Dreaming of a Disney spring break - part three COMPLETED - Page 63 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Yeah, where did Eeyore go?? I found Tigger and Pooh several times at different parks but I have NEVER seen that cute donkey. Poor baby, once I finally spot him, I might knock him over with joy!!
I know - and of course we all know who's the most popular Pooh character, right?
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Loved the pictures of the Canadian gardens, the colors are just beautiful. Sorry no Eyeore sighting, we did not see him either, we saw Pooh and Tigger in the UK a couple of times but no Eyeore.
I am just shocked at the lack of crowds in the WS on Easter Saturday! I know crowd levels for that week (especially the weekend) are crazy so I'll bet the other parks were mobbed.
We always enjoy our meals at Restaurant Marrakesh. It's one of our "hidden gems" and we know that we can almost always get in there with no wait. We'll have to check out the film in France and hopefully we'll get to see the whole thing!
Sorry you did not see your favorite Donkey. The only place we have seen him was at AK with all the WTP Characters, we got pictures last October there with him. It would be great to see him around more often.
Your Epcot pictures this day are fabulous and so colorful! I especially love the one with the duck and the F&G Festival with the monorail included. Canada looks so beautiful through your lens, too. And I did see the sparrow!
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Sorry you did not see your favorite Donkey. The only place we have seen him was at AK with all the WTP Characters, we got pictures last October there with him. It would be great to see him around more often.
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.
Saturday 23 April – part four: we’ve never seen the animals do that before! :
I noticed that one of the Twinings tea tours was due to start in a few minutes’ time, so we went back into the shop and asked where we sign up for it. A Cast Member, Rayid from London, told us that he’d be taking it and we signed up. We spent the next few minutes talking to him and then headed outside into the burning heat again.
Over the next 30 minutes, he took us round the various teas that were shown in the garden and explained about each of them in turn. It was very detailed and interesting. At the end of it, I felt a lot more educated about the various teas we had seen. I’m a very conservative tea drinker. I know what I like and I stick with it, but having heard about all the different teas, I might (only might mind... ) be tempted to try something else.
We learnt that the Irish are the world’s biggest tea drinkers, although I’m not sure that anyone on the tour believed him when he said that! We also heard how caffeine is one of the first things to come out of tea, so if you want to de-caffeinate it, then you should put the teabag in, then drain the water and repeat a couple of times. I guess that means I always get lots of caffeine, as the teabag is lucky if it lasts a minute with me!
We also had a couple of really weird things happen. One was when a guy came up and said that the tea the guy was talking about tasted like “dead frogs”. We were all like “what?” I suspect that perhaps he’d had a few too many drinks today. He was certainly on something!
The other one was Alice, who’d just arrived out to do meets and greets. “Don’t believe a word he says” she told us and then Mark asked what tea she liked. Her response was fantastic. “Whatever I can fit in my tea cup”! She was on top form today!
We thanked Rayid for his tour and headed slowly out of World Showcase and back to the Beach Club. It was so hot again, it wasn’t true. So much for any prospect of it cooling down... it later transpired on the news that the temperatures wouldn’t be cooling down into the mid 80s until Friday.
We drove back to the Animal Kingdom Lodge and spent the next couple of hours in the room.
We had the depressing task of packing in preparation for our journey home tomorrow. We had pretty much done the small red case, but we added a few more bits into it, although it was tipping 23kgs. Fortunately, the next case came in at around 20kgs, so we had some leeway there and could throw a few bits in there if we needed to.
We also got someone from the engineering team to come and help with our small red suitcase, whose handle had broken. She was great and, as she said, a first for her, bringing Duct tape over for a guest to repair a suitcase handle. Still, it worked.
Around 5pm, we headed over to the concierge lounge, all 20 steps of it and got stocked up on cheese. There wasn’t just cheese, there was also hummus dips, carrots, celery sticks, roasted peppers and mini flans. It was a wonderful selection and much better than earlier in the day. You could easily make a nice dinner out of this.
We had found British chocolate that we still hadn’t eaten or given away, so after getting some more help from the concierge guy on duty, Wayne, we asked him to share it all with the concierge staff as a thank you to them for their service over the last couple of days. We were going to give it to Ryan, who had been so helpful yesterday, but sadly he wasn’t working today.
Then it was back to do the rest of the packing. Fortunately, everything just about seemed to fit in, which is always a good start.
It was here that we found our invitation to the Sunrise Safari the next morning:
We headed down to meet Bruce and Marta just before 6.30 at Boma, getting some photos on the way. I think I should explain at this point that we’d had a little bit to drink in the room, as obviously we couldn’t take an open bottle of wine home with us!
We stopped at concierge for a bit of a laugh to ask if they could get us into the Crystal Palace for lunch tomorrow. I know, I know! We’d already looked online and found nothing, but we figured it didn’t hurt to ask, but they didn’t have any luck either – big surprise, huh?
We were at Boma for a slightly different meal, as the menu is different on a Saturday night, but to be honest, neither of us were overly impressed. I found that there was a lot of meat on and I didn’t really like the salad choices. Don’t get me wrong – I found enough to fill me up, but it just wasn’t that outstanding.
The stand-out was desserts, with the zebra domes superb. It was interesting to discover that the passion fruit panna cotta that I’d had previously is made with apricot. Tonight it had an apricot gelee base, so I peeled that off, as I didn’t want to push my allergy too much.... fortunately, again I was fine with the apricot in the panna cotta.
Boma:
Appetiser 9 N/A
Entree 8 9
Desserts 9 8½
Service 8 8½
Atmosphere 9 9
Value for money N/A N/A
Average score:
We couldn’t comment on the value for money, as Bruce and Marta paid ( guys) as we’re planning on getting some of their favourite South African wine and bringing it with us, so that they have it on the Alaskan cruise.
We sat there for a while, after we’d finished eating, before heading out to have a look at the flamingos. My goodness, what a noise they were making out there! We weren’t sure if they were mating or fighting!
We saw a giraffe turn up on the savannah, so headed that way and I managed to get some night-time shots of the giraffes and eland we saw out there. We saw the giraffes running around and apparently they were playing with each other. It’s something I’ve never observed before and was fascinating to see.
Unfortunately, we were all getting bitten, so we decided to beat a retreat back inside. We headed up to the concierge lounge, where we sat chatting for quite some time, before we had to say our goodbyes. At least we would be seeing them again on the cruise in just four months’ time!
We needed an early night for our Sunrise Safari tomorrow morning. Once again, mousekeeping had done a sterling job with turndown!
The weather today was hot and sunny and in the 90s. The best thing today was The worst thing today was saying goodbye to Epcot.
[b]The funniest thing today was Today we tried eating at the concierge lounge And the result was there’s a good selection for breakfast and late afternoon. The most magical moment today was
Did I understand that correctly that Boma has a different menu on Saturdays? Why? (It's 3am here, so bear with me if that's a stupid question or if I misunderstood)
Is the Twinings Tea Tour free? Is it only during the Flower & Garden Festival? I think it's something mom would absolutely love, but I don't know if it would be on in October.
Anxiously awaiting your Eeyore interaction, but I know we have some more fun stories to read through first! Can't wait to hear about the safari, and see photos!
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The only place we have seen him was at AK with all the WTP Characters, we got pictures last October there with him. It would be great to see him around more often. 
,
Looks like you found him exactly where we found him! Love it! He was great with our DS too! 
Melanie
: 
) be tempted to try something else. 
We were all like “what?” I suspect that perhaps he’d had a few too many drinks today. He was certainly on something! 
She was on top form today! 
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