Bonne anniversaire a Disneyland Paris COMPLETE - Page 3 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I am so happy that you had such a magical birthday and such a great time with Sabine and her DH. Looking forward to hearing about all the adventures...
Friday 19 December – part one: I’ll travel downstairs next time...
It’s unusual for a Disney trip, but we had a leisurely start to the day. We were booked on the Eurotunnel at 1.50pm, so we didn’t need to leave the house until about midday. We headed out to go and do some shopping, as I wanted to get lunch for us today and a lot of snacks for the next few days. Let’s just say that the pound has dived (and boy, do I mean dived!) in recent weeks compared to a lot of currencies and now it’s almost £1 to €1. That’s a big drop from a year ago and even from a couple of months ago from when we were in Spain… so I planned to get some food to minimise how much we’d be spending during our time at Disneyland Paris.
Once back from that, we loaded the car up and were ready to go. It was such a pleasant change to not have to worry about weighing the cases and knowing that we could just throw anything we wanted to take with us into the car. That even included my hot water bottle and a number of different coats, because you just never know what the weather’s going to be like.
Half an hour later and we were at the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone.
I’ll explain how the Channel Tunnel services work here. There’s the train, the Eurostar, that runs from London, Ebbsfleet and Ashford, all ofwhich are between 20 and 60 miles from the entrance to the Channel Tunnel. As for the Eurotunnel that we’ll be going on, it’s located at Folkestone, right at the entrance to the tunnel itself and you’ve got passenger services, which we’ll be going on, and freight services, both completely different to each other. You don’t mix the two services on individual trains. On the passenger services, you stay with your car, while on the freight services, the lorry drivers go to a separate cab, away from their vehicles. The journey takes just 35 minutes. You drive your car in at the start and then drive out at the other end. It’s a very straight forward process.
When we got there, we went through self-check in and it gave me the option of leaving on the 1.35pm train for no additional charge, so we went for it. After all, why not leave 15 minutes earlier? The train wasn’t ready to board, so we went into the terminal building.
It’s got places to eat and shops and we got a map of France and then a hot chocolate for me (possibly the best I’ve ever had, as it had real bits of Cadbury’s Wispa in it) and Mark had a soup. Not long after we got them, we were called to the train.
We set off and three times, the windows of our car came down for no reason, as no-one wanted to check us either at UK passport control, security or French passport control. It was quite farcical really. From there, you line up, ready to board the train and we were there about 10 minutes before we boarded. Kindly, a nice guy in an Audi cut us up just as we were getting to the ramp for the train. Nice way to start your trip.
Boarding the train, behind the nice Audi driver The name of our train
We ended up upstairs and it was a few more minutes before we were ready and then we were off.
When we did, boy we felt the movement up there. I’d definitely rather travel downstairs if I had a choice, it’s much smoother.
Fortunately, the journey was over soon enough and we were driving out of the train into brilliant sunshine. Blinded for a minute, we quickly got our bearings and we were off. The signs were very easy to follow and for the first 20 miles or so, all we saw were British number plates.
Calais
It was a joy to drive for much of the journey, as the speed limit when it’s not raining is 130 kilometres an hour (the French work in kilometres), which is about 80 miles an hour, that’s about 10 miles an hour faster than the limit at home.
However, as fast as we were going, we both felt that it was a dull and boring drive. It was 190 miles and we moved pretty quickly the whole way until we were about 20 miles outside of Disneyland Paris and then we hit one traffic jam after another. I suspect the first was down to the volume of traffic, but the second was definitely the result of an accident.
Finally, we saw the signs for Disneyland Paris and then Val d’Europe, which we knew our hotel was opposite. It was such a relief to turn off the motorway and knew that we were close and we were. We soon found the station and, sure enough, the hotel was just next to it.
I went inside to check in and then we parked up in the underground car park. It was a very nice hotel and the room was nice enough, although it did look a little basic and the bed was a bit hard.
The view over the Val d’Europe shopping centre – that’s how close we were to it!
We decided to catch the train over to Disneyland Paris and it couldn’t have been easier. Literally, the hotel is about a two minute walk from the station.
We got our tickets and walked down to the platform and a train was just pulling in. Literally, from leaving our room to getting to the park, took us no more than five minutes.
As we had time before we were due to meet up with Sabine and Manuel, we walked slowly though the Disney Village, which is Disneyland Paris’ equivalent of Downtown Disney. We took lots of photos as we walked, noticing how much it had changed since we were last here. For starters, there was a Christmas market set up, with lots of little chalets all selling different things.
We didn’t visit the Disney Village in January on our last trip and haven’t been since our September 2003 trip. It’s clear that it’s gone through a rehab since then. A lot of the shopfronts are much more clear now than they were before. The places are still the same, but it’s just got a different look to it.
The drive through France looks like a drive through the Midwest! Totally boring!!
Ah, but in the end, you were going to another Disney park, so that had to be the light at the end of the tunnel!
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Pixie Dust
We're finally back home as well. We did have a blast with you guys! Can't wait to see all the pics you took 
your pictures of Disney Village. More please!!!!
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