A tale of two cities… and a few other places… COMPLETED - Page 9 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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.
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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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This site does very sobering and he can't imagine it being family friendly.
No, and that's why I was shocked they put a planetarium in there, as that is very much aimed at families. Ok, so you can get a separate ticket for it, but a lot of people would think "I'll just get the combined one and see everything" and I think they'd get a shock. I didn't see any warnings on the website as to just how harrowing our visit would be... more to come on that on a second....
Saturday 16 September – part five: a bit too much…
The lift took us straight up to the top of the dome, and it was very surreal to get out of the lift and realise where you were. We browsed around up there…
… then we settled down to watch a film about this place, except really it wasn’t. First, it took us both ages to get our headphones working. They were supposed to come on whenever you were in range of something they wanted to learn about. However, most of the time outside of the film, if you literally stepped away to look at someone, that was it, you’d lose the volume completely or get interference of some kind. Not great. It didn’t help that ours were supposed to come on in English, and we both got German, which was a bit surreal.
Once we sorted that out, we learnt about how they created the V1 and the V2 rockets, and I was pretty appalled to discover that the person who was behind them Wernher von Braun went on to live in America, become a naturalised citizen, and helped with Saturn V. I had no idea, so this all came as quite a shock to me. Mark knew, so he wasn’t as shocked, but as we then walked around the exhibit looking at the rockets that were born out of war, I just felt very uncomfortable.
That sense got even worse when we went into the section about the Doracamp, where they had drawings of life there, drawn by Leon Delabre, a painter and curator of Belfort Museum, and a fighter in the Resistance. I could just feel my anger and resentment building that the Americans took in a man who, while not responsible for life here, worked with the people who were. We had quite a discussion about this, as I appreciate he was a scientist, but the whole thing just left a very bad taste in my mouth somehow.
We also got to see colour photos from an official photographer with the Nazi regime. Albert Spier, the Nazi’s Minister of Armament, ordered that a documentary film and photos be taken of the V2 assembly chain in the underground factory. The photographer was Walter Frentz, Hitler’s personal photographer. They were fascinating, but sick as well, as you just knew they probably weren’t true. The scientists appeared to be working hand in hand with those in the labour camps, and I suspect that really wasn’t the case, given one set of people here had no option but to work. It just goes to show how good Nazi propaganda was…
It got worse from there on in. There are no photos, as I couldn’t bring myself to inflict the sights we saw in the images on you. They were from deportation camps that were liberated at the end of the war. The pictures of people that were now more like skeletons and the piles of bodies as far as the eye could see will stay with me for a very long time.
It really made you think, but if you know what I mean, it was a bit too much as well. I was quite shocked that there were no warnings in this section about what you were about to see. Remember my comments earlier about it having a planetarium and me feeling this was a family orientated place? Oh my goodness, it wasn’t. I don’t think I’d want any child under the age of about 11 or 12 seeing this…
It really brought us down to earth, and I think there was more to see up here, but frankly if there was (the signage wasn’t very good at this point), I couldn’t bear to see it, so we made our way out…
It was as if the skies knew what we’d just seen, as they were very dark and sombre as well. Honestly, we didn’t talk much for the first few miles, as I think both of us were just appalled at what we’d just seen. I just hope enough people see things like this that it sticks with them and the world never has to go through anything similar again…
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That was quite the exhibit and none of it good in any way in regards to Nazi Germany. Very strange about NASA's Saturn V rockets and how they were begun in Nazi Germany and created by one of their engineers and brought to the USA by this person. Not what I wanted to hear!
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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!
That was quite the exhibit and none of it good in any way in regards to Nazi Germany. Very strange about NASA's Saturn V rockets and how they were begun in Nazi Germany and created by one of their engineers and brought to the USA by this person. Not what I wanted to hear!
I had a feeling that might be some people's reactions. That made me feel very uneasy.
Saturday 16 September – part six: a 10 metre hill and thousands of lost lives
We made our way along the main motorway…
… and eventually turned off, heading to our third destination for the day. We stopped off when we found this place. It’s called the Warlencourt British Cemetery, which is where more than 3,500 Commonwealth soldiers are buried, more than half of whom were never identified.
The Butte de Warlencourt was the scene of some savage fighting in autumn 1916. The German Army set up on top of an ancient burial mound, which was only 10 metres high, but it gave them the advantage of having an observation post there, and they were able to turn it into a heavily fortified position. The British Army tried on many occasions to take the hill in late 1916, but never succeeded. In early 2017, an Australian patrol discovered the Germans had actually abandoned the hill, but even then, it took another year before Butte de Warlencourt was finally liberated.
As we stood here, taking photos, I could just see rain in the distance, so we made our way back to the car, and sure enough, it started to rain shortly afterwards, although just a short shower thankfully. On the way, we found these beauties…
… and drove through this village:
As Mark said, it probably had to all be rebuilt following the Battle of the Somme, which raged through here in the First World War.
As we headed through here…
… you could just picture the battles across the flat land, with neither side gaining much in a day in terms of land, but losing thousands of men.
Then we saw what we’d come here to see…
This is the Commonwealth Memorial in Thiepval, which is a memorial to more than 70,000 missing British and South African servicemen, who died in the Battle of the Somme with no known grave. Since the memorial was built, a number of bodies have been found, and where they have been identified, they are given a funeral with full military honours. Their names are then removed from the memorial by the inscription being filled in with cement.
When we got here, we found the last parking space, showing how popular this place is. They had a museum you could pay for, but we didn’t, as they had a pretty comprehensive display free of charge, which was fascinating, but again heart breaking, as you learnt about the numbers of men lost in each day. It’s just almost impossible to comprehend, the numbers are so great.
This is beginning like a military tour of France. It's quite astonishing the amount of losses during these wars!
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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!
This is beginning like a military tour of France. It's quite astonishing the amount of losses during these wars!
It was a bit like that. There are so many tours where you can literally tour places like this for a week or so. I don't think I could do that. A day was enough for me....
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I don’t think I’d want any child under the age of about 11 or 12 seeing this… 
Not what I wanted to hear! 
They had a museum you could pay for, but we didn’t, as they had a pretty comprehensive display free of charge, which was fascinating, but again heart breaking, as you learnt about the numbers of men lost in each day. It’s just almost impossible to comprehend, the numbers are so great. 
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