March Break 2015, Day 1: In Transit

To make things much easier on myself--and to speed up the time it takes to post--I'm organizing my photos one day at a time, starting with Day 1. That should allow me to get a new post out every day or two. I should note that due to the sheer number of photos, some of the days may be spread out over multiple posts.

Technically, our vacation started on the Friday, when we drove down to Syracuse, in anticipation of our flight the next morning. But let's face it, nothing about Syracuse screams (or even whimpers) "vacation spot," so for the purposes of the blog, Day 1 is the day we got the heck out of Syracuse.

Calling Day 1 an early day is a wee bit of an understatment. Our flight left at 5 something so we were up and getting ready at 3:30 or so. Here's the first photo from the trip, showing the whole gang at the Syracuse airport. For those of you unaware, we were traveling with our friends Chris and Nicole, their 3 kids, and Nicole's parents. A third family, Sheridan and Heidi and their 3 kids, traveled separately but were on the cruise as well.

We had one stop in Atlanta, where we spent a little over an hour. The best part of Atlanta was that we got to eat Chick-Fil-A for breakfast, one of my favorite fast food restaurants from when I lived in the South. What a great way to start the smorgasbord of food that awaited us the rest of the week.

For some reason, Lucas decided to do pushups. Or at least what he calls pushups. It usually looks like he is humping the floor.

Cute photo of Brandon, Lucas, and Jayden. Note the Chick-Fil-A boxes. Yum!

Even with the early start time, the kids had more than enough energy to keep playing in the Atlanta airport.

Once we arrived in Orlando, we hopped on Disney's bus that brought us to Cape Canaveral and the ship. Everyone poses before the ride begins.

I probably should have taken a picture of the cruise ship (the Disney Fantasy) before we got on it, but I was probably too tired, giddy, or some combination of the two, As a result, our first photos from the cruise are from our lunch on Deck 11 at the aft end of the ship. These were taken while we were still docked.

If you squint, you can see the Kennedy Space Center way off in the distance.

Best photobomb of the trip goes to Lucas.

Now to the fun stuff! Lucas started off by going down the kids' waterslide several times. What I find amusing about this photo is that he had a very distinctive bright orange shirt that you saw in the last few photos. You'd think it would help him stand out, but in this photo, he's standing next to a kid with the very same shirt.

I've included a bunch of pictures from two of his runs down the slide to show what our new Nikon camera is capable of. It has a mode that lets you take multiple pictures per second, which came in very handy to capture his expression. You may not be able to see it here, but the detail in the original hi-res photos shows individual droplets of water. Very impressive to my amateur eye.

I love how out of control he looks here.

And finally, a few shots of our cabin. We had an internal cabin, but they include a virtual porthole, which most of the time shows a picture from outside the boat so you still have a view and can tell what time of day it is. From time to time, Disney characters would float by or peer in so that was a fun feature.

You can't have a cruise without intricate towel animals. Our first one was a swan.

Getting ready for bed. Lucas had a pull out bed...

...and Marilu and I shared a queen size.

That's it for Day 1! Watch out soon for Day 2, our first full day at sea.