A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
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We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED
Welcome to the latest (and final ) final part of this trip report. The previous instalment can be found in the Globetrotting trip reports forum and covers the previous day, when we left the Disney Wonder after our Alaskan cruise and headed to Victoria for the day.
You join us at the Fairmont at Vancouver Airport, ahead of our flight down to Disneyland…
Tuesday 8 September – part one: breakfast with a view!
We had set the wake-up call for 6:00am, but I didn’t sleep particularly well, as I kept having nightmares about what time I’d wake up, not because we were catching a flight this morning, but because it was today at midday UK time (4:00am Vancouver time) that tickets were going on sale for the 2016 European Swimming Championships at the Aquatics Centre at the London Olympic Park next May.
I woke up at 5:30am in the end, and very bleary eyed, I checked my emails. Just as well I didn’t bother getting up at 4:00am, as the email had only come through at 4:20am our time! I must admit I figured I’d be out of luck, as I wanted the finals, including medal ceremonies, and we were going for a Saturday afternoon, so I thought they’d be amongst the first to go, but I managed to snag third row seats, which I didn’t think was at all bad, for ourselves and my parents, who’d be coming down for it.
That done, we could start getting ready. We added everything in we’d bought yesterday into the cases, along with Mark’s coat and our outer sweatshirts, as with 90+ degree heat in California, we weren’t going to need those again. We got a shock when the big red suitcase came up at 25kgs, and the weight limit was 23kgs. A little bit of re-packing later, as the others were well under weight, but just needed a bit more crammed into them, and we were set.
About 7:00am, we headed down for breakfast – wow, what an amazing setting!
Even better was the view, and we had a window seat for all the action taking place outside, although in fairness, there wasn’t a lot of action. We’re certainly not talking about an airport on the scale of Gatwick or Heathrow for flights here.
They had a very good selection here for breakfast, and we both had good meals to keep us going until maybe Club 33 this evening… we’ll see.
Once we’d finished stuffing ourselves, our excellent server Richard brought the check, and he earned himself a good tip, as he’d only put me down for a continental breakfast, which was $7 cheaper. In fairness, I hadn’t had the hot items, but I had had French toast, and pancakes, and thought that might count, but apparently not.
I will say here that we thought about eating in the airport, but when I looked on their website earlier, the selection didn’t exactly overwhelm me, so although breakfast here was pricey ($33 for the full buffet and $25 for the continental breakfast), we figured it would be the best choice for us today.
We headed back to the room to finish packing and brush our teeth, and I caught this taking off:
All ready to go, we headed downstairs with our luggage, and paid the bill for our breakfast and the Internet. I object to paying for the Internet, but given I needed to get those tickets for my parents, I really had no choice.
Fortunately, they had luggage trolleys in the reception area, so we piled everything on to one of those, and headed off. As we’d already checked in online last night, we were able to go straight to the desk just to get our boarding passes and our bag tags. It was interesting that none of our bags were weighed, but we weren’t complaining.
Once we’d done that, we had to then go and deliver our checked luggage to what I assume was TSA, although it did seem to be Vancouver Airport security. Anyway, it was the last we’d see of them in Canada.
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Glad you got the swimming tickets!
Sometimes it's worth it to pay the higher cost of a good meal, if nothing else just because it's convenient. And should last you most of the day too! At least the view was ever-changing!
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Glad you got the swimming tickets!
Sometimes it's worth it to pay the higher cost of a good meal, if nothing else just because it's convenient. And should last you most of the day too! At least the view was ever-changing!
Strange you should say that... I'm trying to remember now, but honestly I think it may have lasted us until Club 33 in the evening, as I really don't recall eating anything else at any point - apart from snacks on the plane and they don't really count.
Having spent WAY more time than we wanted at the Vancouver airport, and needing to find food, you definitely made the right decision with breakfast. We paid well over $100 for lunch, and it was nothing special.
Having spent WAY more time than we wanted at the Vancouver airport, and needing to find food, you definitely made the right decision with breakfast. We paid well over $100 for lunch, and it was nothing special.
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) final part of this trip report. The previous instalment can be found in 
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I must admit I figured I’d be out of luck, as I wanted the finals, including medal ceremonies, and we were going for a Saturday afternoon, so I thought they’d be amongst the first to go, but 
I managed to snag third row seats, which I didn’t think was at all bad, for ourselves and my parents, who’d be coming down for it. 
A little bit of re-packing later, as the others were well under weight, but just needed a bit more crammed into them, and we were set. 
But it looked beautiful! Congrats on the swimming tickets! 
At least the view was ever-changing!
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