dizbang

April 4-14 will be our 45 trip to WDW. We've stayed at most of the middle and upper hotels. If you have a car then AKL is not that bad. They have good bus service to the parks but I prefer driving. The AKL is probably the cheapest of the luxury hotels and the architect that designed Wilderness Lodge also designed the AKL. Both Boma (Swahili for animal enclosure) and Jiko are VERY good restaurants and there is a lot to do around the hotel. The Wilderness Lodge dock has boats to the Magic Kingdom. All three monorail hotels have rooms (at extra cost) that face the Castle and at night we usually watch the fireworks from our balcony looking across the lake. Buy or borrow from the library two books - The Official Walt Disney Guide (Birnbaum) and the Unofficial WDW Guide (Sehlinger). The truth is somewhere between the two:) On our April trip we're spending 5 days at the Poly and then 5 days at The Grand. Hope your trip is a good one.

I like Sony cameras. I've been recording Disney parks for more than 20 years. Over 2000 hours worth. I started with a video camera and portable (HAH!) VCR, then later a VHS camcorder, then standard 8, high 8, and then digital 8. I just got my Sony SR-1 and am moving into the 21st Century. In two weeks we go to WDW for 2 weeks and I'll be shooting in 1080i. In all those hours of shooting with Sony, the only problem I had was with a tape transport mechanism locking up. It was repaired and back in service. Fortunately, I take two video cameras with me in case one goes down. Although I'll be able to edit and burn this stuff the files are WAY too large to post. Hope to talk to someone later about compression. At 25 gb to the hour it's a drive hog. I can only get 40 hours of video onto a 1 tb drive. Oh well....

I'm new to this site but I'm also in IMDB. Check out Vampire Sisters. As for getting into CG, although I use mostlly high end software, there are cheaper alternatives to start with. Blender is a FREE open gl program with fairly good results. Although I use World Builder Pro and now Vue Infinite for my background plates (landscapes) you can get a FREE version of Bryce 5.5 in the current issue of 3D World Magazine. Also an artist can learn how to use a software package but it is difficult do "learn" to be artistic. Just my 2 cents worth.