Mickey’s Holiday 5k (formerly known as the Jingle Jungle 5k) is the first race of the Wine & Dine weekend. I was excited to be doing this race for several reasons – I’d never done it, and I was looking forward to running through Animal Kingdom and experiencing the holiday theme. I was also excited to have two of my best friends doing their first runDisney race!
Race transportation began running at 4:30 a.m., so we were up and at the bus stop shortly after that. When we got to the pre-race area, the lines for characters were already long, especially for Mickey & Minnie in their holiday attire. We hopped in line for a fun nutcracker background instead, and admired the creative costumes that were around us.
After our picture, we decided to head over to the corral. We were technically in three different corrals, but we had decided to all start together with our friend who was still recovering from a past foot surgery. Helpful hint: at any runDisney event, you can join corrals that are further back than where you are assigned, but you can’t move forward. I knew we’d be walking a good portion of the race, which would be a new experience for me, so my only goal was to make sure my friends had as much fun as possible.
At 6:30, the first corral took off amid a swirl of snow and smoke. Soon it was our turn, and we were off! The course for the 5k started and finished in the Animal Kingdom parking lot. There was a good bit of parking lot before we reached the entrance to Animal Kingdom. We stopped for a quick picture with Rafiki, then headed into the park.
We skipped the next character stops – Baloo and Terk – and took our time enjoying the gorgeous Tree of Life!
I love running through Animal Kingdom, and with the sun just starting to rise, it was truly beautiful. We got to run around the entire park – Asia is my favorite, then we were in Dinoland and another mandatory photo op – Santa Goofy and Holiday Donald!
One thing I really liked about this race was that there were lots of photographers on the course. Since our only goal was fun, we took lots of silly pictures!
Right past Mile 2, the course took us on an out and back loop backstage, which was pretty boring, other than the occasional glimpse of props and other things we wouldn’t normally see. I was excited to see some floats from the upcoming Rivers of Light show. There was also a DJ on this section, and Pluto was greeting runners at the turnaround.
Right after the end of the out and back was the marker for Mile 3, and before we knew it, we were crossing the finish line!
After digging into our cheese and chips (the best part of the finish line box!), we headed into Animal Kingdom for some more fun photo ops. This was a great 5k that I will definitely run again!
