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Old 04-15-2009, 07:38 PM
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Donziikid Donziikid is offline
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As some of you may already know, I was lucky enough to join my girlfriend and her family on a trip down to Orlando, Florida; more specifically: Disney World. During this nine day excursion we traveled from Disney park to Disney park for four days then eventually found ourselves on a trip of a lifetime on Disney's very own cruise liner. Throughout this excursion I was enticed by good times, fabulous people and an amazing atmosphere. Plus, who would complain about 90* weather when coming from an average high of only 40*!

Being the.. erm.. genius.. that I am, I decided to leave the Nikon's behind and only bring along the Kodak point and shoot. Sadly, I am terribly regretting this decision due to the thousands upon thousands of opportunities I had to take photographs of breath-taking scenery and amazing city skylines. I'll be certain to bring along an SLR camera for the next trip I plan on taking (which, knowing my non-existent finance situation, won't be for quite some time ). However, although being limited camera wise, I found ways to make due with the limited equipment I did have. I hope many of you still find a way to enjoy the following images and slight stories that go along with it. Please bear in mind that these are not the best quality and are shot with a point and shoot! On to the stories!

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Sadly since I live up in the north, Michigan to be exact, I had quite the flight ahead of me for a trip down to Florida. Now, unlike many of you, I am sure, I have never flown on a commercial jetliner before. Small planes, sure, but these were simple prop pushers that couldn’t get you from your house to your local mall without having to stop to get fuel three times. Seeing as how I wasn’t traveling with my own family but rather with my girlfriends, I was rather intimidated. Along with never being on a commercial jetliner, I have never been through any sort of rigorous security process that you now find at the International Airports. Finding the first day already to be quite stressful, we landed safely in Orlando airport and I was now sporting five new scars on my right arm due to the girlfriend’s lack of confidence (and my over confidence..) on the commercial flight.

After landing at the airport we check into our airport hotel; the Orlando International Hyatt. Typically, I would find myself along with my family in a motel on the side of some route road that lead to the middle of no where. But, I fortunately wasn’t with that family, and we were traveling in style: they ordered the balconies. Getting the luck of the draw, my girlfriend’s brother and I shared a room that overlooked the east facing runway, which due to the directional patterns of the wind that evening, seemed to be the most used runway. Joy.

Although listening to airplanes is typically a pastime for me (yeah, right), I found the sound quite soothing while falling asleep in our nearly (not even close!) to soundproof room. Before drifting off to sleep, I managed to take a few snapshots of the runway and runway control tower before totally crashing.


After that long awaited sleep, the family and I made our way out of the hotel rooms, down to the “red carpet” and onto some of Disney’s own tour coach buses. From here we were shuttled out to Disney’s Polynesian resort, after stopping at other resorts like the Wilderness Lodge. From here we quickly checked in, but while waiting for the Alpha Female of the group to check in our reservations, I took a few more snapshots of the grand display in the middle of the resorts lobby. Unlike many other hotels I have ever stayed in, this resort had a live pond with a ten foot cascading waterfall and flowers, ferns and plants galore! Coming from Michigan, it was quite extravagant to see such lush and live plants in the beginning of April.

Skipping a few days ahead we find ourselves traveling to Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park. Obviously, as the name portrays, this park is all about animals. The first thing we did was go on the Kilimanjaro Safari Tour; if some of you don’t know, this is an animal tour where you search for animals and act as if you are saving a baby elephant from poachers. Sorry if I spoil it for some of you ‘youngins, but the elephant in the back of the car is not real! After the Safari we took the walking tour of the other animals not seen from the Kilimanjaro Safari Tour and found all sorts of animals ranging from birds to fish to ant eaters. Oh, and you can’t forget about this cute Meer-cat!

After all of the girls said they wanted to keep him as a pet, we made our way through the rest of the trails, stopping periodically to admire the amazing scenery. While looking at the scenery my girlfriend’s brother-in-law notices something large, hairy and black in the back of the bushes. Hopefully if you look close enough you can spot a gorilla in a few of these following images!



(larger file sizes linked at end)

Ending our tour of the four Disney parks, we headed back to the hotel for a good amount of shut eye since our next excursion was what everyone was waiting for: the cruise!

Again, this amazing family does not want to waste any experiences, and ordered the balcony rooms on the ship. From here you could see miles and miles out into the bays and the oceans as you cruised along at a blistering speed of fourteen knots! Looking down from my personal balcony on the initial leg of the trip, you could see sparkling deep blue water for miles and miles.

(larger file size linked at end)

During the first night we encountered beautiful clear skies full of stars and this brilliant white moon. Sitting on my balcony, sipping my complimentary (everything but booze is free!) coke, watching the waves roll by and the moon shining down, I had thoughts of how wonderful life would be if it could always be spent on a cruise. I believe we all would enjoy that.

After a shorts nights rest, we arrived at Nassau port of New Providence at 09:00. Disembarking from the ship we all moseyed our way down to the straw market, which we later found out closely resembled a black market. Turning our way back towards the ship we noticed an amazing sight; our ship squished between two Carnival cruise liners. Now, if you believe parking your car is difficult, you have never seen what these ship captains must go through backing these massive ships into place. It’s an amazing sight itself, let alone the beautiful sky and background.


Nearing the end of our nine day vacation, we find ourselves back on the ship for the second to last night of the cruise tour headed towards Castaway Cay; Disney’s own private island. Here we already signed up to swim with stingrays, miscellaneous fish and the all inclusive “Extreme Getaway Package” which included snorkeling gear for your desired amount of time and the best of the best, the crème’dele’creme of EXTREME…. a water floaty! Oh, you also were allowed to rent bikes for one hour.. I was just too interested in the water floaty to really mind about a bike ride.

Probably not the best thing to tell to a rock crawler, eh?

On the last leg of the cruise tour we were all invited (where else would you go…?) to a fireworks show on the ninth and tenth deck. Overlooking the water, admiring the beautiful moon, you could gaze up into the sky and see the most spectacular display of bottle rockets.



The first image is a merge of the two images above.

Thank you for listening to my ramble. Please, if you have any questions or comments, contact me! Thank you!

Full sized images. Please remember to click on the picture to view complete full size!
WaterFromShipLarge.jpg
AnimalKingdomWaterfallLarge1.jpg
AnimalKingdomWaterfallLarge3.jpg


Cheers,
Kyle; Donziikid Photography.
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