Adults only – sampling southern England COMPLETED - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Well that was kind of fun to stumble upon some old memories. It's a beautiful beach too.
I absolutely love this photo with the trees!
Look at them! Gorgeous.
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Tanya
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The beaches are lovely and glad you could experience some memories of these from your childhood!
Like those £1+ homes. Do love them, but beyond me! I'm sure you and Mark will be renting one of those next Summer if I know how your tastes run!
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
The beaches are lovely and glad you could experience some memories of these from your childhood!
Like those £1+ homes. Do love them, but beyond me! I'm sure you and Mark will be renting one of those next Summer if I know how your tastes run!
__________________
October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
The beaches are lovely and glad you could experience some memories of these from your childhood!
Like those £1+ homes. Do love them, but beyond me! I'm sure you and Mark will be renting one of those next Summer if I know how your tastes run!
__________________
October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
The beaches are lovely and glad you could experience some memories of these from your childhood!
Like those £1+ homes. Do love them, but beyond me! I'm sure you and Mark will be renting one of those next Summer if I know how your tastes run!
__________________
October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Double post! It wasn't finalizing and got error messages! Anyone have that problem tonight?
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Last edited by SuperDave; 05-27-2014 at 09:36 PM..
And one more! Took forever to load and never got confirmation that it did!
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Last edited by SuperDave; 05-27-2014 at 09:38 PM..
The beaches are lovely and glad you could experience some memories of these from your childhood!
Like those £1+ homes. Do love them, but beyond me! I'm sure you and Mark will be renting one of those next Summer if I know how your tastes run!
Gosh only in my dreams! While you're right about my tastes, part of the reason we can afford nice places is our DVC membership, as we never have to pay for our accommodation at Disney, which does free up a nice chunk of change for other holidays....
Sunday 4 May – part eight: is this ever going to come out?
By now, we were both starving, which wasn’t surprising, given what we’d eaten so far today, so we decided to head straight for our dinner stop for the evening, which was the Smuggler’s Haunt.
This is a Beefeater restaurant, a national chain, of which we’ve got a couple in Maidstone. We always find them to be reliable places to eat. You know what you’re going to get, and I also knew they had a new spring/summer menu, which I was looking forward to trying.
I was convinced that I’d eaten here before with Mark, but he was equally convinced he hadn’t. I figured he’d recognise it straightaway when we arrived, but so I guess he was right…
We were about 45 minutes early for our table, but it was no issue and we were seated straight away, and settled down to check out the new menu. It certainly has a lot of new items on it, which is good to see, as it gives you the opportunity to try new things, and I certainly made the best of that opportunity.
For appetiser, I went for the crispy salt and pepper prawns, battered salt and pepper prawns fried until golden brown, and served with ranch dressing and a wedge of lemon. This was a new item on the menu, and I thoroughly enjoyed the prawns. They’d been cooked very well, although the ranch dressing was a bit spicy for my liking.
Mark went for the improved classic prawn cocktail, sweet juicy prawns on a crisp lettuce, tomato and cucumber salad, with our creamy Marie Rose sauce, and crusty buttered sourdough bread. Now when they say classic, they do mean classic. This dish has been on the menu at Beefeater for as many years as we can both remember – and our memories probably go back to the early 1980s for me. The fact it was improved was intriguing, and we found out how when it was brought out…
Mark had one or two issues with the Marie Rose sauce though. It just wouldn’t come out, no matter what he tried. Remember those old tomato ketchup bottles, before they introduced the squeezy ones? They’re the ones you’d be patting forever, nothing would come out, and then suddenly it would all come cascading out. Ok, now you get the picture of what happened here…
For entrée, I went for the lemon and herb tilapia, which is brushed with lemon, garlic and herbs and then grilled to order, served with buttered potatoes, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes. It’s a fish I don’t eat that often, but I do like it, so I try and eat it whenever I get the chance. It was beautifully seasoned, and I really enjoyed it.
Mark went for the Beefeater mixed grill, a platter of flat iron steak, chicken breast, gammon steak, and two pork sausages, with ultimate chips (fries to you guys ), grilled tomato and mushroom, battered onion ring, a fried egg and garnished with pea shoots.
For dessert, I know what I wanted as soon as I saw the new menu. There were a number of new sundaes now available, and the chocolate and honeycomb one took my fancy. It was described as ice cream layered with crunchy honeycomb pieces and gooey chocolate sauce, finished with a whip of cream, a wafer and chocolate popping candy.
When it turned up, Mark told me there was no way I was going to eat all of that. Oh boy, after so many years together, sometimes how little he knows me! I knew how hungry I was and I knew I would be able to polish it all off, and I did too! I have to say it was absolutely wonderful, and a great addition to the menu. I hope they’ll keep it for some time.
Mark had the classic bannoffee pie, which is crunchy biscuit, toffee and cream, topped with slices of fresh banana and drizzled with warm caramel sauce. When Lisa, our server, brought it out to us, they apologised and said it had had a bit of an avalanche, and it did appear to have done!
I need to say a word here about Lisa. She was a great server, and before the restaurant got busy (and boy it did get busy towards the end of our meal! ) she chatted with us quite a bit, which was so nice.
I also need to say here that one of the reasons we came here is I’m a member of the Beefeater loyalty club (see any pattern here? ) and I can trade in my points for money off vouchers. You can either get £5 (c. $8.25) off your meal, or for the same number of points, you can get two free starters or two free desserts. Well, as a starter or a dessert here is about £5 each, you can guess which I opted for. So we ended up with both of our starters and both of our desserts free. The bill still came to £40 (c $65), which was quite a lot, but that does include two large glasses of wine for me and a shandy for Mark. I was certainly glad we had those items free!
Smuggler’s Haunt
Appetiser 8 7
Entrée 8½ 8½
Dessert 9 9
Service 9 9½
Atmosphere 8 8½
Value for money 8 8
Average score: 8.42
We headed out of there just after 7:00pm, and made our way back to the B&B. We saw Celia and Richard and asked for a slightly later breakfast at 9:00am, as the National Trust property I want to visit in the morning doesn’t open until 10:30am, and it’s only about 15 minutes away, so I couldn’t see the point in eating much earlier than that.
The weather today was warm and sunny with temperatures in the high 50s. The best thing today was visiting the Tank Museum. The worst thing today was not being able to park and visit Castle Corfe The funniest thing today was Mark with his sauce for his prawn cocktail. Today we tried visiting Studland Beach And the result was we much preferred the quieter Middle Beach than the packed Knoll Beach. The most magical moment today was watching the bunny rabbits play outside our B&B.
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I'm sure you and Mark will be renting one of those next Summer if I know how your tastes run! 
Anyone have that problem tonight?
While you're right about my tastes, part of the reason we can afford nice places is our DVC membership, as we never have to pay for our accommodation at Disney, which does free up a nice chunk of change for other holidays....
so I guess he was right… 
), grilled tomato and mushroom, battered onion ring, a fried egg and garnished with pea shoots.
I have to say it was absolutely wonderful, and a great addition to the menu. I hope they’ll keep it for some time. 
) and I can trade in my points for money off vouchers. You can either get £5 (c. $8.25) off your meal, or for the same number of points, you can get two free starters or two free desserts. Well, as a starter or a dessert here is about £5 each, you can guess which I opted for. 
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