A tale of two cities… and a few other places… COMPLETED - Page 52 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Great time at the spa and I'm sure the two of you enjoyed this relaxing time there! Too bad you didn't find out the name of the celebrity there as this would be interesting.
Yes it would. Celeb sightings are always fun - we had one in London on Saturday, no-one you guys would know, but someone was a Member of Parliament and a high profile one at that who now does travel shows about travelling by rail.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
Saturday 23 September – part three: what a miracle no-one was hurt!
We made our way out of the hotel, and on the way found this, which is the McLaren (as in formula one, if you guys watch that?) testing centre. Neat!
Despite the fact that it was already late September, there was still little sign of the leaves changing colour in the trees:
We made our way over to Clandon Park, a National Trust property. I’ll cover its history more in a moment, but the most important thing you need to know about this place is that it suffered a massive fire in April 2015, and I mean massive. We are talking national news headlines. Although everyone was safely evacuated from the building, the fire devastated the building, and left it as a shell, although they were able to salvage furniture and items of art from the property. The roof, ceilings and floors fell into the basement, and only one room was left intact.
Tragically, one of the footballs kicked across no-man’s land on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1916 was one of the items lost. Talk about priceless! For those who don’t know the story, basically the Germans and the Allies played football, I believe on Christmas Day, when hostilities ceased. I remember Paul McCartney immortalising it in the video for his song Pipes of Peace.
It’s thought the fire was started by an electrical distribution board in the basement. The National Trust decided that a number of the main rooms would be restored to the original 18th century designs, but rooms upstairs that weren’t as historically significant would be modernised to hold events, performances and exhibitions.
So what was the property’s history? Well, it was a family home for centuries. The Onslow family arrived in 1641 and built the current building in the early 1700s. It’s one of the UK’s most complete examples of a Palladin mansion. This type of architecture believes that parts of a building should sit harmoniously together. Inside the house, the Marble Hall was one of the most dramatic entrance halls in England and offered glorious views of the garden and parkland beyond.
You can find photos of how the house used to look on the National Trust’s website https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/clandon-park, and honestly, when you look at those photos, and then compare it to what you’ll see from my photos, it brings it home to you how much of a tragedy this fire was, and how much we lost as a country.
Anyway, given what happened here, it’s certainly not your traditional National Trust property, as you can see from this photo:
Here’s what it looked like at the height of the fire – this photo really is terrifying, and frankly, it’s a miracle no-one was hurt in this.
They’re now at the stage of deciding which design to go with, as thankfully the decision has been taken to restore and “reimagine” the building in the National Trust’s words. The re-imagination includes a new gallery, better use of the gardens, while the restoration will be of the building and its rooms.
There’s a shortlist of six designs on display, which we went to have a look at, and there was certainly plenty of debate over them from all of us in there. The conclusion was that there wasn’t one that we looked at and said “that’s the one”, we’d like to take elements from different ones, and combine them. Apparently the decision was taken on Wednesday, and will be revealed in a couple of weeks’ time. It’ll be interesting to see which one does win.
As I update this in late November, we’ve heard nothing about which company won this competition, and from looking on the National Trust website, it doesn’t look as if an announcement’s yet been made, so goodness knows what happened to that timeline.
2018 will then be spent going through planning permissions, and potentially revising the winning design, with work getting underway the following year. They reckon it will take three or four years, which means it will probably be around 2023 before the work is completed. It will be fascinating to come back and see it when it’s done.
I hope they can restore it to its old glory. It looked like a beautiful place. Crazy what fire can do!
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Tanya
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Great info and background about Clandon Park and what's there. Interesting about Paul McCartney's song "Pipes of Peace" as I know that well.
With your celebrity sighting of someone from Parliament, I'm wondering if it's someone I know as I watch I lot of travel shows. That shouldn't surprise you.
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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!
Great info and background about Clandon Park and what's there. Interesting about Paul McCartney's song "Pipes of Peace" as I know that well.
With your celebrity sighting of someone from Parliament, I'm wondering if it's someone I know as I watch I lot of travel shows. That shouldn't surprise you.
True. It was Michael Portillo. I'll be very impressed if you know him.
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Saturday 23 September – part four: seeing the marble remnants…
They have guided tours around Clandon Park, and ours was at 12:30pm, so a couple of minutes before, we headed over to get our hi-vis jackets, and hard hats, as the site is a building site.
Last year, they were only allowing people into one room, but now you can visit three rooms. We had a talk about the building’s history, which covered quite a lot of what we’d already learnt, but added in some new facts. The one that really stuck with me was the fact that the scaffolding they have here is 32 miles of free standing scaffolding, as it can’t touch the building, given it’s listed.
This is the Marble Hall, described as one of the most dramatic and impressive entrance halls in England. It rose 40 feet from the ground floor to the attics above. It was created by an Italian architect for the Onslow family in the 17th century to welcome their Royal and aristocratic guests. The marble hall was the heart of the house, surrounded by two grand staircases, one stone, and one oak.
What did amaze us was how the marble fireplaces and statues had all survived….
We were shown the basement area where the fire started, and it was explained to us that there was a lift shaft, which meant the fire travelled straight up it. There were also voids behind the fireplaces, which again gave the fire another opportunity to move around. Sadly, it was also a windy day, which literally fanned the flames….
The next room we went into was the Saloon, which was used for parties, dining, weddings, and playing billiards. The room had a costly Italian marble floor, a large chimney piece, and a beautifully sculpted decorative plaster ceiling.
Michael Portillo is on TV a lot here. Several of his railway journeys shows have aired, including "Great American Train Journeys". They're always fun to watch. I think he'd be classed as a celebrity here as well!
Michael Portillo is on TV a lot here. Several of his railway journeys shows have aired, including "Great American Train Journeys". They're always fun to watch. I think he'd be classed as a celebrity here as well!
Oh wow, cool! I had no idea. Yes, the Great American Train Journeys was the most recent one. It aired almost a year ago now. The book came out a bit earlier this year (odd timing) and I've asked for it for Christmas.
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