Chris & Amy's Trip report.

Well I'm going to follow Ham Ham's lead and put it here.

All and all it was a good trip but the drive down took a lot out of me this time. I do most of the driving and it took a few days to come out of 'it'.
I always get a kick out of the run away ramps, it's silly I know.



This was our welcome to Disney, rain to which you needed to drive 20 klm's per hour just to make sure you don't hit someone or the other way around.



The first night was spent at DHS. It was a light rain all night so I figured it would be a good time to see Toy Story. NOT, 70 minute wait in the rain. I'll see it another night.



We stayed at CSR and found it wasn't for the us. It was a great place but it seemed to be missing something for us, can't put my finger on it. Would I stay there again, yes but not our first choice.

The view from the room.





My favourite part of Christmas at the World is the Castle Lights.





A major derailment at the American Christmas Tree in Epcot.



We went to Kennedy Space Center one day in the first week, man it was cold, 12C according to the truck. I loved it but Amy hated it.
This is the Rocket Garden at the visitor center. Seeing what these guys rode into Space in real size is incredible. The amount of tecnology in these things was down right scary, one of the guides said a modern calculator has more power. Up until the Saturn rockets, the rockets they rode into space were modified ICBM's. Riding a bomb into space, those guys had guts, The Right Stuff no kidding!



State of the art computers for their time.



In the Garden there are displays that you can touch and crawl around. This is a F1 motor for the Saturn 5, I came up to the tube thing on the bell, it towered over me.



This is the launch platform where the Apollo 1 crew died on the launch pad during a test. It is now a National Monument.







I just love the Saturn 5 and everything about it. To see the one on display was just amazing. These things were 36 stories tall and weighing 6 million pounds. It took 5 F-1 rockets to lift this sucker off the ground with 7.5 million pounds of thrust that propelled the rocket to 6000 mph and 38 miles high in under 3 minutes.They say at the time, the launch of a Saturn 5 was the loudest man made noise other than a nuclear bomb.

This one is an actual rocket that was part of the Moon program. The program was stopped because they decided to go ahead with the Space Shuttle program, so instead of scraping it they put it on display.







That's my darling wife Amy standing under the rocket.


The Explorer is a real size mock up of the remaining Space Shuttle's.



How they load cargo.



We are represented ;D.




That's it for now, I can't tell a story like some so I try to with pictures. I'll see if I can update some more during the holidays.

 

Nice shots.

Those Saturn rockets are huge.

I spent a couple of weeks at NASA in Houston doing a documentary.

I got to try the Canadarm and walk through a mock up of the space station.

Next time were in WDW I wonder if I could convince the girls for a day trip to KSC.

 

GREAT report so far! ; LOVE the picture of Everest, simply beautiful!

Funny how you said you felt that CSR was 'missing' something. ; I get the same vibe there. ; Nice as you said, but not my first choice either.

70 minutes for TSM huh? ; Not bad, the night I was there it was 100. ; Thank Zeus for Fastpass. ; ;D

 

Wonderful report thus far - thanks so much for sharing. ; Love the Kennedy pictures - it's a great spot, isn't it?

 

Hi Chris... ; so far so good.

I'm with your wife on the whole 12C though!!!!!

I too had that same "feeling" about CSR when we were there. ; Nice, but....

 

Ham Ham, I think the other tour had something to do with the Space Station and Nasa today. We took the historical tour, at the launch pad for the Mercury missions there was a museum with volunteers there that had previously worked for Nasa showing you around. That is where the computer picture came from. That bunker (they called it something else) was only 400' from the pad, the reason was copper lost conductivity past that distance. Looking out the window thinking that's not that far if something went wrong and it did often those days. Apparently that is why they made the buildings at odd angles, the newer ones were dome shaped, to deflect a rocket out of control.

The guy we had was one of the guys who helped strap in Neil Armstrong for that historic flight. The way he was talking he got to know most of the guys that had gone into space around that time, almost a family kind of thing by the sound of it. I almost started to cry when he was talking about losing three friends in that fire, he wasn't there but a friend of his was, describing how helpless they all were trying to save them. From that loss, a bunch of safety programs were implemented. He talked about how it was very dangerous the whole space thing was but it didn't hit home till that day.

If Amy is an indicator it's not really a girl thing, she is usually pretty good about these things. I burned up a tonne of brownee points that day. It's gonna take forever to build them back up ;D The cold didn't help at all.


Miss Megara, the Everest shot was a fluke. We were coming back to the room and I happened to see it and of course took about 10 pictures. I didn't even know you could see Everest from CSR.

 

Just a couple more space pictures.

A replica of the Rover.



This is one of the launch towers where the Shuttles take off. They just used this one for Discovery but the other one is being retro fitted for the Space Shuttle replacement system. I didn't know there are just a few Shuttle launches left.



This is a shot just outside El Centro.




One of the days Animal Kingdom had EMH late and we had never been after dark. It was great to see it in a different light (pun intended ;D) so we went later in the afternoon.
Look at the horns on this sucker.



I got Amy unsuspecting.



Everest during the day.



Everest at night.



Just an Elephant pic.



This was from Wonders of Flight, I love this show, I have to see it at least once a trip.



Some more animal pics.











This was from Lion King.



The Vine Lady.









Looking back on the way out.





If you are getting bored let me know.

 

Keep it coming.
What do you kind of camera do you shoot with?

 

Bored???? ; No way!!!!

 

Ok you asked for it. ; ;D

Amy bought me a Sony DSC-H7, 8.1 Mega Pixel, 15x Optical Zoom, last Christmas after I wined about our other Sony point and shoot camera not being good enough on last years trip. The shot of the launch tower was 5 miles away, not to bad for a mid $300 camera.

If I can post some more later I will. Got to go to the West End for work tomorrow, worst drive on the planet East to West Toronto.

 

Keep the pics coming!

Reminding me of the sights haven't gone to in quite a while and should check out next week!

 

lovely shots - neat to learn about different cameras too!

 

Well I have a bit of time today so I'm going to put another chapter together.

As far as I am concerned this is the most dangerous store in all of the World.



After a day of shopping and escaping the Art of Disney with minimal damage we decided to take in MVMCP that night. It worked out good because it was one of our days we didn't us our 10 day passes, therefore a good value to us.



Last year we pre-booked our tickets and it rained all night. This time I picked a nice cloudless night and enjoyed in so much more. Spent a bit more but had great weather.



The stage show near Buzz Lightyear. Can't for the life of me remember the name?



My favorite part of my trips, the fireworks. If they stopped the nightly fireworks I would seriously maybe almost not go anymore.




Throw in a parade and I'm 12 years old again and don't have a care in the world. The only time I feel like a big kid again is the last morning when you open the door and that envelope is hanging from the handle!





I'll try to add some more later.

 

Great pictures Chris!!!!! ; I too took alot at the parade and fireworks ; with my Sony DSLR. ; What settings were you shooting with?

And keep them coming!!!!

 

beautiful!

 

thanks for shareing ...great pic

 

Settings, well I tried them all ;D. It seemed to work best on auto with the flash off for fireworks. The castle lights were on the night setting with me propped up on something solid like a garbage can or railing. That only guarantied about 1 in 5 pics clear. I've learned to take a bunch of those because they look alright on the little screen but look like cow patties on the computer screen.

The one thing I try to do is not shoot anything with the flash, I find it washes the picture with white and doesn't represent the true colors of whatever I'm shooting. Maybe I'm using it wrong, more than likely using it wrong but it seems to work for me. I'm sure I would be able to get better shots if I understood the instruction book better but this mind of mine just can't grasp all the shutter and ISO stuff.

The only thing I'm having trouble with is the night pictures. Most of the parade pics have the ghost shadows of the person in them but the backround is great. Change to sports setting and the detail is lost but no ghosts. The great thing about digital is most of the time you know you either got the shot or didn't, so you can play around until the memory is full.

 

how far was the Kennedy Space Center from wdw ? were is it?

 

Chris - did you change your lenses for the nighttime shots? ; I don't know much about cameras (just got a DSLR recently) but what little I know is that the lowlight lenses tend to be better for Spectromagic/ firework shots...