The Castle's of Disney

First let me start off with apologizing for the delay (again).  I wanted to work through the Disney pictures as other are building up.  However, I had to get a new computer (and I still have not installed Photoshop yet, so all these pictures are directly out of the camera).  For this reason when you click on the image, you will be getting full size images (I have not cut them down at all).

When one thinks of Disney, the castle pops right into head.  The Magic Kingdom is known for there main castle (technically Cinderella's castle).  But a castle by any other name (maybe a giant hat or a golf ball looking thing).  Here are some interesting pictures on what might in some cases be termed loosely as castles.

Since our first Disney day was at the Animal Kingdom, lets show the Tree of Life (technically not a castle, but its my blog and I can be loose with the definitions if I want to).

So we have a hot Quin and Autumn (I have not said this yet, but we were in Florida during the major heat wave).  The tree of life is in the background.  It is one of the more interesting structures of Disney (well thought out) with all the animals together in the bark. Not the best picture of the tree (I think I have one from the past somewhere), but I wanted to include this park (and the weather did not cooperate as when we were closer to the tree later, it was raining quite hard).

The next Disney Park we visited was the Magic Kingdom.  This one is known for its castles (and it is adding more).

The theme of having people stand in front of the castle is prevalent (hey its a vacation and we need some of the "standard" pictures, and the castles are the best places for them).  The castle looks good during the day.

It also looks good at night.  This is just before the fireworks.  It required a very steady hand to hold the camera up over my head, steady enough for a dark shot in a crowd of people moving around. Came out pretty good.  I needed an ISO of 800 (which I try to avoid on the SX260), but I did not get much noise at all, and was able to hold still for 1/13 of a second (and a reasonable zoom).

I did say that they were adding castle's and here is one of them.  This is Beasts castle.  It is quite far back behind a wall (in an area under construction).  I had to use almost all of the 20x zoom to get this picture.  It looks interesting (looks almost like a toy).  I wonder how it will be setup when it is open.

So next we were off to EPCOT.  There are multiple buildings that might be able to be called castles in the different areas of the world, but I will just stick with the globe at the beginning.  My best pictures of this came at night.

So I was being funny in this picture.  The princess (see she is wearing a tiara) wanted a picture with the globe.  I figured I would set it up around her head.  I had to use flash, but with a slower shutter speed (to get the dark areas).  She and I did a good job of holding still.  I can't say that for everyone else as they all look like ghosts of themselves (I like this one).  I did take another after showing this one off (guess my sense of humor was not appreciated).  However, that one is not as interesting.

Our last Disney park was Disney Movie Studios.  If I stick with my theme of the main icon of the park being a castle, we will get a wizards hat.  Note, I obviously did not take this picture (was my turn to join the group in the foreground).  Not much special about this one except to say that it is nice that Disney hands out those little cards (we used the same through all the parks).  Hand the card to the photographer, and when you are done, with your vacation, log into the site, and you can see all your pictures.  It is a bit pricey, but a nice alternative to have everyone in many shots.