Points make Paris... TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 6/29 - Page 18 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 wonder if the insurance policy for the park prohibits having any real firearms and/or bullets in the shows?
I'm also guessing that the male buffalo might have been, um, "altered"so that they aren't as agressive? All speculation on my part, but certainly not out of the realm of possibilities .
That donkey was too cute! Love how he's scooting out of the arena as if he's saying"Yup, everybody loves me!)
I wonder if the insurance policy for the park prohibits having any real firearms and/or bullets in the shows?
That wouldn't surprise me.
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I'm also guessing that the male buffalo might have been, um, "altered"so that they aren't as agressive? All speculation on my part, but certainly not out of the realm of possibilities .
That's the sort of thing I was wondering about.
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That donkey was too cute! Love how he's scooting out of the arena as if he's saying"Yup, everybody loves me!)
Saturday 30 April – part eighteen: the cows are back!
The final game, which would be the decider, was the medicine ball, which was described in the programme as being a game where the first team to pass the ball from row to row, all the way from the back to the centre would win the game and the prize would be gold from Colorado. I must admit I was a bit concerned about this, expecting to have balls flying all over the place, but I should’ve known better. We had our team leader grab the ball, and basically run along every row, with every single person placing their hands on the ball as it passed by. Very cleverly done!
Once the ball got into the arena, there was a fair bit of tomfoolery to make it last a little longer, and sadly in the end, it was the yellow team that triumphed, rather than our green team.
Three volunteers from that team were then selected to come down and ride in the Deadwood Stagecoach, which was subject to an attack.
In the end, Auguste triumphed, with a little bit of help …
… and oh look, we all got to share in that gold!
Auguste then presented Buffalo Bill with champagne as a gift from France, and in return he got Bill’s cowboy hat.
Then it was time for the finale, with our wait staff presented to us, and I have to say they did a great job, considering they had to serve everyone, and try their best to keep out of the way of the show, which was going on the whole time. I was very impressed with them.
Oh and here I should also mention that there was free water or beer, which Mark was very pleased with. I ended up with most of the bottle of wine!
Then the whole cast came out to take their final bows…
… and there was one final surprise for me – the herd returned and were the last to leave the floor! I ended up going down to the front to get some photos, as people were already leaving by then.
I got some photos of the empty arena…
… and then we headed out.
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
Appetiser 8½ 9
Entrée 8 8
Dessert 8 8½
Service 9 9
Atmosphere 10 9½
Value for money 9½ 9½
Average score: 8.88
It was a bit surreal to go outside, after being in the dark for so long, and to find it was still light outside. It’s also odd, given it’s also an hour ahead over here, compared to the UK. By now, it was 8:00pm, so the show lasted about 90 minutes.
When we came out, we both commented that it looked as if it had rained, and we’d find out the next day that it did – apparently Sara, Tom and the kids went back to the parks and ended up walking through the Disney Village in a hail storm around 7:00pm! Thank goodness we didn’t caught up in that.
I was fascinated by all the topiaries, and while I’d just walked past them earlier, now I was able to stop and read the details – and my goodness, what an eye opener about the work that went into them!
As we walked back, the sun finally came out – and my goodness, how different everywhere now looked!
We made our way back to the hotel…
… and found we’d had turndown service when we got to our room, a very nice touch.
We literally crashed at about 9:00pm, as it had been an early day, and we’d been on the go for a lot of it, plus we’d have a relatively early start tomorrow, with the Morning Magic Hours to enjoy!
The weather today was a mixture of showers and some cloud and temperatures with a high in the high 40s. The best thing today was seeing Disneyland Paris through newcomers’ eyes. The worst thing today was the weather. The funniest thing today was Daisy’s reaction to the castle! Today we tried seeing Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show And the result was we both loved it and can’t believe we waited so long to see it. The most magical moment today was walking up to the castle and seeing the topiaries, and having the park open as we were there.
Looked like that show was well worth the time!
I think growing the topiaries is so cool. Hard to believe how long they've been working on some of them!
That is one heck of a show. I'm totally impressed with it! If I do get to DLParis, I'm not sure I'd take time out for it though, so I really appreciate the photos and details about it!
Amazing what the sunshine does. Photos look great with the sun!
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Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
Looked like that show was well worth the time!
I think growing the topiaries is so cool. Hard to believe how long they've been working on some of them!
I knew they took some time, but I had no idea it was that long.
That is one heck of a show. I'm totally impressed with it!
We were blown away by it!
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If I do get to DLParis, I'm not sure I'd take time out for it though, so I really appreciate the photos and details about it!
I'd say do it, as you won't miss that much in the parks, given the time it's on. The night-time show when we were there was on at 10:00pm, so it's not like WDW, where you miss something during dinner.
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Amazing what the sunshine does. Photos look great with the sun!
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I think when I first woke up, Mark told me it was 5:10am. I decided to go back to sleep. I woke up about an hour later and started to gradually putter around. We had originally been due to meet up with the others at 8:00am, but had changed that time back by quarter of an hour, after we realised breakfast in our hotel only started at 7:30am, rather than 7:00am.
When we looked outside, we were greeted by this… a very unfamiliar sight so far this trip, but one that was very welcome all the same.
We got going and headed upstairs to the second floor, where the restaurant is located for breakfast. The whole place appeared to be deserted…
Looking down at the still closed Disneyland Park below
Yes, they have a California Grill here too
Taking a sneak peek inside the dining room before opening
We arrived about 7:25am and we were the first ones in line for the breakfast. How’s that for keen?
We were taken through a few minutes after 7:30am, and to be honest, it looked like they still weren’t 100% ready. They were putting out details of what all the dishes were about 10 minutes after we were seated for example…
This was a nice touch – the placemats reflected their spring festival
We asked for tea, and I asked for some milk, although when the woman put it in, we noticed it was curdling a couple of minutes later, so patently it was off. We didn’t bother to drink it after that, and stuck instead to orange juice.
The food selection was pretty good, although I remember it being better in the past. I’m sure they used to have more varieties of cheese for example, and some smoked salmon.
However, I made the best of it, and demolished three croissants, two pain au chocolat, a yoghurt, some cheese, and two pancakes!
As you can see, Mark went for the kiddies’ version when it came to plates!
While we were sitting there, we spotted the park’s first visitors of the day – about 20 minutes before it was due to open. I guess Donald and Daisy were just keen to get in and see what was going on…
We headed down to the reception where we’d agreed to meet the others…
Well good morning sunshine! Lovely start to the day.
Even if that buffet is lacking from previous visits, it still looks pretty darn good. Well done on your breakfast plates. Happy to see Mark made his fun too!
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Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
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Oh I just love the decor there. And how nice to see the park before opening. I too would absolutely expect salmon on the Buffett. That's a little strange and your curdling incident is unacceptable
I have to say you look right at home in your photo. [emoji2]
I'd no idea they have a Ca Grill too. Is it similar to the one in WDW?
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Well good morning sunshine! Lovely start to the day.
That was a very pleasant start to the day.
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Even if that buffet is lacking from previous visits, it still looks pretty darn good. Well done on your breakfast plates. Happy to see Mark made his fun too!