Dreams do come true – our Med cruise! **Updated 6/30** THREAD 1 *COMPLETE* - Page 18 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
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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PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
What a fabulous evening! Hurry back with more, but I never want the TR to end. Just out of curiosity how many pictures did you take? And how do you keep them in order, if you download them at different times?
I took about 5,000 shots this trip and they're put on the laptop every day / night. I put them into separate folders for each day, which is how I keep them in order. I was very good and re-sized all the photos, ready for this trip report, while I was away on the cruise, so all I had to do when I got back was upload them on to the site I use for my photos - I say "all I had to do", it took most of the day we got home and another good three hours earlier this week to do them all!
Tonight I had the Harissa spiced crispy calamari with pepper and lemon dip, followed by watermelon and mint soup, which was divine. I think that obviously chilled soups are a real speciality on this cruise. (Let’s just say I wasn’t surprised later in the cruise to discover that they had a soup chef on board).
Mark went for the azurian peppered tuna rolls, followed by roasted vegetables.
For main course, I had the cumin seared sea bass with orange relish, while Mark had the chipotle grilled sirloin steak on the bone. Honestly, when the main course turned up, it was looked like half a cow on the plate. I have never seen such a huge portion of meat in my life before!
For dessert, I had the Golden Mickeys chocolate award, while Mark had the caramalised Date and Hazelnut pudding.
As for the quality of the food, I would rate it much better than Parrot Cay last night. Again the cold soup was a winner, but the sea bass was also beautiful.
Dinner was very leisurely, so leisurely in fact that it was 10.30 before any of us knew it and the others needed to get to bed, as they had an early start for their shore excursions the next day. We headed back to the room and bed. This was the sight that greeted us when we opened the door. I love the way that you’d come back to a treat like this every night, it was a lovely touch.
The weather today was sunny in the morning, but rain by the afternoon and then dry again by evening, with temperatures in the 70’s. Today we walked 1.95 miles The best thing today was dressing up for formal night. The worst thing today was the rain in the afternoon. The funniest thing today was getting all those free drinks out of Disney! Today we tried formal night on the Disney Magic And the result was it was lovely to see everyone all dressed up in their finery, it was a very special sight. The most magical moment today was getting all the professional photos taking and feeling like a star!
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PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
Your meal looks and sounds devine. I personally love chilled soup. I've had a cold cucumber soup, vishy something (potato), gazpacho, and a strawberry soup but not : watermellon. Your desserts look
Great dress-up pictures. It looks like it was a special evening. More please!
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Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
Monday 28 May – part one: where do we find the taxis?
We were awake just before 6.00 and decided to go up on deck, as we were coming into Palermo, our first stop on this cruise. I was surprised at how few people there were on deck, considering that a lot of the shore excursions were due to leave at around 7.00. I had thought that people would be checking out the view before heading off to their meeting points, but obviously not.
It was lovely to see us getting closer and closer to land, although (and I never thought I’d say this!), I was sad that we didn’t have another day at sea to enjoy the Disney Magic. That would have been nice.
Having watched that, we went back to the room for a while and then headed won to Lumiere’s for breakfast, as we could take our time with no shore excursion to take.
We were very impressed when we were asked if we had been asking about getting a menu for the Golden Mickeys dinner last night. Yes, we had asked last night and were told that we couldn’t have one, as they only have enough for their own needs (seems a bit odd to me) but they did offer to copy one and were as good as their word. That was very well spotted from us giving our room number for breakfast.
After breakfast, we headed out for Palermo. Our original plan was to catch a taxi over to the furthest point that we wanted to walk to, having discovered the night before that the city was a 20 – 25 minute walk (or so Rachel, our ever so accurate cruise director had told us!), but when we got off the ship, we couldn’t see any taxis. There were lots of dodgy looking guys offering use taxis, but my instinct was to say “no” to them, but as Mark said, maybe that was how you get a taxi here, as there certainly weren’t any others to be found anywhere else. Regardless, I didn’t want to risk it.
I got a couple of photos at the entrance to the port:
We walked up the main road from the port and it was a bit like Nassau, full of people hawking all sorts of things, like taxis, carriage rides and even sightseeing tours. A simple “no grazie” dealt with them. They weren’t nearly as pushy as the ones you see in Nassau.
I love your food photos! I am already planning my choices for our trip. Definately the spicy calimari.
Thanks for all your hard work putting the TR together.
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And another yummy meal 
More please 
: watermellon. Your desserts look 
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