Happy Cat Adoption Day

She’s hiding under the vanity in the bathroom. At least she’s not under the bed anymore.

Patches

I went to the veterinary hospital today to pick up Patches’ remains. She will sit on the window sill for now, but once the weather clears up she’ll go outside into the garden.

Rest in peace, baby kitty.

Florida Recap Post – The Eighth

On January 9th we started the day at Magic Kingdom, then went back to the hotel to flake out for a while. That was the last recap post. That night we went back to Magic Kingdom for the fireworks show and stayed for an after hours event. The event required a separate ticket and took place after the park closed. That means the joint was virtually empty. We did a ton of rides with little to no wait. It was awesome.

Here are a ton of pointless photos.

I was really ready for the xmas stuff to go away.

Fireworks… in manual mode. Like a crazy person

This is me putting my feet up on the nearly empty People Mover, which we rode I think four times that night.

Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (my favorite Magic Kingdom Ride not called Splash Mountain) was a walk on. Glorious.

I really wanted a slow shutter speed shot of the spinning merry go round, but not enough that I would stand there and wait for the ride to start. Sorry.

That’s it. The next post will bring us back to Epcot and I think it’s going to be a long one. Lots of pictures from the last stop at Epcot. After that there will be another day at Hollywood Studios and then I think that’s it.

I Hate Snow

Bite me, mother nature.

Florida Recap Post – The Sixth

The last post had our first day at Hollywood Studios. This post will start with that same night and then finish with a character breakfast at The Polynesian the next morning. Enjoy!

That’s the main street. What’s the main street called? Is it Main Street or Hollywood Blvd?

I forget what the fireworks show at Hollywood Studios is called. Phantasma? Something like that? Unlike the other parks, it takes place in a theater, and that theater was PACKED.

MICKEY!!! We had breakfast at Ohana in the Polynesian. We sort of feel the need to do a character dinner every time we go to Disney World. It’s usually Chef Mickey’s, but (food wise) this was SOOO much better.

The camera dropped the ball a little here. I think it was the bright light in the background.

Harry took this. I put the camera in Auto mode before I handed it to him.

Meter for the shadows, bro. Actually… in digital aren’t you supposed to meter for the highlights?

There you have it. We met Mickey Mouse in person. He actually hung out with us because he’s sort of our best friend forever now.

The next post will be Magic Kingdom pics during the day, and some flake time around the hotel.

Florida Recap Post – The Fourth

This one is going to WAY over do it. You’ve been warned.

Our first visit to Magic Kingdom was first thing in the morning and we were shocked at how packed it was. We stayed for a couple of hours and then went back to the hotel for a while. My picture taking plan was to start with film and switch to digital when I burned through one roll. As it turns out, we weren’t in the park long enough for me to take 36 pictures on film so I don’t have any digital pics from that morning.

When we went back after dark though… I really went nuts. My YouTube schooling has taught me to keep the ISO setting as low as I can when using manual mode. I was struggling a little at night so I said screw it and set the ISO to auto, and then eventually just switched to auto mode and WOW can this new camera handle lights at night. It was crazy, so I went crazy with it. I took soooo many pictures. Here are mountains of them.

It was January 7th and the christmas decorations were still up. That was disappointing. Worse, they were still playing christmas music.

Another example of an utterly mobbed theme park.

I think this is my favorite picture from the trip. I haven’t seen any of the film yet, but I can’t see anything I took topping this one.

We rode Pirates and got wet and it was under 60 degrees out so it was not the most comfortable experience.

Shooting through windows sort of became a thing on this trip. There are a lot like this from both Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios.

There was another night visit to Magic Kingdom and there will be a ton from that visit. Next up though will be Hollywood Studios. We got there early and stayed until they closed so there will be a ton of pics, including a bunch at night. I think. I might do something else instead, but that’s what I’m thinking right now.

Florida Recap Post – The Third

This installment of the Florida Recap Post series isn’t terribly exciting. It’s just a few spots around The Riviera hotel, the Skyliner, The Caribbean Beach resort, and the Art of Animation resort. In short, it started with us just hanging around, and turned into us riding the Skyliner and just getting off at random spots.

I just liked the light here by the bus stop

Our room was on the right but on the back side of the building

The Skyliner runs direct from the Riviera to Epcot, but to go to Hollywood Studios you have to change cars at Caribbean Beach

I think this is at the Caribbean Beach but I’m not sure

Art of Animation has an arcade. Maybe next time we’ll stay here.

A fountain at the front entrance of The Riviera

We were waiting for a ride to Magic Kingdom. That will be the next post.

Florida Recap Post – The Second

Here is the second in an open ended series of Disney trip recaps. This one will cover our one stop at Animal Kingdom where we discovered that our least favorite park can be pretty fantastic when the temperatures outside are in the 70’s instead of the high 90’s. It made a huge difference.

I took a lot of pictures that day so… here’s a shit load of them. There is little actual significance to any of these.

The park was insanely mobbed that day. I tried to shoot over people’s heads when I could, but it wasn’t always possible.

Almost all of my safari pics were garbage. It was the only time on the entire trip that I wish I had a zoom lens. I actually had a zoom on my film camera, so maybe there might be one or two from there that are okay, but I doubt it.

We need to go back at night so we can see all of these lights when they are lit.

As shitty pics of the tree of life go, this is one.

Oh my god does the f2, 40mm prime lens do the portrait thing well!

I think I posted this already, and I think I said the same thing in the caption, but there is a film shot of two bikes that I am sure was in a different location, but I am also equally sure that it’s the exact same two bikes. We’ll see when the film comes back.

The next post is either going to be from the resort, as well as a brief little resort hopping jaunt that Jen and I went on, or it will be Magic Kingdom at night… or both.

Flashback to a Recurring Nightmare

I grew up during the cold war. I wasn’t concerned that nuclear war might happen, I was positive that it inevitably would. You remember how things were, right?

I had a recurring nightmare. It happened every so often. I would be outside with friends and family, just hanging out and doing stuff. We’d all look up in the sky and see a rocket heading in our general direction. I, and I assume all of us, knew exactly what it was. Our number was up. We’d watch in silence as the warhead at the top of the rocket drifted ballistically into our neighborhood and then vaporized all of us.

Last Monday, while we were at the after hours event at Magic Kingdom, a big chunk of that nightmare came true. Everything except the warhead vaporizing us part. We were all walking near the Merry Go Round when we saw something that looked exactly like the rocket in my nightmare climbing into the sky.

It flew across the sky, broke into three pieces, and then the middle piece continued in the same direction while the two on the sides curled off in opposite directions. Given that I am here writing this you can assume that nuclear weapons did not destroy central Florida and that we survived the holocaust.

I figured it out quickly, but there was a fraction of a second there where I was 100% positive that my old 80’s cold war nightmare was finally coming true. Someone near us found the truth on Google. Space X had a launch scheduled for that night at about that time, and that’s absolutely what we saw.

It was awesome. Absolutely awesome. Ignoring the douchey Elon Musk asshole connection, it was the second coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida.

The coolest thing I’ve seen in the sky above Florida was of course the Space Shuttle launch on May 31, 2008. That still takes the cake for three reasons.