Year Twelve of PrincessMen – the larger group returns!

It’s already been a couple weeks since Princess Half Marathon Weekend 2026, and I already miss the afternoons hanging out with all my friends laughing and catching up on life.

This year was one of the busier race weekends in recent years in terms of the amount of people who came to race. We had nearly the entire group back for 2026. And it was awesome.

Wednesday

My usual travel day started early on Wednesday morning at John Wayne Airport here in Orange County, as always. I was flying out on one of the first flights of the day to get over to Orlando. However, this year Kellie is now living and working in Seattle. So I actually flew up to Seattle to connect through there and meet up with her; and we had a direct flight from Seattle to Orlando together.

The most surprising part of going so far North for the connection is that the cost was STILL the same, if not slightly cheaper for me, and the travel time was only marginally longer to be able to fly with Kellie. We arrived in the evening, picked up the rental car, grabbed Waffle House for dinner, and crashed before the next morning that would kickoff a busy race-cation weekend.

Thursday

Most of the group flew in Thursday morning. Starting with Beau and Biggs coming in from Texas and Maryland. After grabbing them at the airport we met with Naidymar for brunch while waiting for Tracie to arrive from New York.

Heading over to the Expo was the start of a much longer afternoon than any of us planned for.

After arriving at Wide World of Sports, we did the usual line for our bibs, followed by a quick stop to Runner Services so Biggs could get issues with his runDisney account sorted out.

But get this… BEAU RAN A FASTER TIME THAN ME!! (for his qualifier)

Can you believe this BS?! So I kinda “require” that everyone runs a placement race for Princess Weekend. We have a big group chat and we were all talking about our different placement times last summer. Beau was oddly quiet. TURNS OUT HE QUIETLY SET OUT TO BEAT ME FOR A LOWER NUMBER. hahahahaha! I’m so proud. Apparently he was watching my average paces from my runs via Garmin, and told himself “I just have to beat that…”
He went out and ran a 10k qualifier thirty seconds faster than mine and got a bib number that was twenty one numbers lower than me!!

I’ll beat him next year.

Anyway.. We eventutally met up with Lorren, and then made our way to the run expo. None of our group was able to get into the Merch Expo virtual queue. Honestly this year was pretty crazy – which I’m thinking was because of the Brooks special edition shoes. Lorren was able to add me to her virtual queue group shockingly enough, and the two of us made our way to the Merch Expo line.

Did any of you actually go through Brooks merch line?! Ho.ly.crap. We waited for probably 1 1/2 hours in THREE different queues after the Virtual Queue time came around. It was insane. But, we were able to pick up the shoes we were trying to get. I was asked by Ryan and and Theresa to get two pairs of the Rapunzel shoes. But I felt horrible making the rest of the group wait outside on the grass for long. Sorry guys :(

The rest of that afternoon was busy with checking in to our resort, meeting up with the rest of the group, and then heading over to grab wings for dinner.

Friday – 5k Race Day

3:00 AM, first of the early mornings!

The first day is always the worst. I say this multiple times every year. Because 3a in Orlando is just midnight back home for me.
And this year Kellie would be doing the 5k – but with her Mom and sister! So she was up bright and early that first day, too.

Friday morning was muggy and warm-ish. A huge change from last year’s 5k that was freezing.
Me, Beau, and Biggs started in our corral ahead of Kellie and her family who were back a corral or two and planning to walk together. We kept a slight jogging pace, laughing and having a great time as usual.
We even bumped into a few different people we knew!

This poor girl will never get to see how much better Beau and I made this photo! hahaha

Crossing the finish line one of the photographers ran out to get a centered photo of us crossing!
Know what’s wild about us finishing only 47 minutes after the official Corral-A start? is that Kellie and her family were still in the corrals and had yet to even begin the race.

Waiting around in the Meet & Greet area a small girl came up to me and said “I have a bracelet for you since you’re Jasmine!”
OMG, how sweet it that?? This will now be part of my costume going forward!

The rest of the day was pretty low key. This year we were ALL in the same resort – which was AMAZING. It was so much easier to spend time together when the two halves of our group were just a few buildings apart and within walking distance. We spent a huge chunk of time that afternoon sitting at the pool talking, laughing, and catching up on life. Truly the best part of every trip the older we get.
Later that evening we ordered take out from Olive Garden – a family platter of pasta for everyone – and waited for the weather report on the 10k.

While we were at the pool that afternoon we were watching the storm clouds roll in. And while eating dinner the wind and some rain was starting up outside. At 10p Disney sent out an email saying the race would continue as planned. So we went to bed and planned to be ready for a possibly rainy race day.

Saturday – 10k Race Day

3:00 AM. There was some rain.. but TBD on how bad

Challenge Day 1, for me, Beau, Biggs, Kellie, Theresa, Ryan, and Lauren

We all piled into the car at 4am. It was already raining.

I joked about this was possibly going to be a very interesting, possibly terrible, race day ahead. But I had bought a pack of space blankets for this trip, like last year. So worst case scenario is that we all had space blankets to stay somewhat dry and warm during the race.
And while we ended up using and wearing them all the way to the start line, once we started running we were pretty much fine.

I ran as red Jasmine this race, which got a pretty positive response from more people than I expected. I’ve only worn this version maybe one other race I think? It rained on our half of the group only briefly during part of the race. And the other half of our group was a bit behind us during the event and said they got just slightly more rain than we did. So clearly it was pretty scattered around the course.

It got so muggy on the course that we actually stopped and Kellie switched from her gaucho pants to just her shorts in the humidity.

That afternoon I met up with Lanza family again for our annual family photoshoot! And then it was another night of Olive Garden family platters and hanging out. For those unaware, you can feed 14 people for $200 in takeout. That’s easier and cheaper than pretty much anywhere else around the area.

Sunday – Half Marathon Day

2:30 AM, the earliest, busiest morning of the weekend

Getting up this early sucks – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Haha. But the laughing and talking once we’re all awake and getting going makes things a bit easier and you start to forget how tired you actually are.

Sunday was a cool morning again, and those space blankets came in handy once more.

Today we were all going to start together and (try to) race together as much as possible, as usual. So we all made our way to C-corral for a higher placed starting point. (This is why I ask everyone to run qualifiers. Having a faster qualifier gets you better placement and then you can pretty much select which corral and where you want to start).

And boy did starting further up make a HUGE difference for us.

We were HALFWAY through the course before the sun came up. And that includes me/Kellie/Biggs stopping for a photo with Aladdin and Jasmine, and all of us stopping for our group photo at the castle!

On the back half of the course Ric caught up with us to run alongside and say hello. And we caught up to other friends like Christine/RunsInTutus during the event.

We got off the course at the finish line at 7:44am!! That’s insanely early for us.

I was curious about how our Start Times versus when we actually finished/got off the course stacked up against previous years… so I decided to break it out in a chart.
Some of you guys might remember that prior to the Covid cancellation, they used to start the races juuuust slightly later. In 2022 it was a HUGE deal that they moved the start time earlier in the morning by thirty minutes AND had us park at a different location. I ranted about how messy it was in my 2022 PHM Blog.
But the combination of the earlier start time by runDisney, and us starting just a littttle further up in the corrals makes a huge difference in when we get off the course in the morning.

But it was too cold to stick around a longer time this year.

As the wind picked up while we were waiting around for a few people it started to really cool down again. So we actually left the Meet & Greet area to head out at 9am.

Sadly this was one of the earliest times that we’ve left the race in recent years. But it was just getting a bit too chilly to keep hanging out as the wind picked up. I honestly felt really bad about it because I know there were quite a few people who had messaged/commented online about hoping to catch us during or after the race. Sorry all!

We followed up with our usual brunch at IHOP, and then headed to hang out at the pool for a bit, before our dinner plans that night at Ohana that night.

And while a group dinner and time together is always great, the experience for cost at Ohana in 2026 is… just… not.

Skip Ohana, it’s not what it once was. Booking a large group required THREE reservations, made back during New Years. I was told they can’t do / won’t take bookings over eight people. And that we could have the reservations combined in-person the night of the dinner. Once we were at Ohana the front desk guy said he could, and did, combine our reservations. When the second desk girl called up our group, it was only for half the group and she said they couldn’t help us and combine the tables. Completely different than the first guy. And different than the Disney Dining rep I spoke with on the phone at New Years.
We ended up at two tables, had to wait longer, and I personally was very unhappy with that experience.
Combine that with the fact that it cost everyone $83 per person (after tax and large-group auto-gratuity), AND their new menu that they changed five years ago after Covid. There is no longer the skewers of food, and it’s just plates they bring out one by one.
So, to end my rant on this: Don’t bother with Ohana anymore. The old experience was far superior, and this new restaurant experience is now a great example of paying more for less than you used to get at Disney.

Monday – Disney Day!

We always talked about extending an extra day to hangout longer…

And we finally did it!

After a night of extra sleep – uncommon since typically we’re all getting up early again for flights home – we all grabbed Starbucks and made our way to Magic.

We all typically head home on Monday, dealing with busy airports and travel with lots of other runDisney runners at MCO. But this year we all decided to stay one more day and hit the parks instead. It was one more day of laughs, stories, catching up, and making new memories together: Waiting in line for the new Splash Mountain ride, only to have it break. Checkin out the new TRON coaster, which was awesome but far too short a ride. Dole Whip. Over priced and slightly stale Mickey Pretzel… the usual things. haha.

And an INCREDIBLE dinner at Be Our Guest! (And completely worth the $200+ for two people). Make sure to choose the West Wing. it’s darker, moodier, and doesn’t feel like a cafeteria which was the vibe I got from the other rooms.

We got out of the parks late that night, basically shutting it down with everyone else.
It was later than most of us planned, and we still had packing to do before our flights the next morning. But it was another great year with everyone that – as always – flew by faster than anyone wanted it to.

And if you made it this far, let’s check out all the rest of the images from our week in Orlando!

Wednesday

Ok, this was the night before… Pulling out all my different costumes deciding what to bring..

And a bunch of shoes – it might rain, so I need backup shoes cuz I wasn’t about to ruin my gold ones in the rain. And I ended up using every pair

Something like 430a and leaving for the airport

1 Dolla holla!

Parked. And starting my long day of travel

Unlike last year, the airport was packed this morning with a high school group of some kind it looked like

“Oh good, my gate exists… now I can go to the coffee shop”

Decent leg room this flight

Off to Seattle!

In Seattle, Kellie was waiting at my gate before we made our way to our next one

And we’re off!

Mt. Rainier

I didn’t expect to land before sunset in Florida

Kellie’s home turf… she was hustlin’

Really tho… she BOLTED

Bags, check. Now to the rental car

Livin that minivan life on vacation. Let’s see how many miles we do this trip.
(it was a total of only 198… less than I thought)

Dinner of champions. Waffle House.

Anddd, checked in. Long day is done. A bit of sleep before all the busy-ness starts tomorrow

Thursday

Got the boys!

And now Brunch, while we wait for Tracie’s flight

Long line to get in to the Expo

We made it!

Beau was extremely proud of his lower-than-John bib number

He ran a 47:04 for his qualifier… fifth in his bracket at his race.
So clearly I need to do something in the low 40s this year so no one else in our group can beat me. hahaha

Ran into Cristi at the expo again!

Medal lineup

The challenge’s stained glass effect was awesome. Makes me more annoyed how terrible the Jasmine medal was previously

Bumped into Jon outside the expo too!

This is the low-angle you always get when you video call your parents, haha

Kelly found us while we were hanging outside, too

This was the first line, inside the expo centerr, just to get into the merch area

Lorren and I waited probably 40 minutes in the first line…

And this was the THIRD line we had to wait in to get shoes. I forgot to get a photo of the second line, but it was twice as long as this, and maybe half the first one.

Ok, got shoes for Ryan and Theresa. Done. Only took 90+ minutes of waiting

Easily the most creative design of all the shoes they released though

Met up with the rest of the group once we got to the resort to check in

Dinner, night two. You know… light dinner before the 5k

I’m always curious about how they do corrals…
Like, why do I have a B corral for the 5k? What was the cutoff to get A corral placement? How fast is that group?

Quick wig check, and then some sleep before the race

Friday

Blue Jasmine today

Kellie went as Megara instead of Aladdin since she was running with her family and not us today

Final wig adjustments

This is always funny to me… that we’re still doing this after 12 years

Alright! Mirror Photo and time to head out!

The 5k is a LOT smaller event overall

Me, Beau, and Chris started in B. Kellie and her family back in D

We ran into Briana in the corrals – she usually runs as jasmine and I have photos with her from previous races somewhere… I just can’t find them fast enough to add to this blog cuz I can remember which years. haha!

Muggy motion photos in the dark!

Nearly done

Found Jacci at the end, workin the med tent!

Beau is always the popular one ;)

Kellie and her fam were still out of the course!

Met Tiffany after while walkin around

And Jen found us as well!

with Pam, Maria, and Kathleen

with Heather

This was prob the nicest thing to happen all weekend! A little girl giving out bracelets ran over to me and handed me this one

Another Jasmine! (Jessica)

Later that afternoon was just us sitting at the pool talking, laughing, and watching the storm clouds roll in

You can absolutely count on Chris losing it multiple times during a race weekend

Easy dinner for seven people. About $90 in takeout from Olive Garden

Kellie got a haircut while in town too!

Joe came by to hangout and chat for a bit

Then it was more wig prep before bed now that we knew the race was still on and the weather didn’t cancel anything!

Saturday

Good?… eh…

I’m honestly shocked Garmin gave me a 73

“Zip me!” – Beau

I gotta bring plenty of wigs… cuz… you never know

Red Jasmine today… with old running shoes because it was raining out

We ready!

More photos for the “collection of weird photos john and beau have together”

This’ll be fun..

Chilly out. Burrito time!

The sky and wet-everything made for great colors though

How your old little Oma be lookin’ on her way to market

We were right up front by one of the ropes for our corral

We’re off!

Belinda found us around mile 1 and yelled for us! She is reallyyyy good at spotting us on the course

It got so muggy that around mile two Kellie changed to shorts from her Aladdin pants and just carried them the rest of the way!

Sydnee found us in the World Showcase

and paced with us for a bit!

Boardwalk!

Kelly found us around mile 4ish

Who wore it betterrrr

Alaina caught us as we stopped to get a photo with Pocahontas

A bit further back on the course Theresa was having a great time with all the photographers it turned out

Chris and Beau making Kim’s photo better! lol

As we turned down the final chute, Chris started running harder because “Make a Man outta You” was playing..

Beau had just said “Is he gonna sprint the whole way??”

And this is when Kellie and I realized “yeah.. Chris is still sprinting ahead”

Fortunately I’m fast enough to catch up.. and Kellie was right behind me

But Chris.was.MOVIN.

“WE MUST SWIFT AS THE COURSING RIIIIVVVVEEERRRRRR!!!”

maybe me running backwards ahead of Chris trying to sprint in his costume was mean… but, my costume is much lighter to be fair.. and I had to get the action shot

And done!
Sweaty, muggy. Def the wettest race we’ve done here

Said hi to Jacci again

And Susana stopped us to take a photo too

Met and chatted with Aaron after getting our medals

Talked with him and Scott for a bit. They told us the next day their whole group had a full Beauty and the Beast costume planned. But unfortunately we didn’t see them on the the next day at all

Julia has caught us at multiple races and came to say hi!

Back on the course Naidymar was about to finish up

With Theresa not far behind

And Ryan and Lauren just a bit behind her, too

Sydnee finished just a short bit after us and came to hang out while we waited on the others

and with Kelly again

with Maria

And the rest of the group finished! Seriously though, look how soaked everyone is.
and apparently it rained briefly on the other half of the group somewhere on the course that missed us entirely

And Jenn found us again

James stopped to get a pic too!

Heading out!

We were just about to the car and Lena yelled to say hi as soon as she saw us! haha, so of course we had to get a photo

And honestly, a lot of the afternoon was just more hanging out

I took off for about an hour to go do photos with Joe and Erin, as usual

And I got back and found everyone exactly how I left them….

No need to go anywhere or do anything, just talking all day

We hit the pool for a while. Then ordered takeout for dinner again

Beau, getting his shoulder workout in…

Repeat of dinner, just double for twice the people.

Had to kick everyone out a tiny bit early so we could organize stuff for the morning and then get to bed

and of course one last night of wig prep

Sunday

Ouch. Half Marathon day is alway a bit earlier due to how many more people there are parking, walking, corralling, etc

Well… that’s not gonna happen today

Ha. Yeah. Sounds about right

One last race with us for Joe!

a little help from Kellie

Chris slowly sees how many more accessories he can carry each year… i swear

Lookin’ good, boys!

We walk out and see Aaron waiting like this..

Heading in

Made it!

Can you tell Kellie was cold?

go toward the light!

Alright, time to head in!

Corral C, sound off!

We had heard they’d be hustlin the A-C corrals out onto the course… and they definitely were

we got up to the start QUICK

We’re ready!

Goooo!

Home Stretch! 13 to go!

Town Square Belle!
Joe makes an effort to say hi to EVERY Belle he sees on the course

More Belles!
Honestly, Joe picked a great race to go out on. Lots of other Belles out for the challenge

Cheering on runners as we wait for people in our group

Back at it and heading toward the resorts

Arriving at the port

Entering Main St.

Took a quick video of us running down Main St.

And it turns out Erica, who was running behind us, took one also and found me online and sent it over!

Andie is the girl in the background dressed as Pegasus and later DMed saying she was wondering is she did actually make it into our selfie! haha!

runDisney’s photo above, cell phone below. I’m shocked they both came out great.

We HAD to stop for the Aladdin and Jasmine stop this year!

Pretty certain this is the same Aladdin as last year when Kellie and I took a quick selfie while running by and they waved in it!

Alright, gotta catch up to the others!

They waited at the castle for the group shot.
There was no line! Crazy how much of a difference things were this race for us

Really great castle shot this year

Makin our way out of the park, through Tomorrowland

Tracie just enjoyin her race solo at that point

And heading out of the parks. The sun was now starting to come up

“WHERE’D YOU GET YOUR DRESS!?” -Joe

Ryan found us online after the race to tag us and say hey

Ric didn’t get in to the race this year, but he did go wait to cheer for us IN COSTUME!

Found Christine (RunsInTutus) on the back of the course

The longgggg mile 8-9 was far less brutal this year with the overcast skies and no blazing sun

had to get the mile marker sign of course

Just jogging along laughing at this point

Another Jasmine out there! Kelsey

Just some ups, then downs, then ups, then downs… then finish? – Beau

Heading into Epcot. Last section ahead

Smile and wave boys, smile and waveeee

More Jasmines! Rebecca and Erika

just tryin to make other people’s photos better…

We got all the angles from runDisney on these. hahaha

Done!

Jacci made sure to say hi each time as we passed

I didn’t her name, but she was workin and couldn’t stop laughing when she saw us

the OG group (minus Biggs who always dies along the race somewhere and catches up at the end, haha)

And with Kellie

The others weren’t too far back on the course

Lauren ended up catchin Tracie and they finished the race together

Theresa, Ryan, and Chris finished. And Ric found us too

The temp started to drop as the wind picked up, basically freezing Kellie while we were hanging out waiting

with Juliana and Olga

Diane found us and came to say hi!

Mulan is who she’s really here for though!

with Amairany

And Tracie finished! That’s the whole crew today!

Amanda came to hang out and cheer for us,…. and Lorren… but mostly us we like to think

with Sydnee

Honestly we were all having a great time chatting and saying hi to people, but it was starting to get uncomfortably chilly due to being sweaty from the run and now a cold breeze that was getting stronger

So we decided to head out – much earlier than usual

Joe said this was his last year running as Belle… but he said that three years back… so maybe we’ll see him again

So how many of you just leave your medals wrapped now?

We all went to IHOP for brunch – I actually don’t have a photo of that. But as we left everyone made sure to give Kellie’s mom a big hug before her drive home.

That night we went to Poly for dinner at Ohana

I joked with Kellie about “how much does it seem like Hawaii now that you can compare?” Me and Kellie spent a week in Waikoloa last summer when I raced in the Hawaii Half Ironman

After dinner we asked the server to take a photo of us and make it obvious to see what the others would do since we ended up split at two tables. Theresa and Lauren immediately jumped up to get in the photo!

I prob should have brought my real camera. Oh well.

Monday

We all got to sleep in on Monday for once. Instead of going to the airport to fly home, we were going to Magic Kingdom for the day

We off! …wait, where’s Ryan?

Hey look! It’s the arch that we couldn’t take a photo under since they changed the course!

Starbucks. Minivan. Just rockin our inner soccer mom

Biggs is always ready to accessorize

Waving thank you to the monorail driver. She was throughly embarrassed I think

As often as I see all the photos online of people with their medals at Magic after the race, I never considered that they would have a massive dedicated area just for photopass photographer to do medal photos

gotta start the day off with a group photo of our own

10am Dole Whip as we headed into Adventureland was tempting

Starting with Jungle Cruise. Ryan is already on a work call. haha!

Harambe #NeverForget

Pirates next

Lunch time was a chicken and rice bowl… that honestly was pretty good and filling for the price

Everyone loves a mid-bite photo… #photographyprotip

We waited over an hour for the new Splash Mountain… then it broke. lol

Dole Whip time!

Had to send a photo to the rest of our friends who were at work

Heading to Space Mountain

TRON next… honestly, if you had asked me before this weekend I would have sworn to you that they built TRON at Epcot

Very cool coaster, but way too short

Off to haunted mansion next

Beau and I had to try and recreate the photo we took back in 2013

Oh man, I posed COMPLETELY WRONG. hahaha! But in fairness, I couldn’t find the photo in time since it wasn’t on my phone. So, no point of reference

Dinner that night was at Be Our Guest

Did our posed photo with a phone set on a chair

Then a lady offered to take one when everyone said i should just lay across their laps. Soo…..

The ballroom was impressive walking in… but after a couple minutes I felt it was so bright that it felt more like a cafeteria. Large. Open. Loud.

We were over the west wing, which was darker and more moody (even if this photo doesn’t look like it)

French onion soup was good – but I prob should have went with a different option

The Filet was amazing. Farrr better than dinner at Ohana the night before. I also added Shrimp which were also great

Creme Brulet for dessert, also was amazing

Beast did a walk by wave

The near-impossible-to-see Steamboat Willie

Waiting for the fireworks

Honestly the projection work on the castle was pretty impressive

And I thought the mix of lighting and fireworks was surprisingly well done

“Never had a friend like me!”

So cool

One last ride for the night

Mine train!

Last group shot for the trip!

Wait, no… gotta get the leg pop

Heading out!

Our minivan… so alone way over there

Tuesday

packed up and heading to the airport

Under 200 miles of driving this trip. Not bad

Kellie and I had the exit row

Theresa spent a bunch of time choppin it up with the other attendants. And of course they got worried when I took a photo of her standing around thinking I was some crazy person