A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - Page 14 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Some great photos of the donkeys and cows. I love the little signs for the donkeys with their likes and dislikes! Glad you made the ferry and you got some nice photos from that and of the Needles earlier. The chairlift looked like fun to the beach. I rode on one of these descending from Mount Pilatus in Lucerne Switzerlaand some years ago aand really enjoyed it.
Glad the passports were found and you must have made a mad dash into the house!
Enjoying the photos so far of the wildlife park and you captured the butterflies very well!
__________________
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!
Some great photos of the donkeys and cows. I love the little signs for the donkeys with their likes and dislikes!
So did I - I thought that was so cute!
Quote:
Glad you made the ferry and you got some nice photos from that and of the Needles earlier. The chairlift looked like fun to the beach. I rode on one of these descending from Mount Pilatus in Lucerne Switzerlaand some years ago aand really enjoyed it.
Oh cool - we're hoping to go back there, that sounds like something neat to do!
Quote:
Glad the passports were found and you must have made a mad dash into the house!
I was just hoping and praying they were where they were supposed to be - I was so relieved they were!
Quote:
Enjoying the photos so far of the wildlife park and you captured the butterflies very well!
Sunday 5 June – part three: where are the buffalo?
The next animal we saw was the lynx, and we don’t usually get to see them being this active, but this one was pacing up and down its cage…
We then moved over to see the wild boar, complete with litter of piglets.
As you can see, a lot of the piglets were flat out, but that didn’t stop their brothers and sisters who were awake, coming over to annoy them, and in some cases, treading over them. Nice!
We carried on walking, and found these two…
The one lying down was literally right by our feet, and didn’t appear bothered at all that we were there. I sometimes wonder if that’s a good thing or not. Ok, so I know most of these animals will never be released back into the wild, but even so, it just crosses my mind that perhaps they should have a little more fear of us.
One of the wallabies was at least active and eating…
… and I did manage to capture this guy as well:
We found ourselves by the wolves, and my first few attempts to get some decent shots were somewhat hampered by the fence in between us.
However, when we moved round to the side of the enclosure, I was able to get some much better shots:
We made our way back to the entrance, but ended up being captivated by this owl, who was very active, and flying around. Once again, photography was very difficult with the fence in the way:
We realised that we’d now done the whole park, but we hadn’t seen the buffalo anywhere. I pulled out the map, and realised where it had said deer encounter was in fact a huge section of the park, so we figured we’d go round again, so we could see the bit we’d missed out. We came across the otters, and they’d now been fed, so were a lot more active.
We would later find out these are brothers, which is why they love playing together so much.
We headed back into the greenhouse, and once again, the ferret was out:
This time in the nocturnal section, we knew what we were looking for, as we’d seen the outdoor area of the badger enclosure earlier on in our tour, and this time there was a badger all curled up. It’s not the best shot, but you get the idea.
Great photos of all the animals and especially, since many were closeups!
__________________
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!
Sunday 5 June – part four: feeding time for the otters!
We found more activity in the next otter pen, probably because they were due to be fed in about 20 minutes time…
The noise they make is a bit like a squeaky wheel, and in the next pen, with this group together (they decided to move just as I took the shot )…
… the noise was just unbelievable!
We headed over to the deer enclosure, and this was a very eclectic mix of animals. There were deer…
… then there were the giant otters, which we were later told are the most dangerous animals in the park. Wow, I had no idea!
They were massive. There were also some more ordinary sized otters as well…
Another attraction here were owls, although again it was very hard to photograph them through the fencing….
We headed down to the buffalo enclosure…
These two headed towards each other, then just stood there, staring the other one out, but doing nothing else. We kept figuring one or the other would move, but not a bit of it. We sat there for about five minutes, and were going to wait for the keeper talk at midday, but that was still about 20 minutes off, so peaceful as it was, without any animal activity at all, I figured we’d give up, and head back.
We found these deer, and one of them obviously wanted the massive tree branch as substitute antlers, the way she was waving it around, trying to eat it!
As we headed out, we found some very excited otters…
We then found out why – feeding time! The keeper was just coming, so we watched them…
This was their beef lunch, which I found a bit weird, as I didn’t think that was entirely natural. Apparently they have chicken for breakfast, beef for lunch, and then fish for dinner. They apparently like to eat any small meat. There was even a robin, who got in on the action, and nicked a bit. Carnivorous robins – who knew?
We carried on walking, and found the first set of otters nearest to the entrance now playing in a big tub of water. These were the playful brothers…
We were at a beautiful garden/nature centre in Cornwall a couple of years ago, and we watched in horror as the captive otters there were fed dead baby ducklings ........ There were otters happily running around with tiny duck feet sticking out of their mouths, and we overheard a nearby family trying to explain to their small child that it was pieces of bread, whilst their slightly older daughter looked on with a cynical expression on her face.
And then in Edinburgh zoo we watched as they munched on frozen white mice.
I do love otters, they are one of my favourite animals, but I wish they ate, oh I don't know, something innocuous like lettuce!
__________________
Silvercat
(Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels Parts 1, 2, 3 & the new volume 4" - available now as e-books)
About This Page: 
Glad you made the ferry and you got some nice photos from that and of the Needles earlier. The chairlift looked like fun to the beach. I rode on one of these descending from Mount Pilatus in Lucerne Switzerlaand some years ago aand really enjoyed it. 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
How cool to come upon a kangaroo sunbathing. 
)… 
We sat there for about five minutes, and were going to wait for the keeper talk at midday, but that was still about 20 minutes off, so peaceful as it was, without any animal activity at all, I figured we’d give up, and head back. 
Linear Mode
