Continuing with part two of my birthday trip to the Walt Disney World Resort a few weekends ago…read part one here!

On Saturday (my actual birthday), Rachel agreed to go for a short run with me around the Port Orleans resort. We ended up running through Riverside and the French Quarter for close to 3 miles. It was a great birthday present to have her with me, even for a short run.

After getting cleaned up, we made our way over to the Magic Kingdom. We were excited because all of our friends who live down that way came over for the day. Chris & Meredith and their sweet daughter Caroline (who was dressed as Tinkerbell!), Nick & Ciara and Ellis & Colleen all showed up. I love these people!

The weather was absolutely perfect and while the crowds were quite strong, we had a great time walking around and catching up. Since all of us are annual passholders or cast members, none of us felt the pressure to ride all the rides or see everything. That was a huge bonus, since the wait times for everything were crazy long. I think I ended up riding 2 total rides the whole day! 

After spending several hours at the Magic Kingdom, we all headed to our cars to go over to Disney Springs for dinner and dessert (we rode over with Chris and Meredith).

We ended up getting dinner at this new pizza place called Blaze Pizza. It was sooooo good. 2 thumbs up! And the best part was, we were able to snag a table large enough for all of us, even with the crowds. Disney Springs is much more manageable now that they’ve added new stores and restaurants.

After dinner, we walked around Disney Springs, stopping into a few stores before grabbing dessert at Ghirardelli’s. My milkshake was the best birthday dessert I could have asked for.

By that point, Chris & Meredith (and Caroline of course) took off, so the rest of us walked over to this area Disney had set up as a Christmas Tree Trail. It had about a dozen different trees decorated around popular Disney movies. Every few minutes they would make it “snow” with fake snow. It was pretty fun watching all of the kids getting excited every time it snowed. 

Finally, we called it a night, since we needed to be on the road pretty early the next morning. I had to work Sunday night with Youth Ministry stuff. We said our goodbyes and made our way to the boat that goes between Port Orleans and Disney Springs.

While it was a super quick trip, it was a great weekend celebrating with great friends and great food. We are looking forward to heading back down for almost a week in January for the WDW Marathon Weekend, where I will be running my 5th annual Half Marathon in January!