Alethea & Athena (double_dear) wrote,
Alethea & Athena

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Following the Leader♪

Today, we revisited our pirating days. Love Hina volume nine has an interview with Ken Akamatsu and Megumi Hayashibara about the anime, and Hayashibara-san mentioned a line from the anime that could have been translated any number of ways and was in desperate need of context. We checked Hulu and Crunchyroll on the slim hope that maybe we could watch the anime legally without having to wait for DVDs to be shipped (our deadline was today, after all), but no such luck.

And so we pulled out our stack of pirated anime and searched through it to find our old Love Hina episodes. As it turns out, we no longer have the codecs necessary to play those episodes, so we were only able to listen to what was said. Serves us right, dirty pirates. We think it was enough to give us the proper context, maybe, and we left a note to the editor.

After all that, we decided to price DVDs for the heck of it, and you can get Love Hina legally without spending too much money! We're leaning heavily towards doing that, except that we have a lot of other things lined up we want to buy (manga next week, Kingdom Hearts whenever some website lists the KH3D/3DS bundle...). Anyway, I think we'll wait until we get some definite details on things that are in the works.

In the meantime, I still have a race to report. Let's see how much I can piece together based on what Celeste and Sarah told us.

They went inside the park, where all the runners were herded to the hub in front of the castle, and waited for the thing to start. There were some cast members there to get everybody all revved up, and apparently they actually managed to get everybody to do the wave all along Main Street. I'm so jealous! We've never seen a successful wave that big!

Then the MCs came along and explained all the stuff that was going on. They also gave a lot of statistics, like how many people had signed up, how many were men, etc. The "premise" for this particular race was that they were all searching for Peter Pan. We really should have asked for more details about that--was he lost? did he run away? why are they looking for him? We never did find out, but anyway, that's what they were doing. And they had Tinkerbell fly behind the castle while they played When You Wish Upon A Star, and then they were off!

...Sort of. There were like a million (4,000) runners, so of course they couldn't all start at once. Celeste and Sarah were in the third group to set out, so after the first two groups left, they were off!

The course wove around Disneyland and over into California Adventure (as mentioned previously). The runners got to go backstage, where they had all the floats from Mickey's Soundsational Parade, too. They played music all along the way, starting with Following the Leader from Peter Pan (which they also played at the finish line). And what would a Disney event be without Disney characters, right? Celeste and Sarah were busy running, so they didn't spend much time with the characters, but they said when they saw Captain Hook, he didn't seem to have the big head, which means he was probably allowed to talk to people. They also saw the Lost Boys in Frontierland, which was super awesome, because you never get to see Lost Boys! They stood in a line and held their hands out for high-fives. Awesome. (According to the Disney Parks Blog, the boys had taken over King Arthur's Carousel for the Half Marathon.)

The report of the Lost Boys was enough to make us think, "...I bet we could walk a 5K in under an hour..." (Around an hour is when they start picking up stragglers.) Sarah was convinced that we could, and any time we brought it up with the slightest uncertainty, she gave us the smack down. (Only not really. More like, "No, you totally can.")

There were also pirates (also mentioned previously), who would taunt and chase runners. Sarah liked to retell the story of one runner who, when he ran by the pirates, got right in each of their faces in turn and shouted, "Who's a codfish!?" After he yelled at the third one, the pirate lost his temper and chased him away.

And of course, right in front of the finish line were Peter and Wendy. When Celeste saw then, she pointed and yelled, "I found Peter!" Things like races tend to help people be less shy about doing silly things like that. We also discovered that races are popular cosplay events. Most of the cosplayers were dressed as Peter Pan characters, and almost all of them were represented! There were even a couple of crocodiles, and someone dressed as Nana. It was awesome.

And everybody got a medal! It was made of rubber instead of, like, gold or something, but that just means it was colorful! And it had a map of Neverland and a picture of Tinkerbell on it. After everybody got their medals, they were directed to the pier, where they had their pictures taken in front of the Ferris wheel, with the World of Color fountains dancing in the background.

And that's the gist of it. Celeste and Sarah had more little anecdotes about, for example, a little boy who was running for all he was worth, but I don't remember most of them. They also said that everybody along the way was super friendly and supportive, even the people who were clearly there to cheer on specific acquaintances (one of them saw the aforementioned little boy and shouted, "You go, little man!"). They also said that having an event like that is a good way to stay motivated to exercise, so they're already making plans to do it again!

Today I'm thankful for super fun Disney events, finding the line of dialogue we were looking for without too much trouble, meeting our Love Hina deadline, having a box of mozzarella Cheez-its to try, and having lots of time to practice our music today.
Tags: disneyland, event report, love hina

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