us on and many of the Star Wars characters made the trip too. It was quite a sight to see the parks lite up in early morning and hearing the music of the Star Wars movies playing on the loud speakers. There is a "behind the scenes" tunnel that connects the two parks and they had lights shooting along the walls like blasters going off in a battle between the Rebellion fighters and the Imperial Military fighters. While the morning started off cold standing around for the race to race, once we started running it was very quick to figure out that I overdressed. For once in a race I got to start in the first corral!! I must have entered Z's normal 10km finish time as mine to get into corral "A". Even with some stops for photos, the race went by so quick and before I knew it we were coming up along the finish line and were done. I can mark this one off our bucket list. I've wanted to do this run for awhile now and it was definitely worth it. Some pretty cool, and unique memories to last a long time!! 

Despite the early start to the day, after showering and having some breakfast after the run, we head back and spend the rest of the day at Disneyland and California Adventure. We had so much fun and enjoyed a few "new" rides. We ended up staying to watch the Water of Colour show at California Adventure which started at 9:45pm; needless to say we slept pretty well that night. At some point early in the day Z realized that there were professional photographers throughout the park and that any of those photos and our run photos could all be downloaded (for a fee of course), but we thought it worth it and sought out getting our picture taken by the professionals instead of relying on our point and shoot. So we ended up with some pretty awesome photos as memories of this trip. In California Adventure the new rides included: Soarin' Around the World and Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters. We also ended up watching the new Frozen Live show. This is quite the production and worth checking out. 

We enjoyed some good food while at the parks, but the highlight was definitely lunch at Blue Bayou in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. This place is extremely popular that Z had to book our reservation a few weeks beforehand. When we arrived we decided it would be worth waiting for a riverfront table which gave us a view of the pirate boats as they started out on their peaceful journey...the food here was amazing and we would highly recommend it. We also enjoyed lunch at the Bakery Cafe where they make the most delicious salted caramel Mickey macaroons. We also enjoyed some good hearty food at Rancho Del Zocalo restaurant. And it's not a trip to any amusement park without indulging in a churro or two! 

Sunday evening we made our way to Orange County and spend a little time walking around Laguna Beach before heading to Z's cousin's place for a lovely home cooked meal and fantastic visit. It was a great ending to our quick weekend getaway that really made us feel like kids again! 

To travel is to live...until next time! Life is good!!