Returning to Roman times… COMPLETED - Page 6 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What a great impulse purchase! I can't believe how much progress they're making with cameras. A 50x zoom without a special lens is phenomenal. A year or so ago there was nothing like this available. I think soon there will be more small, lightweight cameras with advanced features. Did you even have to read the instructions or is the Sony familiar enough to you that you could just set it up and start shooting?
What a great impulse purchase! I can't believe how much progress they're making with cameras. A 50x zoom without a special lens is phenomenal. A year or so ago there was nothing like this available. I think soon there will be more small, lightweight cameras with advanced features. Did you even have to read the instructions or is the Sony familiar enough to you that you could just set it up and start shooting?
I know - it's amazing what they're doing now, isn't it? I told my dad last night and he was like "oh well, on a 50x zoom, you'd need a tripod" and I proudly told him that I didn't, having used it lots of times during the weekend freehand, as it has image stabiliser. Now a couple of years ago, that wouldn't have been possible either...
I did read the instructions on the flight, but quite frankly, they were next to useless. They pointed out what everything was on the camera and that was about it. I used it mainly on the automatic feature and did a couple of panoramic shots as well, but that was about it. It was pretty familiar from my last one, but as I get more confident with it, I'll experiment a bit more with it...
Saturday 4 May – part two: what’s that poking through the clouds?
Thank goodness we were on board the plane quickly, as another problem with the seats (they weren’t that bad by the way – I barely noticed the restrooms were behind us in truth) was that there was no overhead locker space, as it’s filled with the emergency equipment. Fortunately, we were able to put ours up in the lockers over seats 24.
As we walked up to our seats, a young couple were just settling down into the aisle seats I’d rejected yesterday when I checked in online. I heard the guy say “these were all that were left”, and I thought that sounded about right.
We settled down, and were soon joined by a lovely woman, who was heading to Sorrento for a week’s walking holiday. We chatted away happily, and she absolutely made both our days when she told us that she thought we were both in our late 20s. Her face when I told her I’d just turned 40 was an absolute picture, and she kept telling us to carry on doing whatever we were doing with our lives, as it was obviously working!
We were so busy chatting away that, before I knew it, we were on the runway, and taking off. I have no idea if we left on time or not after all, but I suspect we probably weren’t far off. It was tough getting photos as we took off, as the cloud cover was pretty low. The sky looked ominous, and I have to be honest, I wasn’t feeling particularly confident about the weather forecasters, who were saying that it would be a lovely Bank Holiday weekend for us at home. Oh well, where we’re going, it should be nice enough anyway.
A few minutes later, we were at the south coast, and starting to cross the Channel. It was so neat to be able to capture these shots of that…
I even managed to snag a photo of a tanker in the Channel. My goodness, how small does this thing look from the air?
Soon we were back above the cloud…
….and breakfast was arriving. I would’ve photographed it for you, but I had my long lens on (a problem I won’t have with my Sony in the future ) so there are no shots, but I can tell you it was made up of orange juice, a wild berry muesli that tasted better than it looked, and a croissant with cheese in it. I think Mark’s might have been quite dry, but mine was lovely, although they’re not the easiest things to eat, and I did think it was a slightly odd choice, given that they tend to go everywhere as you eat them.
Soon the clouds were parting to give us some views of France. I was particularly struck by all the different colours of fields on the ground beneath us.
I was also fascinated by this river wending its way through the countryside…..
Sadly, it was an older plane, so there was no display to tell us where we are, so all I can guess is France, and I have no more idea than that..
However, the next thing that we saw, we knew exactly where it was, thanks to the captain updating us. I was sitting there, having seen nothing but clouds for probably the last 20 minutes or so, then suddenly I noticed that was also white poking through the clouds. It took me a second to work out what it was, and when I was, it was one of those jaw dropping moments. It was snow capped mountains - we were flying over the Alps. I couldn’t believe how close we were to the tops of the mountains. We were so close I had to change lenses to capture it all. My goodness, that brings it home to you how tall these things are!
Once we came out of the Alps, and my goodness, they just suddenly stopped, which was quite eerie we were into Italy…
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I got shots of the Alps when we flew from Bologna to Heathrow last summer. Amazing how close you are, isn't it?! Did it make you want to sing "The Hills are Alive"....? Maybe that was just me.....
Don't like the sound of the tease for tomorrow. Glad I've already seen some of the pictures from the trip, as I know you eventually get out of the airport!
I love photos of the countryside with the different colors. The Alps were some very awesome shots. It is hard to believe the plane was that close to the mountains or should I say the mountains were that close to the plane!!!
Those are some amazing shots! I love how you had so many different landscapes in that short amount of time.
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I got shots of the Alps when we flew from Bologna to Heathrow last summer. Amazing how close you are, isn't it?! Did it make you want to sing "The Hills are Alive"....? Maybe that was just me.....
Hmmm.... I think that was just you...
Quote:
Don't like the sound of the tease for tomorrow. Glad I've already seen some of the pictures from the trip, as I know you eventually get out of the airport!
We did get out of the airport, just not quite how we planned...
I love photos of the countryside with the different colors. The Alps were some very awesome shots. It is hard to believe the plane was that close to the mountains or should I say the mountains were that close to the plane!!!
I know - it's scary when you really think about it.
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I used it mainly on the automatic feature and did a couple of panoramic shots as well, but that was about it. It was pretty familiar from my last one, but as I get more confident with it, I'll experiment a bit more with it...
Her face when I told her I’d just turned 40 was an absolute picture, and she kept telling us to carry on doing whatever we were doing with our lives, as it was obviously working! 
) so there are no shots, but I can tell you it was made up of orange juice, a wild berry muesli that tasted better than it looked, and a croissant with cheese in it. I think Mark’s might have been quite dry, but mine was lovely, although they’re not the easiest things to eat, and I did think it was a slightly odd choice, given that they tend to go everywhere as you eat them. 
we were flying over the Alps. I couldn’t believe how close we were to the tops of the mountains. We were so close I had to change lenses to capture it all. My goodness, that brings it home to you how tall these things are! 
we were into Italy… 
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