A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 57 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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That tree in the photos is amazing ! How it is still standing is beyond me.
Just curious , do you ever use the timer on your camera to take pictures of you and Mark ?
We do - we use the timer on his camera to get photos of us together, in fact that's how we got a lot of the ones of us both together in the last few installments....
I can't get enough of your pictures, they are so beautiful and capture so much of the landscape. I loved all the little Budda statues, when you get up close it is amazing how each one is different from the next...
I'm finally caught up! It has been a pleasure doing so! You have so many lovely photos that I feel like I'm right there with you. Sorry you ended up eating at McDonalds so often, but it sounds like the best option sometimes. The rice balls looked interesting - I think I'd try that, and I don't like rice! I will keep up with this TR until my upcoming trip, because I don't want to get so far behind again!
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Mickey's so happy to see me back, he can barely contain himself!
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DH and I have officially decided that this summer we're going to start a savings account just for a Japan trip. We want to take the boys before DS1 finishes High School (he will be in 9th grade in Sept). We're also going to apply for passports this summer. Maybe next year?? I will definitely use your TR as some research on where to go and what to see! Although I think we'll be hitting Nintendo and Pokemon sites in addition to temples...
This is my absolute favorite picture for the whole TR! The beautiful cherry blossoms, the classic Japanese architecture and modern Japan in the background. Bravo!
DH and I have officially decided that this summer we're going to start a savings account just for a Japan trip. We want to take the boys before DS1 finishes High School (he will be in 9th grade in Sept). We're also going to apply for passports this summer. Maybe next year?? I will definitely use your TR as some research on where to go and what to see! Although I think we'll be hitting Nintendo and Pokemon sites in addition to temples...
We carried on down to the main road and walked back down it. Just as we were commenting that we hadn’t seen any shops, we hit the main shopping street, packed with lots of lovely little shops and restaurants. We got the obligatory fridge magnets and finally I was able to find a hard glasses case for my sunglasses. Perhaps that will stop the darned things breaking in the future. We’ll see…
Nearly worked!
A little further up, we stopped to get a tempura shrimp to share, which was lovely. Some of the other offerings were a little odd, shall we say!
It was about here that I started to kick myself for not getting a rice spoon earlier on. They are traditional and specific to Miyajima. I had seen them in the first few shops we’d been into, with English translations, but I never saw the translations again and I didn’t want to buy something without knowing what it meant, so I ended up not bothering. Maybe it’s another reason to come back…
We ambled our way back to the ferry boat terminal and got the 12.10 sailing, having spent a couple of very pleasant houses in Miyajima. On the way, we had our lunch – our bento box and very good it was too.
It was then back on to the streetcar, where the guard helpfully came running out after the thick British tourists, who couldn’t work out which streetcar was leaving next…
Contemplating life on the streetcar on the way back! The driver’s eye view They even have international cuisine here!
We got off at the Genbaku Dome-mae stop or the A Bomb Dome. Formerly the Industrial Promotional Hall, it was very close to the epicentre of the explosion, but amazingly, much of it was left intact and, after much deliberation, the decision was taken to preserve it and now it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Looking one way... .. and the other way – see what I mean about Hiroshima being a normal city outside of the Memorial Park? Looking over the river towards the peace clock
It really is a haunting site and we went round it in complete silence, sadly unlike the three German teenagers, who were laughing and joking and playing on one of the memorials. Not what you want to see. What a disgrace.
Cheryl I'm all caught up now with your last 3 installments, breathtaking views and defanitely AWWW pictures of Cheryl & Mark! You two just have some cute pictures together on here. I highly agree with you about the Hiroshima Memorial about the teen boys and how disgraceful they were in such a place of history. Too funny about the sign of the wild deer. I guess I need to put my toddler in a bubble around those deer so they don't attack him.
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NYC-Canada Cruise Sept 2012
with the saving. 
Maybe it’s another reason to come back… 
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