Tinker Bell Half Marathon Weekend merch and swag

We finally were able to go to the Tinker Bell Half Marathon expo in Saturday morning after the 10K. Held at the Disneyland Hotel, bib pickup is in one big room, while shirts, swag, and merch is in the hotel ballroom.

We made our way down the black carpet ramp (with the cute Tink logo on it) and found a relatively empty room. Of course, the kids races, 5K, and 10K bibs had all already been picked up!

We all got in our separate lines to get our bibs:

Then I headed over to the Commemoratives desk to pick up my pins and my necklace. I had honestly forgotten whether a 10K pin had been offered... But I knew if one was made, I would have bought it! The nice volunteers looked it up, and sure enough, there was, and I did:

Tinker Bell 10K pin

Of course, I also got the half marathon pin:

Tinker Bell Half Marathon pin

I admit that I am not crazy about this year's half marathon pin, but I applaud them for continuing to mix things up!

I also preordered this year's necklace:

I was a little surprised by the plasticky feel of the pendant... And the fact that mine was smeared with glue across the front. But the small silvery wings will be a nice addition to my running charm bracelet. The white pendant? Well, it might be nice in my scrapbook...

I often wonder if I need to preorder the necklace, given that you order it sight unseen, and that for the past two years it has been readily available at the expo. But if it's super cute, I can imagine that it will sell out before I might have a chance to get to the expo… and to be fair, I've liked the other necklaces (for Goofy, previous Tink, and Wine and Dine). So I'll probably just keep buying the dang things!

Then we headed back up the ramp and over to the merch room. First we picked up our 10K shirts and packets (again, thank you runDisney for making this possible):

Tinker Bell 10K shirt -- lovely in lilac!

Then we got our half marathon stuff. I was a little surprised that the half shirts were red (later revealed to actually be a nice dark raspberry color in natural light). 

Tinker Bell Half Marathon shirt -- that's a rich raspberry

As usual, not much else in the bags:

we got a Luna mini in each of the 4 bags

race program

None of us needed anything at expo, though I did want to pick up the "art card" that Lasting Commemoratives offered in the "virtual goody bag". I used the one from Wine and Dine in my scrapbook, and this one was actually nicer: 

art card -- thanks Lasting Commemoratives

Then we made our way over to the official merchandise area -- which looked like a supermarket before a blizzard. Lots of empty space on the walls from where things had sold out, and entire walls featuring just one white tech tee, apparently all in size M. 

The only thing I wanted -- which I didn't know for sure whether or not it existed -- was the half marathon medal pin. We wandered around and Wil spotted a man holding a small stack of them, which made me worry he was an ebayer... But when we asked him, he pointed us in their direction. Result! Wil and I bought a pair, and about 5 minutes later Suz bought one of the last two!

2014 Tinker Bell Half Marathon medal pin

The only other thing I decided I needed was a pair of the Vinylmation figures for 2014. Sure, we aren't planning on running any other Disney races this year, but I did enjoy getting the wee medals in 2013, and we like vinyl toys, so...

2014 runDisney Vinylmation -- these come blind boxed, so we were pleased to get one of each color

Apparently there has been a lot of grousing by a lot of folks about the lack of selection, or about how quickly things sold out. Lots of "they know how many runners are coming; why didn't they make more stuff?" comments. But boy oh boy is it hard to get the product mix right at an expo!!! I do think that holding off selling "I did it!" merch until AFTER the race would be nice, but then there would be complaints from slower runners that they didn't have a chance. I could see limiting access to the merch store to registered runners until after the race. Of course, then I could imagine people just signing up for the race so they could buy merch to flip on eBay….

I keep trying to think of ways to make the merchandise easier -- any thoughts?