Mickey's Jingle Jungle 5k

On Saturday November 10th we ran in Mickey's Jingle Jungle 5k.  This race was part of the Wine and Dine Half Marathon weekend.  We had never run a runDisney race before so we were very excited for this race.  We arrived at the race expo on Friday afternoon and picked up our race bib and t-shirt.  We did do some shopping at the race expo and then got dinner in Downtown Disney and then went to our hotel to get some sleep for our early morning wake up.
We got up at 4:30 AM and got dressed and had a banana before heading out to meet the 5AM bus to Animal Kingdom.  We arrived at Animal Kingdom park and found it to be quite cold.  It was 52 degrees out  so we were glad to have worn our long sleeved Blue Moon Half Marathon shirts from the previous weekend as well as the new calf compression sleeves to keep us warm.  We got in line for a photo with Mickey and Minnie before looking at the other photo locations that runDisney had set up.

We then waited around for the race to begin and absorbed the ambiance of the race as more runners arrived.

We then headed to our corral at about 20 minutes before the 7AM race start.  We started in corral C for this run.  We enjoyed the banter of the race announcers and watched a large number of hot air balloons rising in the distance

At 7AM the fireworks went off and the race started.  Since this run was a fun run we decided to run together and have a good time.  We found that starting in Corral C in a run like this leaves very little opportunity to actually run.  We ran through the first mile through the Animal Kingdom Parking Lot and then entered the park.  Once in the park we stopped for the first character stop for Baloo and King Louie.  The line was only about 10 people long so it was about a 3 minute stop and then we were off and running again.

We ran into Africa and saw Rafiki at the next photo stop so we had to stop at this photo stop as well!  He was funny because he pointed at Jenny's Blue Moon shirt and rubbed his tummy.  Only slightly out of character.

We then started running more.  We wanted to get back ahead of the people from the back of Corral C and Corral D and we ran quite a bit faster than we had previously.  We ran into a backstage area of the park and then back into the pack past Nemo and Dinosaur.

We passed photo spots for Donald and Pluto, but we stopped for a photo with Santa Goofy.

We then finished the race with a strong run and received our medals at the end of the run.

We had a great time at this run and would do it again going in with the knowledge that it was just a fun run and not really based on time.

With our medals after the race