cherryblossom

the elves scare me.

What, no photos of you doing the chicken dance with Miss Lillian??? I think Eric was more excited that he finally got the kiddie coaster credit.

mmm Cinnamon bread.

Eric is going to make a great photographer's assistant

^^ actually that's too much red hair for 1 family

I must have missed the weather station guy with the "Idiots guide to Weather" Now that is funny!

I completely forgot it was his birthday! Does anyone remember his name? He told Robb he wanted to sign up for a trip next year. Thanks for the comments everyone! Glad you are enjoying the pictures so far. Wasn't that guy's name Tom?? And I thought he was joking that it was his birthday.

I think my ears bled on the Mind Eraser! The mistake of wearing sunglasses!! OUCH!

Actually he was really scared... he almost peed his pants.

^^ everything here is called coke

So true! *Wank!* This is a great trip report--I really am looking forward to the rest of it! And to Candace, I'm sorry about bashing your knee around on the crazy Bumper Cars at Knoebels last night! That's alright... I didn't need that knee cap anyway!

If you are just looking to take better photos with your digital, I recommend picking up this book: Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson It's an excellent book.

The D40 is an excellent camera. My biggest issues were the limited lenses that were available to use. The ones I wanted would not AF. Also there is no command mode for the SB600 EF. I still have my D40 and have recently purchased the D200 as my main camera. Congrats on the new toy

chiming in with my theories... Ben is one step ahead of everything and is where he wants to be because he goes back and forth in time. Ben sent the therapist to find Juliette by time travel Also, the person on the boat would probably be more of a shocker than Michael, I could be wrong here but I think it would have to be more shocking for Locke since Ben told him to sit down. I'm thinking it could be 1 of 2 things... if they are playing the time travel game... Ben could say to Locke "my man on the boat is YOU" if they're going to go there. So if they DO go there, all bets are off. if they DO go THERE, then my vote is that it's Locke's dad, because that'd be a shocker.

Thank you!! Most of the shots are straight out of camera. Some shots the levels/curves were bumped up to bring out the color better, but other than that it's the settings I used in the camera... f/stop, iso, aperture, etc.

Day 5: Animal Kingdom: Thursday January 31st, 2008 This update will close out the trip report. I covered day 6 in the Universal update. Day 7 was boring and involved driving north a lot. Animal Kingdom was another first for the trip for me. We had another great crowd day. Also, the weather was perfect again. Upper 70’s/ Lower 80’s and I never noticed the heat once. As far as the park goes, I enjoyed the park but I am not sure if I would be dying to go back anytime soon. As far as a theme park goes, AK is obviously lacking. But for being day 5 of our trip, we really needed a park like this, one where we could take it at a slower pace. Candace liked the park a lot more than I did. She loved the zoo part of the park and took almost as many pictures of the animals as she did the fireworks and parades. Reviews: Expedition Everest This was a lot better than I expected. The line got to around 40 minutes mainly because it was closed in the morning. We rode it once before the line got long and fast passed it for a 2nd ride. Everest was definitely a surprise. Dinosaur: I have ridden Indiana Jones at Disneyland and was looking forward to this ride since it used the same ride system. I didn’t really enjoy Dinosaur unfortunately. I think one reason was, being the first ride of the day, I was worried how the roughness was effecting Candace since she was feeling sick. I felt Indiana Jones utilized the ride system better. Primevil Whirl: This was the only ride I rode on the whole trip where I only rode it for the credit. I didn’t ride the Flying Unicorn or Woody Woodpecker for example because they just didn’t interest me. This was my first “spinning mouse” roller coaster and I didn’t really enjoy it. I’ll get my fair share of them this summer, so maybe this was just a bad ride. Well, that concludes the trip report. Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting! Now for the pictures: Thanks for reading, thats all! Surprisingly, a lot of the animals weren't sleeping in the afternoon. I could easily mistake this for a waterfall in the Great Smoky Mountains down the road from here. The park really has some beautiful pathways. One more tiger shot for good measure. This guy would absolutely shred someone if it wanted to. I loved the tiger exhibit. I'm pretty sure he was laughing at the drenched people getting off of the rapids ride. This guy stayed stayed pretty much subdued the whole time. This guy was extremely interested in everyone that was watching him. We try and represent the all types of animals including the reptile family. Back to the daydreaming. Despite popular belief, gorillas do not like Jack Black. In between afternoon daydreams about Naomi Watts, gorillas eat a lot of bamboo. The safari leader pointed out this tree to us, so we took a picture of it. I don't remember the significance of it but it's a good picture. Ever since "Dude, Where's My Car?" came out I have had a slight phobia of these things. I have read reports of people waiting 90-120 minutes for Kilimanjaro Safari. We walked right on to it. What was with all those roller coasters pictures in that last update? Oh look, elephants, that's more like it! Mt. Everest was a lot better ride than what I was expecting. Our first visit to Animal Kingdom was a relaxing one.

Edit: I accidently posted these last two updates under Candace's screenname-Eric Day 4: Universal Studios/Islands of Adventures January 30th, 2008 Although we went to both Universal parks on Wednesday and Friday, I have decided to combine both days into one update due to lack of pictures. Before this trip, I had only been to Universal once. We only got to ride 5 rides the entire time and had a miserable time. Naturally, I left with a poor impression of the park. On top of that, most of the rides at Islands of Adventure were finished and were just sitting there tantalizing me. I had originally planned to do both parks in one day and spend the extra day at Magic Kingdom. About a month before the trip though, I found a great deal where for only $6 more than a one day/two park ticket, I could get unlimited access to both parks for seven days. This was a no-brainer to me, so we decided we would spend Wednesday and Friday at Universal parks. I was really glad we did this because in the end we had a blast and one day wouldn’t of been enough. The crowd levels were perfect for both days. We started out at Universal on Wednesday and the longest wait we saw on the electronic board was 15 min. for Mummy. The wait was actually about 5 minutes and only because it takes 4 minutes to walk through the queue line! We walked on to pretty much every other ride. The same thing was the case at Islands of Adventure. Everything was a walk-on except for the Pteranodon Flyers which had a 60 minute wait. The weather was once again perfect. We were absolutely blown away by Islands of Adventure. I guess we were so in awe of the park that we hardly took any pictures of all! I can’t even fathom how I would react to DisneySea. We definitely failed in the photo part of this report but I’ll use our first visit to an amazing park as an excuse. Reviews: Incredible Hulk: Great and smooth ride. We rode it 3 times each day. Never had a rough ride once. I kept my head off the headrest (which is rare for me) and that prevented what minimal head-banging there was. Dueling Dragons: Loved everything about it. Loved the queue building (especially since I walked straight through all 6 miles of it) and loved the dueling aspect of it. I guess my favorite was Fire if I had to choose. The pacing on it seemed a little better than Ice. (Question: Do they allow you to use the re-ride option when the line is long?) Revenge of the Mummy: We only got one ride on Mummy thanks to it being closed all day Friday. This was a shame because I probably would of liked it more with a second ride. There just wasn't anything that really stood out about it in retrospect, except for the fire near the end. Men in Black: My favorite ride in Universal Studios. I am really a fan of these shoot-em rides now. Never rode one before Buzz Lightyear earlier in the trip. [/b] Once again, we didn’t get very many pictures but here are the ones we did get. We close this update with a disclaimer. Never let your guard down when you in the company of a photagrapher! Either that or get more sleep. I'm thinking of the awesomeness of Islands of Adventure here. One for each roll. I love cobra rolls! Ooooh! Brakes! Are they really necessary for this ride? Me too. Are you shocked to actually be seeing roller coasters in this trip report? This picture is important because not only do we have another roller coaster picture, but we also have Mythos and Dueling Dragons in the background. If you like close-up coaster shots, we got a few here for ya. Candace didn't get a lot of ride photos on this trip, but she made up for it a little bit with a ton of Hulk pictures. Incredible Hulk was running great both days we were there. Finally made it to Islands of Adventure! I am glad that Universal is getting a new ride but I was a little disappointed that Back to the Future was gone. Add this building being closed along with the Jaws refurbishment and Mummy being broken, there really wasn't much to do at USO on Friday. Although Terminator is a bit irrelevant to me now, I still enjoyed Terminator 4D almost as much as 10 years ago. This guy was just a tad creepy but at least we got one of the few shots of Candace and I together. I didn't get to ride King Kong when I last visited but I am sure Revenge of the Mummy is an improvement. Thank you for not being crowded this time around! The Central Park area of New York was transforming into Mardi Gras central. The park was preparing for their Mardi Gras celebration. Its time to take a Disney break and see what Universal Studios has to offer.

Thanks sorry for the blurry ones!!

thanks! I'd like to think it's both

wow... Thank you very much!

one hell of a photographer you have!

I'm pretty certain it was Germany.

Hiya! My husband, Eric aka ernierocker, said I should come here and introduce myself. I will be joining in on the East Coast Trip, although I'm not a roller coaster enthusiast as Eric I do find them fun on occasion. I am a 26 years old, I live in Tennessee and I'm a graphic designer. Looking forward to the trip!