Sept 2008 - Disney Cruise - 4-Night Bahamas
< HomeSept 2008 - Disney Cruise - 4-Night Bahamas
Cruise and Disney World trip to celebrate my 40th birthday.
I had a GPS recorder with us on this trip, so quite a few of
these pictures are geo-tagged. The software also let me make
this
GPS Trip Log (44MB, requires
Google Earth) which is
an interactive map with smaller versions of my photos embedded
along our route.
Saturday - Evening at Epcot
We flew down to Orlando the day before the cruise with the plan to check in to our favorite hotel near the park and then spend the evening at Epcot. We had dinner at the Biergarten (of course!) and stayed for the fireworks.
Sunday - Port Canaveral
Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel and returned the rental car to the airport. We caught one of the Disney busses out to our ship at Port Canaveral. The lines were easy and the terminal was quite nice.
Sunday - Our Room
Our room was number 5524, which is classified as an inside cabin. In fact, it's one of only 6 "secret porthole" rooms on the ship. These rooms all have an outside window with a fully obstructed view. Kellie arranged to have the room decorated for my birthday before we arrived.
Sunday - The Wonder
We had our first lunch on board and wandered around taking pictures of all sorts of things on the ship. We stopped by the Spa for the tour and decided to go ahead and buy a trip-long pass to use their rainforest room. That turned out to be a wonderful way to relax and get away from the crowds, so we spent at least part of every day in the spa.
Sunday - Golden Mickeys
The first show was called the "Golden Mickeys" and it was done in the style of an awards show. It was good and it gave me my first chance to play with the low-light settings on my new camera.
Monday - Birthday at Sea
We spent a relaxing day at sea for my 40th Birthday. After breakfast we learned to draw goofy in the Animator's Palate restaurant. Then we relaxed in the Spa for a bit, found lunch, and checked out the galley tour. They sang for my birthday at dinner and gave me a cake.
Monday - Fish Extenders
All of the rooms have fish-shaped clips on the wall to leave you mail and such during the cruise. Kellie found a group on the DIS boards who were getting "fish extenders" to decorate outside their rooms and exchange little gifts. She put together goodie bags and we delivered them to all the other DIS people on the ship. I took photos of the doors as we went along. Somehow I missed taking a photo of our door, oops!
Monday - Sunset
Monday night I tried to take pictures of the sunset, but there wasn't much to see.
Monday - Evening
After the sunset, the fading light of dusk and lights on the ship made for much better pictures.
Tuesday - Around the Ship
We had breakfast at Tritons and wandered around the ship before our late-morning appointment at the Spa.
Tuesday - Nassau
We booked a glass bottom boat ride in Nassau. The ride out was pretty nice, with the guide pointing out all the landmarks along the way. The glass bottom part was a let-down. Yes, I saw a few things, but they went by so fast and so far away as to make photography very difficult. The ride back was, well, unpleasant. They held a trivia contest on the things they told us on the way out. The prizes were whistles and the kids that won them obliviously deafened the rest of us for most of the ride.
Tuesday - Pirates Party
Tuesday night's theme was the Pirates of the Caribbean party. The staff, characters and quite a few of the guests dressed up for dinner and a big deck party afterwords complete with fireworks shot from the ship.
Wednesday - Castaway Cay
Our last full day on the ship was spent at Disney's private island, Castaway Cay. We took a leisurely stroll and two tram rides to the adults-only beach. The water was calm and nice, except that you needed shoes for the sharp rocks all over the bottom. I shot quite a few frames for panoramas.
Wednesday - Disney Dreams Show
The show on Wednesday was a montage of dream sequences from many of the classic Disney movies.
Wednesday - Animator's Palate
Our last dinner was held in Animator's Palate, the restaurant that changes from black and white to color during the course of the meal.
Thursday - Villas at the Wilderness Lodge
We left the ship and rode back to Orlando to stay the remainder of our week at the DVC part of the Wilderness Lodge. This hotel is designed to look like the old national park lodges like the one we stayed in at Yellowstone. By Thursday Kellie had a full headcold from all the kids on the ship, and mine was running about a day behind her. We figured a short wait in the lobby would be good rest. The staff refused to give us our room number until ten minutes past the declared check-in time, so we ended up waiting there a lot longer than we wanted to.
Thursday - Our Room in VWL
The decor in the VWL version of the one bedroom suite is earthy, but not too dark. This room: was not released to us until after 4pm, smelled strongly of the freshly replaced carpet, had a refrigerator that was not plugged in, and burned out a belt on the washer... which required 2 calls to the front desk to have someone look into why there was rubber smoke in our room. All in all, our experience with VWL was that of the unwanted step- children of the real resort. We won't be staying there again.
Friday - Animal Kingdom
Friday morning we headed over to Disney's Animal Kingdom for an easy day that was more photography than riding. Neither of us had much stamina with our colds. So, we wandered around taking pictures of the animals. We tried the new restaurant in Asia, stayed close by for the bird show, and the claimed some seats for the parade.
Friday - Spirit of Aloha Show
After the Animal Kingdom, we returned to the resort then took a boat ride and monorail over to the Polynesian resort for dinner and a show. Our table was front row just off center, not bad. I had a great time with my low-light friendly new camera.
Friday - Fire Dancer
Part of the Spirit of Aloha show was this fire dancer. I took so many shots during his act, I just had to split them into their own section.
Saturday - Disney's Hollywood Studios
On our last day we headed over to the Studios for some of our favorite rides and a couple new ones for Kellie. She loved the Animation studio tour and especially the little classes where they offer to teach you how to draw the characters. The Great Movie Ride is always a must do. We also caught the Indiana Jones show for a change, which was decent enough.
Saturday - Epcot
We spent the evening at Epcot, mostly to go to dinner at the Marrakesh restaurant in Morocco. I was playing with some night shots, especially around the sidewalks that have fiber-optics embedded in them. After returning to the resort I caught some of the Magic Kingdom fireworks and the Electrical Water Pageant as it went by.
Pictures of Us
Most of the photos that we took of each other, from the entire trip.
Videos
Video files made with the Nikon D90. Includes Illuminations at Ecpot, some dancers at the Polynesian, the Electrical Water Pageant, and an audio sample of the ship's horn on the Wonder.