2014 Wine & Dine Half Marathon After Party

What happens when a few crazy friends run a Half Marathon in the pouring rain at Disney, finish running in the early hours of the morning, and are delirious and moving off of pure adrenaline?

They celebrate in EPCOT until 4 a.m., of course!

Rain? What rain? Well…if you missed it, you probably should check out my Wine & Dine Half Marathon recap below before continuing on….

• Wine & Dine Half Marathon Expo Recap
• Expo Vlog
• Mickey’s Jingle Jungle 5K Recap
• Jingle Jungle 5K Vlog
• Wine & Dine Half Marathon Recap

All caught up? Let’s begin!

For starters, I’m going to apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. Needless to say, I was cold and wet after running in the straight rain for three hours. My fingers also felt like prunes.

Jason’s After Party ticket was linked up to our Magic Bands. Since I received a special after-party band in my race packet, I was quite confused what Jason was supposed to do. At the ticket turnstiles into Epcot, Cast Members were waiting with wrist bands, specifically for those who needed them for the after party (non-runners, friends, etc). It worked out great!

After a (rather long) clothing change in the restrooms under Spaceship Earth, I was ready to have fun at the after party. I did debate on using the change tents after the race, but the line was HUGE and I’m too modest for my own good…changing in front of a room full of people wasn’t my cup of tea. Instead, I waited in line for about 25 minutes or so from start to finish to change in the restrooms under Spaceship Earth. A change of clothing really did a world of wonders – my dry socks and shoes were heaven sent!

By this point, it was around 2:15 a.m. and the Wine & Dine runners had thinned out. We had no problem crossing the course in Future World on our way to World Showcase and the Food & Wine Festival.

The first thing we noticed when we walked into World Showcase was that one of the “Festival Center” buildings had been completely turned into a Wine & Dine Merchandise room! Randy and Melissa were overjoyed because neither of them had dry clothing or shoes. They each bought a Wine & Dine sweatshirt and said that he sweatshirts a world of difference!

The first food item on my list was a cronut. I heard awesome things prior to attending the festival, so I knew I had to try it! Oh…my…goodness…it was amazing! The warmth from the cronut also helped to warm my hands a little…maybe that had something to do with my liking it? I dunno…I was kind of delirious at that point anyway!

We decided to start on the right of World Showcase and make our way around the Festival. The lack of a crowd was pretty awesome as well. Thankfully by this point, the rain had mostly cleared so we weren’t getting completely soaked again.

We ran into this crazy bunch in Morocco. I was SO excited because I’ve never seen Abu before (apart from a parade)!! He enjoyed digging in our bags and almost ran off with Melissa’s banana!

These guys were in America, so we stopped to say hello to them as well!

I’m pretty sure they ALL thought we were insane!

AS you can see here, the crowd at the after party was pretty thin…a MUCH welcome change from the Inaugural year (although I know that the rain was a huge factor this time around).

Food items we enjoyed (and shared) at the after party included:

• Pork Slider from Hawaii
• Spanakopita from Greece
• Cronut from the Refreshments Booth
• Bratwurst on a Pretzel Roll from Germany
• Pot Stickers from China

This is the strangest thing to explain, I know….but, I can honestly say that I had a crazy fun time at the after party. I was cold and slightly damp from the rain, but I was having a blast and wasn’t miserable at all. I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t miserable, but I figured it had something to do with the fact that I was in Disney, was spending time with friends, and was way beyond the point of delirium.

The remainder of our evening…morning…time at the after party was spent  skipping around puddles and singing obnoxiously loud to the special party music that was playing throughout the park! We also might have danced around the streets of World Showcase like a bunch of fools…I’m sure we were quite a sight!

We made it to Mexico right around 4 a.m. and decided that it was time to be on our way.

Despite the crazy weather, we had a blast and didn’t let it get us down! Thanks runDisney and Epcot for an absolutely AMAZING time! I can’t wait to do it all over again, although I’d rather not have the pouring rain next time…if possible. :)

What’s your favorite Food & Wine Festival item? If you ran Wine & Dine (ever), did you stay for the after party?

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