Hello and welcome to my 2026 WDW Marathon Weekend trip report! You can see all the posts in this report here. Today we’ll be recapping the Walt Disney World Half Marathon. Onward!
After the cooler conditions of 2025, the morning of the WDW Half Marathon dawned with the promise of warm temperatures. Perhaps too warm, but at least with the half we’d be done before the sun got overly high in the sky. I rolled out of bed with my hella early alarm and reached for my EVE race costume in reasonable spirits.
Fellow half marathoner Kate planned to head for the busses a bit later, and Becky was spectating; they had a bit more time to sleep. But my ever-stalwart Erika was ready to go, and we set off for the race start together. Said Erika: “I’m always in your Spaceship Earth photo!” and that’s because she is. ❤️
THE WALT DISNEY WORLD HALF MARATHON IS OFF!
We stuck together for the walk to the corrals before parting ways for our start groups. I’m lucky in that corral B usually gets going pretty quickly. The race started on time, and shortly after I was off!
The WDW Half course doesn’t start off particularly strong. The first four miles or so consisted of undistinguished roads. I did see Jack and Sally out in mile one, and fully intended to stop even if there was a long line.
Unfortunately, the line was not in my estimation merely long; it was staggeringly long. In fact, I found the character lines quite lengthy all the way through by comparison to the past. Is runDisney selling more bibs? Or am I imagining things?
THE FIRST GOOD BIT: MAGIC KINGDOM AREA
Anyway, around mile four is when things finally started to get interesting as we headed into the Magic Kingdom resort area. We passed the Polynesian first and then the Grand Floridian. As was the case last year, the Electrical Water Pageant floats greeted us in advance of the bridge. Side note: it is still WAY too dark in certain parts of the course here. Thank goodness part of my costume lit up.
Mile five hit just before the Magic Kingdom proper, and we took a left turn into the park shortly after. As per usual, the roaring crowds on Main Street were a highlight!
In truth, I didn’t do a whole heckuva lot in the Magic Kingdom. I stopped at the Adventureland bathrooms, and again for my castle photo. (Never be afraid to stop for a castle photo; there are a bunch of queues and the lines move really fast!) Other than that, I don’t remember seeing any characters or anything that enticed me to stop. Thus I put my mile and change in the most magical place on earth behind me pretty quickly.
THE BACKSIDE OF THE WDW HALF MARATHON
Having left the Magic Kingdom behind, we trotted past the Contemporary and found ourselves at mile seven. More than halfway!
The bad news, as you likely already know, as that for this course once you’ve said goodbye to MK there’s nothing to look forward to for awhile. Just five whole miles of roads between you and the Epcot finish.
The good news in this instance was that the character lines were at least a little shorter, enough so that I made some stops. I didn’t find anybody I was super duper jazzed about, but it’s all a matter of excitement-to-line-length ratios, right? I popped in on Lilo, Clarice, and Marie as we motored along. The Pizza Planet DJ stop was kinda fun too.
AND HOW WAS I DOING, SPECIFICALLY?
Okay, so, funny (not really funny) thing happened to me before this race started. As my fellow B corral denizens know, B-goers have a pretty long walk from corral entry to our holding area. I was rounding the curve in front of the emcee stage when suddenly it hit me: a little twinge in my left hip/glute connection area. This is not an issue I have dealt with recently and I had no idea where it was coming from… but I didn’t like it.
Whelp, given that I had an entire marathon to run the next day, I was already planning to take it v. easy a la last year. With this new potential muscular wrinkle, I doubled down on my resolve to keep it slow and gentle.
And I did! It definitely made for a bit of a grind, but I took a measured and relaxed approach to the entire race and manage to avoid any further complaint from my upper glute. The jury was still out for Sunday, but at least I wasn’t starting at a disadvantage. (Yet.)
I MADE A RACE COSTUME MISCALCULATION
As noted above, my costume for this race was EVE from Wall-E. I didn’t realize it until about 75% of the way into the race, but with my space buns and all white outfit I looked like Princess Leia from behind. By consequence, I accidentally ignored so many shoutouts! I mean, I also got callouts for EVE, which I enjoyed, but all the clues for that were on my costume’s front.
Anyway, all of this is to say if I ignored your Leia call out – or were that one lady who got a blank look followed by a forlorn “I’m EVE?” just before I came to this startling realization – please accept my heartfelt apologies for my stupid mistake. Time to start thinking about my costumes in 360!
THE SECOND GOOD BIT: EPCOT
It took until mile 12 to get there, but we did get there: first Spaceship Earth loomed in the distance, and then we were running into Epcot! I will never stop complaining about the lack of World Showcase; as it is, the WDW Half barely glances through the area once called Future World. Basically we came in behind the Living Seas, cut across the hub, and exited between Mission: Space and Test Track. Buh-bye, Epcot! It’s been real!
Normally there’d be nothing waiting for me except a teensy bit of backstage, one remaining character stop, and the gospel choir before the finish.
This year was different, however – Becky was waiting for me in the stands! She texted me her general location and the shirt color to look for (orange!), and I was able to appropriately signal my glee at having a rare spectator as I headed for the end. She even took video! MVP!
ANOTHER WDW HALF MARATHON BEHIND US
And that was my Walt Disney World Half Marathon! It was an undistinguished but serviceable entry in my runDisney history, largely meant to usher me through liminal physicality on my way to the real star: the WDW Marathon. In that way it did its job.
I meandered down the finisher’s chute for my medals and snack box and such before turning around for a runDisney first: I headed to the stands! Erika and Kate had started in later corrals than me, so I joined Becky in the bleachers to watch them finish too.
Once everyone had been duly cheered to the finish, we all met in the finisher’s area for photo ops with Dopey and Tuxedo Goofy before picking up a bus back to Beach Club.
Time for showers and naps and a lil’ panic crafting of course. The marathon awaits us all!
Don’t forget, you can follow FRoA on Threads @fairestrunofall and on Instagram @fairestrunofall. If you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or email fairestrunofall@gmail.com. See ya real soon!