Dreaming of a Disney spring break - part three COMPLETED - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wednesday 20 April – part eight: that’s a bit hot!
We spent the next couple of hours in the room, booking a round of golf at the Oak Trail course for tomorrow morning at 9.40am, which should be entertaining, as neither of us have ever played on a proper golf course before. There’s a good DVC discount, which got it down to just $20 per person, which I didn’t think was bad. I made our ADR for Boma a bit earlier, just so we had enough time to get over there.
We also did some packing as I wanted to load the small red suitcase as much as we could. On the way out here, it had only weighed 14kgs, so it had a lot of weight still to go. By the time we’d finished loading every heavy item we could find that we wouldn’t use again this vacation, it was up to 21kgs, which was a good result.
There was some activity out on the savannah, as you can see from these photos:
We headed off for dinner around 7.30pm, getting shots of Animal Kingdom Lodge on the way. We were going to walk over to Kidani Village, but I thought that I’d ask about buses there as I knew some ran that way. The Cast Member I asked was standing next to a van with the Animal Kingdom Lodge logo on it and she immediately stopped the guy from leaving. It turns out that this was the shuttle that runs between the two parts of Animal Kingdom Lodge. How cool! I had no idea that they did that, but it’s a great idea. It would be nice to see Disney doing more of this, particularly between restaurants for those of us who like to dine at the various signature restaurants and might want to have a drink with dinner.
We had a browse around the lobby when we got to Kidani Village and the shop...
I then got some money out, as we appeared to have run out of stocks...
Then it was downstairs to Sanaa, where we quickly found Bruce and Marta. We were shown into Sanaa just a couple of minutes later and got a table by the window, although as it was dark, now we couldn’t see much out of the savannah, although we did see a bunny hop past...
We ordered the Indian bread sampler and Bruce and Marta asked for all the accompaniments, as you are supposed to just get three accompaniments out of the eight on offer. Our server Julie said that she would do i in a way that we wouldn’t be charged for them, which sounded good to us. I enjoyed the tamarind chutney and mango chutney, but the others didn’t do much for me. Some of them I stayed away from as I was told that they were a bit hot and I’m not a fan of hot and spicy food. Sadly, I didn’t get any photos of them.
I wasn’t going to have an appetiser, but when everyone else got one, I went for the mustard-seed crusted scallops and they were excellent.
Mark had the lamb kefta kebabs.
For entree, I decided to go with the Sanaa vegetarian sampler. I spoke to both our server and the chefs about which to choose as part of this. I knew that I liked the sound of the paneer cheese and spinach, but couldn’t decide between the spicy cauliflower, onions, tomatoes and mint and the vegetable sambar. I was told that the sambar was less spicy, so went with that. I was warned that it had a kick and my goodness, it did! I’m so glad that I didn’t go for the other one, as I couldn’t at that one, which was a great shame.
Mark had the Tandoori lamb and told me that it wasn’t the greatest. He’s not a huge fan of Sanaa and despite my best efforts, this dinner didn’t change his mind on that.
I wanted dessert, as my mouth was still on fire from the entree and I went for the dessert trio, which consists of the chocolate cake, tropical fruit kulfi and chai cream and it was excellent.
Mark went for the orange-sesame cake with tropical fruit kulfi.
All in all, I would say that with the exception of my entree, it was another great meal there, but as I say, Mark didn’t share that view.
Sanaa:
Appetiser 9½ 8½
Entree 8 8
Dessert 9½ 8½
Service 8½ 8
Atmosphere 8½ 9
Value for money 8½ 8½
Average score: 8.58
We took our time and Julie was happy to let us. I think we finally left the table at around 9.45pm in the end.
We headed outside as Mark was freezing, having been seated under the air conditioning unit and I was feeling it too. On the way out, Bruce pointed out some of the restaurant’s wonderful theming. He is such a font of knowledge about all things Disney.
We sat around the fire for a while, watching the sprinkler system at work and spotting some giraffes in the distance.
It was a bit cooler than the last few nights and we were hoping vainly that might mean a break in the temperatures, but we knew from the forecast, that was highly unlikely.
Finally, we headed back inside and Mark and I were both convinced that they had turned up the air conditioning inside, but maybe we were both still just cold?
Bruce and Marta kindly gave us a lift back to Jambo House as we had been told that the shuttle stopped running between the two at 9pm, so imagine our surprise when we rolled up to Jambo House to see it taking people.
We said goodbye to them and headed inside to get directions for the Oak Trail golf course for the morning and then it was back to the room and off to bed.
The weather today was hot and sunny with temperatures in the 90s. The best thing today was SeaWorld. The worst thing today was the heat.
[b]The funniest thing today was the cheeky chappy at the Dolphin Nursery. Today we tried going back to SeaWorld after a good few years And the result was it’s changed a lot and for the better. The most magical moment today was getting close up shots with the manatees.
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There’s a good DVC discount, which got it down to just $20 per person, which I didn’t think was bad. I made our ADR for Boma a bit earlier, just so we had enough time to get over there. 
as I wanted to load the small red suitcase as much as we could. On the way out here, it had only weighed 14kgs, so it had a lot of weight still to go. By the time we’d finished loading every heavy item we could find that we wouldn’t use again this vacation, it was up to 21kgs, which was a good result. 
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