Day 1: runDisney Wine Dine Half MeetUp recap and our Giveaway Winners!

What was the hottest ticket in town at the Wine and Dine Half Marathon Weekend, besides the Half itself?  The official runDisney meetup!

My Pink Minnie skirt was a big hit. It is available from Rock City Skirts. Love her stuff!

One year ago, the 2012 Wine and Dine Weekend was our first runDisney race weekend.  Weeks prior, as the excitement was building, we heard about the "official meet ups".  This is a social media meetup put on by the Sports Events and Marketing teams.  For the past year, we've watched as bloggers and tweeters excitedly covered the meetups. Thus far, there have been official meetups for most race weekends except Expedition Everest and Tower of Terror - perhaps because they are smaller races.  They are free to attend, and they are massively popular events.  But the window to get in is very short, as it fills up in a matter of minutes, due to limiting the size of attendees.

Well, this time - we once again sent in our emails as soon as we saw the blog post and crossed our fingers.  Then later that day, our jaws dropped when we saw our names on the list!  There were 100 attendees and due to the larger than usual pool, we got in.

We were on Cloud 9 for days leading up to Wine and Dine weekend.  More than usual, if you can believe it.

The evening of the meetup finally arrived.  And we were there as they were setting up the check in table.

runDisney event staff setting up to check us in

The Walt Disney World runDisney meetups generally take place at EPCOT. And so there we were.  What made this really interesting is that this was to be the first ever Night Time Meetup! 

Here we are - looking dorky and super excited! ha ha

We got our bracelets to identify us as meetup attendees, a one day park hopper that served as our entry into the park, two fastpasses to Test Track, and our coveted runDisney event shirts (event-specific for the first time - in a wine color with the Wine & Dine running shoe/wine glass logo).

Check in began at 7pm and the event did not begin until 8:45pm, so we had just enough time to head to Test Track and sample a few of the delights from the Food and Wine Festival.

We found the group at our specially designated "Illuminations" viewing area.  We mingled, found old friends, and met new ones while we waited for the fireworks and light show to begin. I'd never actually watched Illuminations all the way through - so this was a real treat - with the primo location.

See if you can spot both DisneyGroom and myself.  It's like Where's Waldo? runDisney edition!

Erin of For the Love of Disney Running blog snapped this pic of us.

After the fireworks,  the group headed to the America Pavilion to hear the speaker's panel.

Faron Kelley and Darrell Fry kicked off the event.

The Dynamic Duo of runDisney: Tara Gidus and Jeff Galloway discussed nutrition and training, focusing on nightime races such as the Wine and Dine Half Marathon.

Next up there was a  talk from a sommelier and two chefs to discuss many of the tasty treats waiting for us at the Food and Wine festival.  The focus was on vegan wine and food - and we got to sample those later that evening.

Then we heard from the New Balance Running team.  

We even got a few teasers about the 2014 runDisney running shoe.  Check out this video for more info.

(DisneyGroom might be getting a pair of the new Sorceror Mickey shoes for his birthday. Shhhhh, don't tell him. ) 

After the speakers panel, we had some snacks and wine and got ready for our run around the world.

But not before DisneyGroom's shoes and socks got their own private photoshoot!  This photographer liked the way the runDisney New Balance shoes looked with his "Groom" socks. 

We split up into a Run-Walk-Run group led by Jeff Galloway and a separate run only group.  The run was one and a half laps around the World Showcase.  A really neat thing about this was having the park all to ourselves. All the guests and most castmembers were gone by this time: 11:30pm!

From there, we all got together for a group photo.  For a tough "Where's Waldo? runDisney edition" challenge - see if you can spot us in this one.

One of the coolest things that evening was getting to chat with fellow bloggers. There were so many names I recognized from runDisney social media.

Here we are with the lovely and very inspiring Kimberly from Maker Mother Marathon Runner blog.

We chatted a bit with super cool runner, Linzie of the See Sharp Run blog.  Hey, these two handsome guys are wearing matching shoes!

Finally the evening was capped off with a midnight champagne toast at Spaceship Earth. Yes, you read that right. Midnight.  It was a perfect ending to a magical evening.

And here is my Prince, handing me champagne! Cheers!  Here's to an awesome Wine and Dine Half weekend!  Recaps from the rest of the weekend still to come!

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Also we want to announce the winners of our X Race Wear Giveaway.

Our male winner is Clinton M.

Our female winner is Abby B.

Clinton and Abby will each receive an item of their choice.  Thanks to everyone that entered, but don't be too bummed if you didn't win.  Use our special code:  DISNEY13 for 20% off your purchase through 1/1/2014.

Check back on the blog this week for our Wine and Dine recaps and another giveaway. We promise this one will be bling-tastic!

Until then...

Run Happy!

-DisneyBride