Trip Report Another Princess Weekend, Another Running Dress for Brifraz, Another Trip Report

Hello Intrepid Disney Travelers! It's time for another Brifraz Trip Report. Nothing live this time - it's already been three weeks since the trip. But the Brifraz clan just did another Princess Weekend and I'm here to share the adventure with everyone!

I suspect that most of you have followed along on one of my 36 trip reports over the past 16 years (holy carp, I've been doing trip reports for 16 years!), but in case you have not... our travel crew is a trio. Myself, my lovely wife, and our daughter. Back when I started trip reporting she was pretty young, but now she's a full fledged adult, with a nice full time job (pays more than triple my first teaching job back in the 1990s) and her own apartment about an hour from where we live. Here's us from back in 2016 on our first Princess weekend!

Also a chance to sneak in a comment about how much I miss the old Luau at Poly.

Here's us a bit more recently, just to make sure you recognize us.

Yes, the girls look almost the same, except some height changes and different glasses. Why am I the only one who has aged???

Anyway, back to the point. Princess Weekend 2026! Some background on this trip. I retired from teaching music in public high schools for 31 years this past summer only to take a position at a small local college for a couple days a week and to begin teaching private music lessons one day a week. My wife is still teaching English in high school (and still enjoying it) and also working part time at the Hippodrome Theatre in downtown Baltimore. As I mentioned, our daughter is now adulting full time, having graduated from college right around the same time I was retiring! As is our usual at Princess Weekend, I was running the 10k and the girls were doing the Challenge (10k and Half Marathon). For the first time ever, I was the one who had actually trained for the races - since I now have a little more free time - and the girls had not done nearly as much training as they usually do (this is what those in the business call foreshadowing).

In addition to the races, we had some other somewhat important plans. We were going to get a final ride on Rockin' Roller Coaster on its last day and bought Lightning Lanes to make sure we got to ride without hours in line (this is also foreshadowing). We also had plans to have fun with a new game that we have heard about - some Bus Roulette coming your way soon.

And it starts with a big change from normal for us (this is what those in the business call a tease).

 

[brifraz]

Once I was back at the car, I actually had a stop to make before the room and that was the grocery store. Went and picked up some fruit, breakfast items, and some drinks and was moving into the room almost exactly 12 hours after I had woken up in the morning. Yes, that would be 3pm.

Not a bad view from our deck. Got us all unpacked and things set up in the room for our next 3 days. And, promptly took about an hour nap. I don't tend to be a napping person and when I do it's usually just for 30 minutes at most. But after the preceding 12+ hours, I obviously needed a bit of sleep. Around 5pm, it was time to get back into the Roulette for my dinner. As you can guess, I was pretty darn hungry at this point. Those totchos had been great, but were a long time ago and the couple handfulls of goldfish that I had scarfed down while unpacking were no longer keeping me sated!

Lucky for me, the first bus to arrive at the Turtle Pond bus stop was back to Disney Springs. Once on the bus, I was searching through menus and ADR possibilities for some dinner. Oddly enough, as hungry as I felt, I was in the mood for a salad. And after reading a couple reviews online, I decided on the one that looked like it would be perfect for me.

Crispy chicken caesar salad at Chicken Guy's. Exactly as advertised and quite good. Yeah, it's just a caesar salad with chopped up chicken tenders on it, but it was quite good. And large enough to be pretty filling. I was a happy traveler. Speaking of travelers... meanwhile, back in Maryland...

The girls were waiting at BWI for their flight and getting some food at the Silver Diner in the airport. As they waited to fly down, I walked through a bit more of the Springs that I hadn't been through in the morning. Stopped off at the DVC showroom, hoping to head upstairs for a quick free drink and extra little snack, but sadly I got there just after 6pm and it was already closed. I did get some magnets for us, though!

For the discerning eyes, that picture was taken after I had arrived at my next stop. I had a couple hours before I needed to head to the airport so decided a little entertainment was in order. Over to Raglan Road I went. And, oh, maybe I'll force myself to have a pint as well. Got just about the last seat open at the bar and sat and enjoyed for an hour or so.

Not pictured was the plate of chips (fries) that I enjoyed as well. But in the background of the picture you can kind-of make out the band that was playing and of course there was some great dancing as well. After my visit to Raglan, there's not much more excitement to the first day at WDW on this trip. I drove to the airport, picked up the girls, and then went back to the room for some sleep!

 

[brifraz]

And, here's another clue as to our running outfits for the 10k.

We had nametags. The characters in their original form do not have name tags, but us wearing name tags was pretty essential to people understanding who we were. The names of these characters are VERY important (especially mine).

 

[PineapplePrincess]

Is it the 3Ds from the Muppet Vision 3D preshow?! Dorothy, Dinah and Max?

 

[brifraz]

Is it the 3Ds from the Muppet Vision 3D preshow?! Dorothy, Dinah and Max?

WINNER!!!! More to come later, but you guessed it! Well done.

 

[brifraz]

Friday, February 27 was another early morning. Not roulette this morning, but we did have plans to hit at least 3 parks plus! So we were up an out the doors just a few minutes after 7am and driving over to Animal Kingdom. Things were not quite as empty as my first morning, but we also were just arriving at the early opening and not nearly an hour before it!!

Unless we are right at rope drop, we generally don't go to Pandora and this morning was no exception. Over to Asia we went for a visit with a large furry friend. A very large guy who I hear likes to dance to 70s music, but never seems to move very much.

As you may already know from previous trip reports, my girls are ride junkies and I am somewhat less tolerant of the thrills. That usually means that they will take a second ride (or a third, fourth, fifth... whatever) on Everest in the morning, while I wander a bit. And on this grey morning we were true to form.

I may be somewhat in the minority (or at least so the bean counters seemed to think), but I really liked Rivers of Light and find it terribly depressing that they built this massive venue that now serves as a break spot for a few families each day and otherwise sits totally empty.

I almost always wander in there and take a couple pictures while they enjoy that second Everest ride and try to make myself look like 5000 people enjoying a show. Not sure that anyone has noticed it, though...

Next up, it was Safari time!

Lots of good animal activity on this ride and we spent quite a while delayed by a rhino in the road. The best animal action for us was the fact that we saw 3 leopards out and about. Here's two of them.

For some reason all I can think of with that picture is the Looney Tunes classic where the sheepdogs are changing shift.

Not that I expect the leopards would do that - I mean, they are cats, so the chances of getting them to punch in and out on time would be close to zero. But since usually you only see one or maybe two and we saw three, my brain immediately thought that maybe we were catching the shift change.

After our safari, we stopped off at the 'backside of gorillas' viewing area. We have often had luck seeing them up close at the exit from the safair vehicles and this morning was no exception. Actually when we walked over, there was nobody there and no sign of gorillas, but then this fine gent showed up and put on a pretty entertaining show as he played with some branches and ate a bit of breakfast.

In very short order, there was a decent crowd behind us watching along. It was finally about 9am which meant we could go visit some of our favorite AK friends on the Maharajah Jungle Trek. Our first surprise was when this guy was not only awake, but out and about wandering his enclosure.

There are certainly times when I think they just have an animatronic Komodo dragon that they either sit on the heated rock or on one of the other rocks and move it around each day so people think its real. But today, he was moving around quite a bit!

Once again, we kind of hit the shift change - well, really just the tigers entering their appropriate enclosures for the morning. We've often been able to enjoy this and once got a full description of the process with the bells and the drill opening the tiger pathway that runs underneath the attraction pathway. The nice part about catching this is that it always means the tigers are up and active. And this was once again true to form. We watched good tiger activity on both sides of their area for quite a while.

We just love the tigers and spend far too much time visiting with them each time we head to Animal Kingdom. But, we had to get to our next destination before the crowds got too big, so it was off to Wide World of Sports to get our bibs and check out the expo a bit more.

 

[brifraz]

Arrived at the Expo at about 10:30am (opened at 11am) and were very happy to see that the crowd was MUCH smaller than it had been the preceding morning. In fact, we were just about the first folks into the bib pickup area. Which meant... zero lines for the characters! Both Minnie and Daisy were out and meeting and girls got to hang out with both for a bit.

This would be the discussion of my girls' new shoes (picked up the day before after far too many lines). Wow, our daughter's shoes sure do match the Rapunzel theme of the half marathon!

Bibs secured, we went over to the Expo to check out all the booths, pick up our shirts, and get some pictures. Again, going early in the morning on the SECOND day that things were open meant little to no lines anywhere. Which gave us time for some more fun pictures and to try on and make some exchanges with shirt sizes.

Since I'm just doing the 10k, I had on my Moana shirt to get a picture with the themed mileage.

Meanwhile, the girls are covering all bases with my wife in Moana shoes, daughter in Rapunzel shoes, and the Beauty and the Beast themed mileage.

We also did make a pit stop in the swag area to return the skirts I had bought the day before (not good sizes). No pictures were taken due to my level of PTSD, but the process was actually quite easy and took very little time at all! So, on day 1 it took me 3 hours just to GET IN to the buy things but on day 2, we picked up bibs, visited characters, took pictures, checked out the Expo, and returned items all in under 2 hours. Yes, much of what I had picked up on day 1 was now sold out on day 2, but still...

It was after noon and we were getting hungry! So, back to Old Key West and one of our favorite locations on site to get a drink and a bite to eat, The Gurgling Suitcase. Bartender extraordinaire and our friend, Roberto was on hand to make a perfect Turtle Krawl for my wife (I just get the Key West Sunset Ale which is not terribly worth picturing).

We got the pulled pork nachos that we regularly get to eat there (see prior trip reports for pictures) and the girls also split a burger. What do you do when one person wants their burger 'naked' except for cheese and the other wants ALL the toppings?

Toppings on the side! All of them! And it worked out great. Everyone got fed and happy and ready to head back out to the parks. See you there.

 

[TheMouseFan]

I also really enjoyed Rivers of Light and am upset that the theater now just sits empty! Can't wait to see your running costumes!

 

[Swissmiss]

I also really enjoyed Rivers of Light and am upset that the theater now just sits empty! Can't wait to see your running costumes!

Me too!

 

[brifraz]

Let's get back to the action... mid-afternoon on Friday. And it was time to catch a bus (no roulette involved) to this place with which I expect you are familiar.

It was actually going to be a quick visit to MK with only one destination in our plans.

Okay, maybe that's not the best picture. How about this one?

Yup, a little visit to the Beak and Barrel for a drink. And we scored it big with seats in the Brig. We were seated there along with two other parties of two. With seven of us, it was a little friendly, but not uncomfortable. And we all chatted about all kinds of things Disney and a little about our lives outside The World. It was a great time and we also had one of the best servers (we've had her before there) who was fully engaged and having as much fun as we were - if not more! After our drinks, we pondered doing an attraction, but it was late afternoon and lines were all pretty darn long, so we hopped onto the monorail to head to Epcot where we had dinner plans.

But before we eat, we felt it necessary to at least hit one attraction and why not, right? LIterally walked right on to Spaceship Earth, where we made sure to do all the appropriate things.

We thanks the Phoenicians. After all, they made it so easy to learn our ABCs. Actually, I personally thanked Mozart and Haydn for popularizing the folk melody that would eventually be known as Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star... or the ABCs song.

We shed a tear for Rome, while simultaneously thanking Jewish and Arab scholars for their due diligence in keeping old books.

And we rocked out with these Renaissance rock stars who are doing a fine job playing appropriate time period music right before the Sistine Chapel scene which has music of a style that was still 200 years in the future when Michelangelo was painting. But, it's really dramatic, so I'm fine with it!

After our ride with Dame Judi Dench, we headed back to our dinner. It was the night before a race, so there is only one appropriate meal to have and that's pasta! So, Via Napoli was our dinner destination. On the way back, the little bit of sprinkle that had been around a bit all day turned into some real rain and we had to dodge the drops a bit (and throw on the ponchos) on the way back. None of us are really sure how it happened, but we got exactly ZERO pictures of our drinks or food from that dinner at Via Napoli. Honestly, none of us can fathom how that happened. It was about 7:45pm when we left dinner, full but also a bit tired. We decided to try to see Frozen with the new animatronic faces and hopped into what was listed as a 35 minute wait. The fact that it was all the way past the entrance to Akershus had us wondering if that was indeed accurate and much to no surprise, it jumped up to 45 and then 55 as we stood barely moving in the light drizzle. We bailed out. Just not worth the time at that point in the evening and with a 2:30am wake-up call, we wanted to get back to the room and get some rest.

Grabbed a quick picture on the way out. Maybe not the finest art, but nighttime Spaceship Earth is always beautiful!

So, that's what we did! Hoofed it over to the bus stops (dodging a few more raindrops) and then bussed back to Old Key West, got to our room and got to sleep around 9pm. Next up is 10K day in 3D!

 

[brifraz]

Coming soon to a trip report near you...

Dorothy, Dinah, and Debbie Max!

 

[cgersic]

Ooooh, I love that last picture!! The lights in Geo-82 are so cool!

 

[brifraz]

I'm sure that anyone reading this who has done a Disney race before knows what it is like. Alarm goes off between 2am and 2:30am. You catch a bus or drive to Epcot at about 3am. You walk an extra half mile to get to the corrals. And then you stand around for a couple hours. Maybe you sit down for a bit in the parking lot, but that's about it. Due to the rain the preceding day, everything was pretty wet, so just about everybody was standing except those who used their mylar wraps as blankets to sit upon. We stood and answered questions about our costumes. Those who got it were very entertained by it. Those who didn't asked a question and then a follow-up and then just walked away confused. But here we are at the corral!

5am and finally time to run 6 miles... or at least run the first mile and then run some and walk some.

There really weren't a lot of good characters meets along the race, some due to the wetness (Anna and Elsa were just waving from a distance) and some just weren't ones we were all that interested in. Still dark when we got into Epcot.

We did feel that it was worth waiting for Christoff (or Sven as they were rotating).

We spent the majority of our time around Crescent Lake in the presence of royalty as King Arthur and Patsy.

And they were super nice and gave us a cute little plastic bunny with appropriate fangs. Once back into Epcot, we stopped for a selfie with our Muppet boss (an early arrival for the Flower and Garden Festival).

And one of the Photopass photographers thought it was a pretty good picture as well.

I'll be honest... I've got no idea of what our time was for the race. My guess would be about an hour and a half or so. Our usual walk/run pace is around 15 minutes, but we ran a bit extra at the beginning and paused for Christoff, so I'm guessing we ended up with about that pace.

And still relatively smiling at the end of the race. Along the race route, we had a few people comment on our costumes and still more look at us confused. But, just after the finish line, there was a CM who secured for us that it had been worthwhile. She went fully nuts. Said it was the best costume ever and she wanted to race someday (she was standing in the area after medal distro to make sure everyone got their medals) just so she could dress as one of the 3 D's. Sadly, we were too exhausted to remember to get a picture with her! Post race was, of course, the half mile or so walk and picking up medals, goodie boxes, and some tylenol from the med tent. We enjoyed our snacks, went back to the car to grab some changes of clothes, and then headed into Epcot to ride Frozen with the new AAs. It was just a few minutes after 8am so we were going in with all the other resort guests for the early hour. And... second attempt had a different outcome. The line wasn't long at all. In fact, there was no line. It was down. We hung out for about half an hour hoping that it would open up, but it did not so we bailed out and headed back to the room. Got cleaned up, took some morning naps, and got ready for the rest of our day!

 

[cgersic]

Oh my goodness, sooooo worth the wait! And all of the hints, as it made it that much more fun! This looks like a fabulous time for sure. Nice job family!

 

[brifraz]

Race done, a little bit of rest and recovery in the room, and it was time to get some drinks (and food) and enjoy the afternoon. Around 12:30pm we headed over to Coronado Springs resort to enjoy a new activity for myself and our daughter (my wife had done this once before on a girls trip), Sangria University.

When we arrived, we headed upstairs to Toledo a little bit early for the 1:30pm event, but more than willing to sit in the waiting area until our time. There was one other party there waiting for Sangria University when we got up there, but there was also a party who had just finished the earlier event. And they were loud. Very loud. Incredibly loud. I really cannot state emphatically enough how loud they were. There were only about 6 people in the group, but at any (every) given moment at least 3 of them were talking at a volume that could likely be heard down at the Three Bridges Bar. It was not helped by the fact that the space between Toledo and the Dahlia Lounge is a literal echo chamber. As we waited we exchanged many alarmed and frustrated looks with the other parties (more arriving by the minute) waiting for the next event and even some of the CMs who were setting things up. In fact, when our event started at 1:30pm, the host even made a comment about how loud they were. It is also worth noting as I belabor this point beyond realistic expectations that the earlier event had likely ended at 12:30pm, so they were standing in the lobby talking loudly (did I mention how loud they were talking?) for an hour.

Okay, on to the actual Sangria University. Summary review - it was great! We had a blast. You get some snacks (not a meal by any stretch) but they were enjoyable and the salt content helped as we were still in race recovery mode.

When you arrive, the variety round of sangrias is already poured and ready for you to begin enjoying.

The host then walks you through each of the flavor combinations and history of the drinks, where the wines and juices are from and how they relate to sangria traditions, and other background on sangria and Spain. Of course, one of our medals had to make an appearance.

We were seated in one of the booths near the entrance, which was a great location for watching all the proceedings and none of us having our back to things. We had a great time sampling drinks and being our usual silly selves.

After you've tasted the different options, you get to create your own personal sangria. You get a menu of options to choose from.

You turn in your choices and get the ingredients delivered each in their own small cup to mix the proportions as you see fit. To be honest, I've got no idea what all we got, but we got a variety and they were quite enjoyable! Once things wind down, you are given a Sangria University Diploma (fun, but nothing fancy) and postcards with the exact recipes of the flight that you had tasted. And, in case you didn't know it, the view up at Toledo is pretty exceptional.

It was a great way to spend the afternoon following a very early morning and lots of physical exertion. Fully satisfied, we headed back to Old Key West for another round of down time before heading to Disney Springs for dinner. See you then!

 

[Swissmiss]

Sangria University looks fun … what a pity my daughter will be just days shy of her 21st birthday when we are there.