Race Night - day

Breakfast today was at the Kona Cafe. A favorite place of mine for breakfast, and based on the crowds and wait times, I am not alone. We had a great breakfast with Kona coffee french press and their famous Tonga Toast... what a treat!

We took the monorail tour and I spotted this in the tile floor at the Grand Floridan... I had never  noticed it before. 

Our afternoon included lots of lazy time in the room and a little nap for some of us.  We enjoyed a wonderful spaghetti dinner in the room, thanks to Mr. J. And soon the race prep would begin.
We were able to take a bus right from the resort to the race, which was more convenient than last year. Having done this last year, we knew what to expect, and it was very similar. Based on the bib numbers, it seems that it was a similar size crowd, but it felt more crowded.  We found a piece of parking lot and settled in.  Just as last year the DJ (bellhop) was great and the people watching was very entertaining. The J's and I headed to the spectators' area about an hour before the official race start and hubby wandered to his pacing group.

My favorite runner.

One other thing that we noticed was like last year was some minor issues they had with the speakers along the starting route, that kept cutting out. So the music and commentary was intermittent for those of use back a bit from the front. We hung out and saw hubby's group go by. We enjoyed the first two starts with fireworks and then made a bee line for the park, and the Villains Hollywood Bash.

His pacing group headed to the start... he is back a bit from the camera.

The Studios.. all to ourselves... almost :)

The J's with a local villain, apparently he wasn't very chatty?

Its great fun to be in a park when it's so close to being empty. Two times on Toy Story Midway Mania and one show of the Muppets and we decided to look for some dessert. We found huge milkshakes at the Dockside Diner and took our treats to watch the runners go by - hoping to see hubby.  Using the RunKeeper website we were able to figure out when he was coming by and attempted a few pictures.  Afterward, we were able to find an empty table back by the Dockside and we relaxed a bit until hubby was done. He had less than a mile left when we saw him, so it wasn't long until he found us and had a seat.
With last year's experience he knew a bit better how to recover and spent some time refueling and relaxing. Once he had recovered enough to change, he and Mr. J headed to Tower of Terror and Rock'n rollercoaster. Mrs. J and I did a bit of shopping and waited for the guys.  We headed out to find our bus around 3 am... I think we were all shocked to have made it to 3 am. The bus dropped us at the hospitality house at OKW and we walked back to our room, as the regular resort buses were no longer running. Hubby took a long soak in the tub and sleep wasn't far behind.