Hoop Dee Doo Princess 10K Review

Hello and welcome to my runDisney Princess Half Marathon Weekend 2025 trip report! I’m returning to the blow-by-blow diary format for this trip. Today we recap the Princess 10K! Read all the posts in this report here. Onward!

As is so cruelly usual, my alarm woke me in the bleak and dark of the middle of the night. But it did wake me up, so step one, check! I will never stop being grateful for a successful step one.

PRINCESS DOLLY, PRINCESS CLAIRE & PRINCESS FLORA

I threw my magnificent Dolly Drew costume on, and as soon as Claire de Lune (Becky) and Flora Long (Erika) were ready, us Hoop Dee Doo Musical Revue ladies piled onto the golf cart and drove off into the night. We were delighted to find ourselves but one of many golf carts making its way to the races buses – it created a funny sort of camaraderie. 2:30am Ft. Wilderness Golf Cart Club t-shirts, anyone?

A race bus was waiting for us at the Outpost, and we trotted on without trouble. We did have to make a stop at Wilderness Lodge next, but we still took off for Epcot in plenty of time. (Make a mental note about this for my half marathon recap…)

We did arrive at the staging area in plenty of time, yes – but not tons of time. There’s never not enough time for a pre-race Spaceship Earth selfie, mind you.

We made short work walking over to the corrals and posting up in D. Shoutout to the guy behind us who was dressed as the Electrical Water Pageant, complete with electric dragon head and cycling LED-mounted t-shirt. Jealous!

It was chilly that morning, but not horrifically so; nonetheless, I was pleased when our corral wave was let go and we could sprint off into the night.

THE PRINCESS CRUSH

Okay. I don’t know what your proofs of time tend to be, or what corral you usually start in. All paces and corrals are valid and a good time can be had when starting anywhere, for sure.

However. It is a truth universally acknowledged by the runDisney community that the further back your corral, the greater the field churn and crush. Having dropped back a couple corrals to run with friends multiple times before, I’ve adjusted my expectations accordingly. (Remember when Erika and I started from the last corral? That was certainly one of the times I ever had.)

This was Becky’s first time dropping back, however, and she understandably reacted with the ol’ weave-and-dash in an effort to get around slower runners/walkers. To spackle on another layer, this was our first time running as a trio, and I had a couple choices. I could a) ask her to slow down; b) let our group separate; or c) declare “eff it; we ball,” speed up, and trust that Erika would follow as she always does.

I chose c! Becky wasn’t doing, like, 6 minute miles or anything crazy, just running faster than I normally do during a challenge when I have more races still to go. I decided to match pace, Erika followed accordingly, and we stayed together the whole race. I mean, we looked so dang cute, how could we not?! Go team Hoop Dee Doo!

THE PIONEER HALL PLAYERS PRESENT THE PRINCESS 10K COURSE

The Princess 10K course begins with the inevitable: roads. Three miles of roads, to be exact. And not to make this the World’s Most Boring Race Recap, but I don’t have much to say about them. I have neither a standout memory nor photographic evidence of our time during this part of the race. Erika and I stopped for a porta potty break at one point, but that’s all I got.

So let’s breeze on past that big fat nothingburger and pick back up at mile three, which is where we entered Epcot! Our first event of interest was the appearance of Bruno and Mirable on the Communicore stage. There were no PhotoPass photographers, so we made do with a selfie and, as the British say, jogged on.

The course took us down toward The Seas before turning up toward the bridge and into World Showcase. We were only there as far as I want to say the UK, however, as runDisney quickly dumped us out on the Boardwalk. We took a counterclockwise approach, passing the various area resorts before stomping the boards back to the International Gateway.

HOOP DEE DOO COSTUME RESPONSE: IYKYK

I believe it is somewhere around here that we decided to make our first real character stop, as the line for Snow White and Prince Florian wasn’t so bad. The Cast Members working the stop complimented our Hoop Dee Doo costumes; one went so far as to say we were the first Musical Revuers she’d ever seen at a runDisney event. That’s right, we put the Pioneer in Pioneer Hall Players!

By mile 4.5 or so we were back inside Epcot, picking up more or less where we left on the World Showcase loop. We trotted along past each country, stopping once for a quick shot with Louis from The Princess & The Frog. As I recall, the CMs here also like our costumes. We didn’t get much spectator attention, but the Cast Members were in the know!

Eventually we left World Showcase behind, traipsing back down the bridge, past the pavilions and out from under Spaceship Earth.

From there it was the standard right turn out of the park and under the finish line. One challenge race down, one to go.

Under normal circumstances we would hang out for a bit, maybe grab a drink and take some character photos. Unfortunately it was still WAY too cold to hang out. We took a very quick pic with Dopey (much shorter than when people are, y’know, Dopey), then piled onto the bus to Fort Wilderness.

Up next? We organized our own post-race activities, including an apropos photo shoot at Pioneer Hall. Tune in later this week to hear all about it!

P.S. Want a second opinion? Read Becky’s Princess 10K race recap!

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!