Adults only – sampling southern England COMPLETED - Page 35 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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The Chinese room looks like a lovely place to sip a cocktail. Too bad that wasn't possible.
Dinner looked delicious though, especially desserts!
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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
All of the photos of the Chinese Room were beautiful. Lovely room to relax and enjoy. Your drink looked very refreshing. I have never tried salmon before but the presentation was very nice.
You really must try salmon - it's lovely.
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It looked like the sweet little kitty was waiting for a ride
Thursday 8 May – part one: exploring the Roman Villa…
I didn’t do too badly this morning, waking up just before 7:00am. I was pleasantly surprised to look out of the window, and see that it was dry, given the appalling forecast for today. Basically it was supposed to rain pretty much all day, so that was at least a hopeful start to the day…
We headed down to breakfast just after 8:30am, and sadly miserable server was back again. I guess it was just his day off yesterday then… We had our usuals, with Mark filling up from the hot buffet, me getting my eggs benedict with no ham and a couple of pancakes, along with some toast for both of us.
All fuelled up, we headed back to the room, and got togged up in our wet weather gear, as I wanted to walk down to see the Roman mosaic in the grounds of the hotel. It was still raining, but it was only light, so I figured it wouldn’t be that bad.
We set off, and as you can see from these photos, it was a bit of a miserable day.
In hindsight, we made a mistake by walking around the outside of the historic house, as that probably added a good five minutes outside in the rain, when we could’ve just walked through the historic house. Oh well, live and learn!
We found our way over to the Roman villa, which by the looks of the interpretation boards, would’ve been something really special in its heyday…
Today this is all that’s left…
We made our way over to see the mosaic and it’s very impressive. We liked the way that there was a covering over it to protect it (apparently put up by Warner Leisure Breaks in 2000), although as Mark pointed out, they really need something to stop the birds getting in here, as there’s bird mess on the mosaic in places, and that’s not going to do it any good.
To give you some background, the mosaic was first discovered back in 1722 by William George, the estate steward of Sir Frances Popham. Sadly, only a couple of years later, it was reburied (and I have no idea why – the signs didn’t explain that ) and it was lost again until 1977. It took a couple of years to restore it, as some of the panels had been destroyed by the weather over the years.
And before you ask those are both our umbrellas drying out at the far end of the shot! I took this to try and give you an idea of how hard it was raining! And this is what’s on one side of our room key, a representation of the mosaic we’d just seen!
Once we’d finished admiring this, we walked back to the house, ensuring we took a much more direct route this time and I got some photos of both the house and the gardens on the way back.
Then we made our way over to the leisure centre, as we had our rifle shooting booked for 11:00am, but I was presuming with the rain, it wouldn’t be happening. Sarah, who had taken us out on Tuesday confirmed that was the case, and it would be the same for archery as well, so our day didn’t look too promising, with both our activities now likely to be cancelled.
Can you imagine the time it took to put that mosaic together? Wow. It's in excellent shape for being so old. Very cool. And your umbrella is too cute!!
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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
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. I have never tried salmon before but the presentation was very nice.
We had our usuals, with Mark filling up from the hot buffet, me getting my eggs benedict with no ham and a couple of pancakes, along with some toast for both of us. 
Oh well, live and learn! 
We liked the way that there was a covering over it to protect it (apparently put up by Warner Leisure Breaks in 2000), although as Mark pointed out, they really need something to stop the birds getting in here, as there’s bird mess on the mosaic in places, and that’s not going to do it any good. 
) and it was lost again until 1977. It took a couple of years to restore it, as some of the panels had been destroyed by the weather over the years. 
The mosaic is beautiful and I'm sure it was much more peaceful to enjoy with the rain keeping everyone else away 
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