Disney Cruise…Shots of the Fantasy Coming In

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We headed over to Cocoa Beach a few days ahead of our cruise and had a couple of wonderfully relaxing days at the Inn at Cocoa Beach. It was a much nicer place than we’d used before for our transition days between Disney park and Disney cruise. On the first full day in Cocoa Beach we saw the Disney Fantasy pull in from its dry dock time. Here are a few shots I got with my long lens.

Saw the New Alien Movie Today…

No significant spoilers in this one.

We liked the movie overall. The characters were much more believable than those in Prometheus. It was violent, bloody and rather depressing, but as Lorna pointed out, that’s the Alien franchise across the board.

I wouldn’t go see it again, but it was definitely worth a movie ticket to see it once. From what I’ve been hearing this is supposed to be a series of several more movies before things are wrapped up and this one certainly makes that clear.

Starting through the vacation pictures

This is our first weekend home again after vacation. I think we’re almost caught up on sleep and feeling human again 🙂 I’ve got most of the pictures from vacation together in one lightroom archive and ready to work on. Loads of pictures to be worked through but I’ll start posting here as I make progress…I expect quite a few postings over time.

Waiting for ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ to start and taking pictures…

This was a somewhat different photographic vacation from previous trips. I picked up a 100mm-400mm lens for my SLR last winter and wanted to give it a spin. This resulted in many more cell phone and small camera pictures (for anything that needed a wide angle) and lots of long and tight shots with the SLR as swapping out that monster for something wider was a bit of a hassle. Overall I think it worked out pretty well but only the final results will tell the tale.

The Disney Fantasy Approaching Port Canaveral

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Continue reading Starting through the vacation pictures

Home again and settling in

We flew back from Orlando Monday evening. The flight was already scheduled to be late (9:20 out of Orlando to about Midnight here) and got bumped and bumped. They started telling us there’d be a short delay and by the time we were done, the flight headed out after 11 PM and we finally got in after 3 AM.

Lorna had picked up something that seems like strep throat at the end of the cruise and by the flight home she was pretty unhappy. I had started to feel some soreness in my throat as well. With the late hour and throat problems we’ve both been a bit frazzled for the balance of the week. Lorna gave it a couple of days and yesterday she set up a doctor’s appointment.

I worked Tuesday and Wednesday but by this morning my throat was getting worse as well. I decided to take the day as a sick day both to avoid possibly spreading the problem as work and to try to double up on the appointment. We did get looked at but so far we haven’t heard back about whether the strep test was positive. We are now on antibiotics and seem so far to be getting better.

I expect that this weekend is going to be a bit of a recovery weekend.  We’re both still a bit worn out and Lorna’s not feeling the greatest. Got to get everything unpacked and squared away and get things rolling in the right direction.

I’m going to try to start working on my vacation photos this weekend. There are a lot of them and I still have some storage chips to load into the lightroom repository and the photo-pass pictures to download from my disney experience.

Hoping to hear from folks that we met on vacation who stop by the site…drop an email to kyle@ninecrows.com or comment on one of the items here to keep in touch.

Waiting for the ‘magical distress’ bus…

Our last in-park meal this year was at the Sci-Fi restaurant. Cool and cheesy in equal measures. Lorna and I were both a bit worn out by this time (and she had picked up a sort throat on the cruise with a mild fever) so we really didn’t fully enjoy our last few hours in the park.

The Sci-Fi dine-in theater. Last day in this year’s vacation.
Another shot of the Sci-Fi restaurant…cell phone picture but my Pixel-XL does an amazing job in the low light there.

Vacation is over for all reasonable purposes. At this point we’re just hanging out in comfy chairs in the lobby of the Disney Boardwalk resort. Devices recharging after a last day of use and before the craziness of the airport.

Hitting the bus at 6 PM with the flight making it to Manchester by sometime after midnight. Going to be a painful work day tomorrow running on a few hours sleep for a nine hour day. Expecting that this coming weekend will be a recharge and recover time.

Lorna got a bit of a bug at the tail end of things that left her final day less happy than might have been hoped. She seems to be feeling better now…hoping the flight home is uncomplicated.

Best shot I got this time around of storm troopers on the march.
Amazing chandelier in the entrance to the Disney Boardwalk resort. We only stayed there a couple of days but we enjoyed it.
Final shot of the theater before leaving Hollywood Studios (our last park for this year’s Disney vacation).

aww…

 

Delayed into port on our Disney cruise ship.

We are going to be hitting dry land a bit after noon today rather than early in the morning. The Disney Fantasy was just out of dry dock for this double dip castaway key cruise. Last night as we were getting to sleep, they announced to the whole ship that we’d be late into port Canaveral as there was a propulsion problem. By this morning they had put numbers on it. Currently sitting in our cabin waiting…

Second Batch from this morning…

A few more from this morning (large batch of originals as I was shooting pretty much everything that moved)

We’ve stayed at various places in Cocoa Beach before Disney Cruises in the past The Inn is the nicest by a good stretch and we’re almost certain to stay here again next year. Cocoa Beach has been moving from a spot to stay for a couple of days between Disney and a cruise to a destination of its own. It is a great place to unwind a bit after spending days running around Orlando doing fun but exhausting things.

A Walk on the Beach

There were fewer pelicans on the beach this morning than I had hoped for but I managed to get some great shots of other critters roaming the sands…