Three Stages of a Disney Vacation

Three Stages of Disney Vacation
Photo-A-Day #1999

Our last day at Disney. We were up very early getting ready and packing the last minute stuff into our bags. We packed most of the things last night but left a few things out. One thing was my camp counselor hat with all my Disney Pins on it. I packed that into one of the pockets of Allison’s duffel bag (mistake), cinched it up tight and we brought all the bags to the hotel lobby. There we were able to check in for our flight (so we thought) and check our bags into our flight. Our flight was to be at 3:30pm (not gonna happen) and we’d be back at the hotel for the Magical Express to pick us up at 12:40pm.

The photo is a cool technique that I learned about from Jennifer Cisney from Kodak. I was tweeting about using the panorama stitching feature on the M580 and she directed me to what is known as a Triple Portrait. This is a very fun thing that you can do with the auto panorama feature. You take a photo of someone in one frame of the panorama then when you move to take the next shot they move as well. And on the last move they also move so you get a great panorama with the same person in the scene three times. Pretty cool. It wasn’t until I looked at this that I noticed Eva’s expressions in the image. She was excited and then a bit drained and then upset. I think of it as the three phases of a Disney vacation. The excitement of going and the first few days followed by being exhausted from everything that you have done on vacation to being upset and irritable that you want to be home and in your own bed but at the same time don’t want the vacation to end.

Today we went to Hollywood Studios for our very last Character Breakfast. This time it was at Hollywood and Vine and the characters were from PlayHouse Disney. There was some Little Einsteins and Handy Manny and also Jojo. Eva did not know who Jojo was and she was not thrilled seeing her. I think it is seeing a six foot clown that can be a little scary. We had a nice breakfast and then went back to the Animation area where Eva played with some of the interactive stuff and as a family we took a drawing lesson. We learned to Draw Mickey Mouse. I enjoyed that very much. Then it was time to head out and back to the hotel for the flight home. I’ll talk about that tomorrow though.

From the Crystal Palace to Hollywood


Photo-A-Day #1998

Today Allison, Eva and I went to the Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom for a character breakfast with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore. Eva likes those characters and she was hugging all of them and we took lots of photos. Breakfast at the Crystal Palace was delicious. There were so many kid friendly and daddy friendly options. Despite that Eva had a ton of strawberries and bacon. I enjoyed Poohs Puffed French Toast, which was really fried dough, so tasty. We enjoyed breakfast and then left the Magic Kingdom but not before stopping at the hat store to get Eva’s Minnie ears personalized.

We took the monorail and then a bus to Hollywood Studios. I was getting pretty sick of the heat and the love bugs that were all over the place. I think today was one of those days that we probably should have gone back to the hotel for a bit and went swimming. But never the less we toured Hollywood Studios and saw things like Muppetvision 3D, Playhouse Disney Live, The Voyage of the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast Live. We also met a lot of the playhouse Disney characters and got even more autographs. Eva’s favorite one was from Sorcerer Mickey. We also received a wonderful piece of art from one of the animators, David Rippberger. I’m good friends with his daughter in law. She told me to be on the lookout for him and his wife Lynn. She is an animator too.

It poured for a while later on in the afternoon and we ended up eating dinner at a table under umbrellas. We headed back to the hotel and packed up for our trip home tomorrow.

What is Drew Shooting with?
Model: KODAK EASYSHARE M580 DIGITAL CAMERA
ISO: 80
Exposure: 1/500 sec
Aperture: 3.4
Focal Length: 5.2mm
Flash Used: No

Disclosure: I received this camera and the Kodak PlayTouch and 2 Kodak PlaySport HD Waterproof Video Cameras for free from Kodak in return I use them and blog about them. The opinions about them are 100% mine.

How Does Drew Protect His Photos?
Model: GoFlex™ Ultra-portable Drive CAMERA
Interface USB 2.0 or 3.0
Capacity: 320GB – 1.5TB
Automatic Backup Software:PC & Mac:
Weight (typical): 150g (.33 lb)
Software: Pre–loaded backup software with encryption

Disclosure: I received a number of Seagate devices including the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB USB 2.0 Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive, GoFlex Home, GoFlex TV and GoFlex Net. I’ll be talking about these devices in the coming months. The opinions about the devices are 100% mine.