Go your own way - Decade of Dreams - UPDATED 6/24 - COMPLETE!! - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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Bless Mark, he looks really sad, I'm glad the Virgin lady was so sweet to you. We love the Sofitel it's our favourite hotel at Gatwick. Looking forward to more.
Thursday 30 April – part one: the dreaded moment arrives
We woke up early at 6.30, although without the help of a wake up call. To be honest, I don’t think either of us slept that well. I know I didn’t, as I kept waking up and thinking about today and heading off.
We got going very slowly and finally left the room just before 8.00.
We took our overnight stuff back to the car and then took the monorail over to the south terminal. No checking in today, so it was straight upstairs and back to Frankie and Benny’s for breakfast. I had the vegetarian breakfast, which was very good with a side of toast and Mark had the New England breakfast, which seemed to come with just about everything under the sun and he got a side of hash browns.
It was pretty good and a nice start to the day. As we sat there, my flight appeared on the last of the departures, which sadly made it a lot more real and again, we got a lot more sober. We finished eating and put off asking for the bill for as long as we could before we had to. We paid up and Mark said that he would look around the shops with me first, before I went through security and we had to say goodbye.
I got a couple of small sets of suntan lotion and some antibacterial hand wash and then we had seen all the shops and we couldn’t put the dreaded moment off any longer. There was nothing else to do, but to say goodbye. We hugged and kissed and I had tears streaming down my face as I walked through and I don’t think Mark was that far off either. He stood there, watching until I went through and even then, I did struggle to compose myself. The guy in front of me must’ve wondered what the heck was up with this hysterical woman behind him.
There was no line for security, so at least that gave me something to think about and I was lucky enough to get selected for a random pat down. I thought there was a certain sense of irony in that, as it’s always Mark who gets that, not me, and the only time I travel without him, I get subjected to it. I said that to the woman who was searching me and she was so sweet. She came to see me, as I put the laptop away and said that whenever she left her husband, she never cared, so he was obviously a lucky guy. That was very sweet and brought a smile to my face.
My next stop was to pick up the money and travellers’ cheques that I had ordered a couple of days earlier. It seemed to take forever to get these and I had to sign my name goodness knows how many times. All the time I was still very much struggling to keep my emotions in check.
That done, I went and had a look around the duty free shop, but didn’t see anything in there that was much cheaper than I can get at home. I did get a Wii Fit game for Mark, as a present, and then it was off to the airport lounge that I had booked.
Yes, I know, I didn’t cover that in the pre-trip report, but a girl has to have some secrets. bout a week before the trip, when I was frantically working on my essays, I booked the airport hotel and thought that maybe it would be a nice idea to try a lounge out. I had looked at them before, but wasn’t sure I could justify the cost for the two of us, as I didn’t know how good they would be and I was never that impressed by the choices. I had spotted a new one called Number One, which seemed pretty good, so I thought I would give it a go. My first challenge was to get there.
I followed the signs for airport lounges and thought I’d take the stairs, instead of the lift, to get some exercise. That was a bad decision. Three flights of stairs later, I finally found my lounge and I was exhausted. When I checked in, the woman told me that would soon pass when I got a glass of wine and she was right. I found a table and made myself comfortable. The view from here was lovely, but it was the ambience that I loved. It was so quiet and beautiful here and you felt as if you were hundreds of miles away from an airport. There were no signs to tell you about the departures or arrivals, but the staff kept you fully informed with any updates. I had time to enjoy a glass of white wine, some water and a yoghurt with berries and granola before they told me that my flight was boarding, so I headed out at that point.
I got to the gate and stupidly got in line, because I was getting lots of text messages from DMIL and my manager, who is on maternity leave, but ironically had just come back from Florida. I say stupidly, as it was a long line and, of course, when I got to the front of it, I saw the sign saying that Premium Economy passengers could just cut the line and go to the front. Oh well, never mind. I headed through the final security checks and we were boarding already, so through I went and upstairs.
Just as I took my seat and got settled down, I got asked for my name by a stewardess. Free upgrade? No, of course, no such luck. It turned out that there was a couple who wanted to sit together and she wanted to know if I would mind moving two seats back, still with a window set, so I said yes. I ended up sitting next to a nice enough guy, who was flying out to Sarasota to see his uncle for a month and we chatted for a fair bit for the first couple of hours of the flight. I knew Mark would be proud of me, as usually out of the two of us, he’s the one who usually makes conversation with strangers.
Lunch was nice enough….
…. and then I slept for an hour or so, before watching Quantum of Solace. Here was a disappointment. This wasn’t the same system that we had on our flights to and from Tokyo, so the films were limited in choice and the ones they had were the ones I had generally watched on our Japan flights. Another problem was this wasn’t the stop start system, it’s a system where the films are all available starting at the same time. Fortunately, when I woke up, they were only 23 minutes into the sequence, so I didn’t miss too much.
To fill the time on the rest of the flight, I wrote some of my Japan trip report up and listened to my i-pod (at least it didn’t discharge this time, an in-joke for those reading the Japan trip report), but the flight did seem to pass more slowly than usual. I don’t doubt some of that was because I was on my own this time.
At least when we started to fly over the States, I started to see places and thought of people who lived there and who I would be seeing in the next few days, which did bring a smile to my face.
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Sorry to hear you had such a sad start to the morning. The lounge sounded wonderful - I wish we had those here (or I was elite enough in my frequent flier programs to go to the ones they have). Glad to hear the flight was nice enough.
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The hardest part is actually walking away from the hubby.
My turn! The day came for me to leave and I made spaghetti and meatballs; green beans, smoked sausage and potatoes; and taco meat; went grocery shopping, typedout lists and impatiently drummed my fingers willing time to pass. The time came and Ben brought home the pizza, the kids were chowing down when we left and we hit heavy traffic, rush hour(nothing like the motorways in UK). We got to my hotel which I absolutely loved, he left and I sat down to wait for Yvonne(TinkerBelz) and her daughter to get there. Love those impromptu meets!
We drove over to the airport to dine, so she could get the feel for the place for December and ate at the Indy 500 Grille. All three of us had the Hangar Steak, Yvonne having Asparagus and I her daughter and I had fries with it. We had dessert too, which for being an Indy restaurant it sure had a fine feeling with it's presentation of dessert. Very nice and got me even more excited about Disney!
I didn't sleep a wink that night and the alarm came very early at 2:50am. Got up, slowly got ready and was downstairs for the 4:15am shuttle to the airport. Once the curbside check in opened, I was without my bag and heading to security, where I also go the pat down. That was very weird and I hope it doesn't happen again. It REALLY made me uncomfortable, but she was very professional about it.
Nothing to do but to wait for time to pass, and I was very anxious. It had been ages since I traveled on my own and my very first time with Southwest and I am sure people were thinking, my goodness, can't she sit down?
Finally came time to board and I got an aisle seat(i was A31) and it was just me and another lady in our row with an empty middle seat. That was nice. Southwest was great, ontime, early actually. Love their uniforms with the shorts and tennis shoes.
Oh, I didn't mention the migraine!! It came on Friday before I left, April 24 and finally went away May 4. Flying down with it was a huge, well, um, headache! Half doped up, as much as my stomach could handle, but nothing was going to stop me or hold me back----I'm going my own way!!
I know the feeling you had Cheryl when it came time to leave Mark at the airport. My DH and I have had many trips apart and it's always a little sad when the other person brings you to the airport knowing that they won't be a part of the fun which lies ahead. Especially when it's a place that you've both held such wonderful memories together. Sounds like the flight went well though. I'm so excited to hear all about your PP meets!!!
Wendy, I was sorry to read that you suffered from a migrane the entire trip I'm sure you had a wonderful time with Cheryl and PP friends but a headache can really bring you down. Can't wait to hear about your meets!
Great to see you tag teaming Wendy! That migraine was a complete nightmare for you, but my goodness, you were a trooper and I don't think anyone would've known you had it, except for those you told. You certainly didn't let it hold you back!
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wonderful updates ladies - still heart breaking though. So sorry that you had a migraine during your trip. Chez - the lounge looked really nice.
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Great update, Cheryl! Saying goodbye is hard, but at least you had so much to look forward to. The airport lounge is an interesting concept. I've never seen those in U.S. airports, other than for frequent flyer/elite status customers for a particular airline. So anyone can pay a fee to wait in these lounges? Interesting. I'm not a big traveler, so maybe they have them in the U.S. and I just never noticed them before. Looking forward to hearing about your arrival!
What great updates!!! :waytog: Chez, I was a mess at the airport after Shawn and Ryan dropped me off. Wendy - I would never have known you had a migraine! You were so warm and cheerful. It was so great to finally meet you!!! I was sorry to not get a chance to say good-bye so I'll just go with "See you later!"
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bout a week before the trip, when I was frantically working on my essays, I booked the airport hotel and thought that maybe it would be a nice idea to try a lounge out. I had looked at them before, but wasn’t sure I could justify the cost for the two of us, as I didn’t know how good they would be and I was never that impressed by the choices. I had spotted a new one called Number One, which seemed pretty good, so I thought I would give it a go. My first challenge was to get there. 
Three flights of stairs later, I finally found my lounge and I was exhausted. When I checked in, the woman told me that would soon pass when I got a glass of wine and she was right. I found a table and made myself comfortable. The view from here was lovely, but it was the ambience that I loved. It was so quiet and beautiful here and you felt as if you were hundreds of miles away from an airport. There were no signs to tell you about the departures or arrivals, but the staff kept you fully informed with any updates. I had time to enjoy a glass of white wine, some water and a yoghurt with berries and granola before they told me that my flight was boarding, so I headed out at that point. 
It turned out that there was a couple who wanted to sit together and she wanted to know if I would mind moving two seats back, still with a window set, so I said yes. I ended up sitting next to a nice enough guy, who was flying out to Sarasota to see his uncle for a month and we chatted for a fair bit for the first couple of hours of the flight. I knew Mark would be proud of me, as usually out of the two of us, he’s the one who usually makes conversation with strangers. 
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