A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - Page 24 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Monday 6 June – part three: you cannot take him anywhere!
We then made our way through the Oceanview Café, which is the Eclipse’s counter service restaurant, much like Topsiders or Beach Blanket Buffet. It’s very light and airy. Contemporary is a word we kept using to describe this ship…
They certainly seemed to have a good selection up here, much better than we’d had in Moonlight Sonata earlier. Maybe this is the place to come?
I liked these neat little touches they had in the “walls” of each of the serving pods – very cool!
We continued our tour along deck 14. I like the way they have these overhangs, so it doesn’t matter what weather you’re sailing in. I think Disney could do with these…
I also liked the fact that blankets are freely available…
Yes, on Disney you can get them, particularly on the colder cruises, such as Alaska, but I’ve never seen them available like this.
We headed into the Solarium, as I hadn’t got many photos yesterday of this area, and I wanted to put that right today. I absolutely love the feel of this place, it’s just so cool, that’s the only way I can put it!
Mark found these… and look what happened when he tried to get into one!
Honestly, you cannot take him anywhere!
Mark kindly offered to turn on the hot tub, so I could get some more realistic photos…
They really seem to be paying attention to detail in the common areas. Not only are there towels laid out on each lounge chair, but they are presented just perfectly. I suspect that it won't be quite so perfect once people start filling it up, but still took some time to do. It seems the kitchen might need some lessons from the towel handlers on presentation. Oh, boy! Mark in that lounge is something else!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
The solarium looks fantastic! I love the hanging double hammock! Mark was so graceful getting into that chair! My DH would do exactly the same I fear....
The hammock looked cool! I keep seeing in your pictures a pillow (?) on the lounging chairs that have a x on them - I was wondering if that's just a decoration or a way to say they are available and if turned over there's a symbol to indicate the chair is taken?
American breakfast, and English breakfast. Cool!
All those empty chairs are soooo inviting. I can see why Mark wanted to sit in one! Lots of places to lounge around, I love that!
__________________
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
They really seem to be paying attention to detail in the common areas. Not only are there towels laid out on each lounge chair, but they are presented just perfectly. I suspect that it won't be quite so perfect once people start filling it up, but still took some time to do.
I have to be honest, that's pretty much how it was throughout the cruise. That was very impressive.
Quote:
It seems the kitchen might need some lessons from the towel handlers on presentation. Oh, boy! Mark in that lounge is something else!
The solarium looks fantastic! I love the hanging double hammock! Mark was so graceful getting into that chair! My DH would do exactly the same I fear....
The hammock looked cool! I keep seeing in your pictures a pillow (?) on the lounging chairs that have a x on them - I was wondering if that's just a decoration or a way to say they are available and if turned over there's a symbol to indicate the chair is taken?
Monday 6 June – part four: how busy will “family time” be?
With that, we made our way back to our room….
I liked the inset entrances to the rooms – easier for passing in the corridors
… and had some down time, before changing into our swimming gear, then we headed upstairs to the Solarium. I was a bit worried that it might be busy, given it was now officially “family time”, now it was past 10:00am, but I needn’t have worried, given how few kids there were on board. However, at the back of my mind, I did think they might all make a beeline for this, but not at all.
When we arrived, there was one guy swimming, and there must’ve been about six or seven other people sunbathing. We immediately headed into the water, and the pool was deceptively big for a cruise ship. I have two memberships at home, one for a 16 metre swimming pool near where we live, and another or a 10 metre pool near where I work. The one near where I work is a 10 metre pool, and I know I cacn do eight backstrokes in that time. Well, this one must’ve been about 12 or 13 metres, as I could get in 12 metres, and even then, I was stopping short to avoid the steps into the pool.
I have no idea how many lengths I did, as I wasn’t counting, and that must be a first for me, so it was kind of liberating. I reckon I probably did 20 or so, so it was a relaxing swim for me, given I usually aim to do 800 metres in total when I go two or three times a week.
What I liked about this pool was that as well as the traditional steps you go down backwards into the water on, they also had ordinary steps at the other end. I have no doubt that’s probably for those of more limited mobility (I think that’s the polite way of putting it), but I was happy to use them. They also had an edge around the pool, meaning you could sit in the water, and wooden benches, so you could sit on those, if all you wanted to do was dangle your feet in the water. All very nice touches.
I will say that the water was colder than I thought it would be. We saw a couple of people venture into the water, and head straight back out again. I didn’t think it was that bad, but given it was undercover, I thought it might be a bit warmer than it was.
When Mark headed out of the pool, I joined him in the hot tub, which was a lovely temperature. We sat in there until the bubbles finished, then we made our way back to our sun loungers that we’d bagged ourselves earlier. We were careful not to leave them alone with our stuff on for too long, as every single one of them had a warning on that if you left them unattended for more than half an hour, they would take your things, and you’d have to retrieve them from the deck supervisor. In a way, it’s fair, although I don’t think they needed to worry too much this morning…
We settled ourselves down on our loungers, and were there for maybe half an hour, during which time we both dozed. I was conscious not to actually fall asleep, as I had deliberately chosen ones that were in the sunlight. Remember this for later…
Eventually, I decided to go and check out whether the cool ones that moved near the hot tub were free, and one was, so we decided to move over there instead. I have to say this felt very luxurious. It was like you were cut off from the rest of the world. Unless someone walked directly in front of you, no-one would see you, and it felt very exclusive. I managed to get in very elegantly, but Mark did a repeat of his photo op earlier on, and literally ended up with his feet in the air again.
We sat there again for maybe half an hour or so, with Mark reading his book, and me reading my Doctor Who Monthly magazine. I find it so neat that I can freely admit to this now, and it’s no longer a geeky thing to do. It’s the 500th issue this month, and when I looked back, I’d purchased almost half of them during the years, and all through that time, it’s never something I’d have admitted to, as watching Doctor Who was never cool – not in the way it now is.
Eventually, I felt like I needed to move, as I hate sitting there with a wet swimming costume on. Usually when I swim at home, I either head straight into the hot tub or steam room, then I shower and get changed. It’s very weird for me to sit down and dry off.
We headed back to the room, only to discover it was still being cleaned, but as he was working his way through the bathroom, and had dealt with the rest of the stateroom, we figured we’d just wait, and he was done in about five minutes.
After he was gone, I got some photos of the activity dockside…
We didn’t stay in the room too long before heading out to get lunch. I insisted on heading up a deck to deck 10 to get some photos of the library, as I’d seen it a couple of times now from the elevator, but I wanted to get some shots in there. I only got one, as there were people in there, and I didn’t want to disturb anyone.
Although breakfast had only been a few hours before, it wasn’t great and we were both getting hungry, so we made our way up to deck 14 and the Oceanview Café, which is their counter service restaurant. Now we’d walked through here at breakfast, and thought the selection then was pretty good. My goodness, it was nothing compared to the selection they had for lunch.
Honestly, if you could not find something you wanted, you are seriously a picky eater! They had just about everything you could ever hope to find on a buffet.
I got as far as the cheese counter, and I was sold, so I filled up on that with a few biscuits…
Mark went for “more Piglet” as he termed it. I warned him he’d end up looking like his favourite character at this rate…
Once I was done with my cheese, I headed back to the dessert counter to try out some of the tempting offerings, including orange chocolate mousse, strawberry shortcake, something coconut (sorry, I can’t remember the details ) and chocolate imperial, and all of them were excellent.
As it’s a cruise, and you can eat what you like (and frankly, it’s all no calorie – right? :whistle), I also got some pistachio ice cream, and some kiwi and guava sorbet…
All were very nice, except I felt very cold after polishing off that little lot.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
Maybe this is the place to come? 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
My DH would do exactly the same I fear....
Alaskan Mom aka Bonnie
In a way, it’s fair, although I don’t think they needed to worry too much this morning… 
They had just about everything you could ever hope to find on a buffet. 
) and chocolate imperial, and all of them were excellent. 
Linear Mode
