Don't Stop - the Pocono mountains section COMPLETED - Page 12 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Love the shots of Cody afraid of the vacuum!!! Those silly dogs. Sounds like a late night - wow. Good thing you got to sleep in the morning.
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Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
Tuesday 29 December – part two: what a great birthday surprise!
We already knew that sadly Sara wouldn’t be able to make it and that Marie and her family had been there for some time, as they had had to take her parents to the airport earlier than they thought after their flight got moved forward. I was really pleased to hear from Marnie that she would be there, as we talk most days via e-mail and yet we haven’t seen her since December 2004, which was now five years ago.
I will be honest, as I walked in, I made a beeline for her and gave her a huge hug. We could also see Jeff, who I instantly recognised from his photos on the boards. He is also just as sweet and lovely, as he comes across on the boards.
As we continued to wait for our table to continued to block everyone who was being called to theirs (we did say that if they wanted some of us to sit down, then we would, but they seemed happy with us blocking everything up and boy, was it mad in there! ). Christine also arrived and I had heard that Steve and Donna were there too. I thought that someone else was there and it turned out to be Val. Marie also arrived for a little while, although her family were eating already. It wasn’t a bad turnout at all.
Eventually, we were finally seated and met our team of two servers. Let’s just say that the girl (I’m thinking Hollie here, but wouldn’t like to say for sure, anyone else remember?) was superb. She knew who everyone’s order belonged to, but her assistant and I don’t think I ever got his name was a complete idiot by comparison. When he brought the drinks out, he stood there, very pathetically asking who had this and who had that and there was at least one drink that went back, as far as I know.
It was just as much of a mess when he brought out the appetisers. Most people got theirs, but neither Jeff nor I had ours. Jeff’s was a salad and soup, mine was lobster bisque. Finally, I got my soup and Jeff got his salad, but with a lobster bisque as well, when he had ordered the Italian wedding soup. Jeff told him that it was wrong and we both heard the guy complain about that, to which the other server told him to get over himself and get everything sorted. He wasn’t a very nice guy and I felt sorry for her, being lined up with him for this meal.
Anyway, enough of that, let’s talk about the most fun aspect of the meal and that is of course meeting all the other PassPorters that were there. We all got on great and I thought it was pretty neat that Jeff had decided to make this a family vacation of a few days and that Marie had driven eight hours to get here. Now that’s dedication for you and is a totally foreign concept to a Brit like me, who thinks that a couple of hundred miles or a couple of hours journey time is a long way to travel for anything....
We all had so much fun together and I have to say a word about Jeff here. He had this amazing bag of goodies that seemed never ending. It included things for all the kids to do a photo album of their most recent trip to Walt Disney World. It looks like they had a real blast there and it was really fun to look at it, especially having just come from there.
I will admit here that I had totally forgotten about our conversation on the boards about the Sailor Mickey from Macy’s that Jeff offered to get me, so I had no idea what was in the bag when he presented it to me. My goodness, he was way bigger than I figured he would be. I thought, with the price they were charging, he would be like a beanie, but he was a lot bigger.
What I wasn’t expecting was to then be presented with a bag containing a birthday card, signed by everyone who was there and a present of a Hallmark ornament of Eeyore. It was such a sweet thought and I know that Jeff organised it for me (Sue told me that ), which just shows you what a lovely, thoughtful guy he is. I’m so glad that we got to meet him.
Jeff is awesome! (Yes, I hope he reads this! ) That lunch was so much fun. They were packed, but so very accomodating to our group. You even got a picture of Steve admiring Christine's new Droid phone. He loved it, except for the pink color!
It was great to see old friends and meet new ones!
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What a great group! Jeff is so thoughtful - that comes across here! That Mickey is cute! Looks like a great start to your PP meet!
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Despite the one server who was lacking, it sounds like you had a wonderful meet! How very thoughtful of Jeff to organize the birthday surprise for you!
This TR is awesome Cheryl! My DH and I keep saying how we want to visit Hershey Park and the Amish Country and after seeing your beautiful pictures I'm going to make that trip happen. Sue and Steve's house is beautiful and the pets are so cute. Sounds like they kept you and Mark quite busy!
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Tuesday 29 December – part three: “you’re at the house already?”
OK, time to talk about the food, as we’ve covered just about everything else about the meal now. For appetiser, I went for the lobster bisque soup, as you’ll know from my earlier comments about the service, which was good, but richer than I thought it would be, while Mark had the Italian wedding soup. I have never heard of this, but I was told it had meat in it, so it wasn’t an option for me. Mark seemed to like it anyway.
Do you think Mark liked it?
For entree, I thought I’d go for something light, as Sue had of course warned us that we had pasta for dinner tonight, so I got the wood-grilled salmon salad and I’m glad I went light, as this salad was massive. I managed to finish it though and all the flavours combined together so well. Mark had the balsamic glazed chicken and I didn’t hear any complaints from him, but I know that he also tried to go light and found his was more than he expected.
He had had enough by then, but I still had room for dessert, especially when I saw tiramisu on the menu. Boy, that was good and there was so much of it. When it turned up with a candle in it and everyone started to sing happy birthday to me, I was really touched. I had almost forgotten that I had just had a birthday and it was such a lovely surprise.
I think someone else enjoyed their dessert too! ... and someone samples some of Sue’s
All too soon, it was time to settle up the bill and that worked out fine and we got our servers to get a group photo of us altogether. I think, but the time that was done, some people had already gone, which was a shame, so I don’t think everyone’s included.
Paying the bill
It had been so much fun and it was lovely to meet everyone. Thank you so much all of you for driving so far and joining us for the meal.
Bravo:
Appetiser 8½ 9½
Entree 9 9½
Dessert 9 N/A
Service 7½ 8
Atmosphere 9 9
Value for money 9 9
Average score: 8.82
We headed back towards Sue and Steve’s, with Sue stopping on the way to see her dad at the hospital, who was doing a lot better by now, which was really good news.
Still nice and cold out!
Then it was back to the Pocono Wilderness Lodge. As Sue pulled up to pick up the mail (I love how they do this! ), she also got a call from their friends, Joe and Lauren and their daughter Joy to ask where we were. She asked where they were and it turned out they had already arrived at the house earlier than expected. It took us all a bit by surprise, but it was really nice and we soon got to know these guys, especially once the bar opened at Charley and Joe’s.
Guess who? Not-so-reclusive cat! Mark plays the role of the animal whisperer again! Ooops.... Steve trying out the breathalyser and he passed!
Sue served up pasta with meatballs and shrimp for me. Dessert was ice cream for me and apple crisp for everyone else.
During the course of the night, we had some international pinball championships between the UK (which was basically Mark, as I have never played in my life : ) and the US, with anyone else who fancied playing.
We also had a few drinks watched a bit of the Glastonbury music festival (I can’t believe you guys have never come across Madness, such an awesome 80s band! ) and then a really stupid horror movie that just had to be seen to be believed, it was so bad. It was all about a group of kids out in the woods with a mad bear that was eating them all, one by one. We turned down the sound and made our own commentary for it, which was much funnier. At times, it got to the stage where it hurt to laugh and we couldn’t laugh anymore. By the end of the night, Joe, Lauren and Joy were all like old friends to us. It had been a great night.
The weather today was dry and sunny with temperatures in the high 20s. The best thing today was the PassPorter meet. The worst thing today was the traffic getting to the meet. The funniest thing today was the horror movie in the evening. Today we tried going to Allentown for the PassPorter meet And the result was it was a lot of fun. The most magical moment today was getting my birthday card and present from everyone at the meet.
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). Christine also arrived and I had heard that Steve and Donna were there too. I thought that someone else was there and it turned out to be Val. Marie also arrived for a little while, although her family were eating already. It wasn’t a bad turnout at all. 
), which just shows you what a lovely, thoughtful guy he is. I’m so glad that we got to meet him. 
) That lunch was so much fun. They were packed, but so very accomodating to our group. 
: ) and the US, with anyone else who fancied playing. 
watched a bit of the Glastonbury music festival (I can’t believe you guys have never come across Madness, such an awesome 80s band! 
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