National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 7 September – part nine: seeing Seattle at night
When we reached the Space Needle, it was clear that it was a heck of a lot busier than our morning visit here. The line stretched outside of the covered area and wound round and round. And guess what? Our old friends from the American Fisheries Society were everywhere. We did think that maybe they should have their own entrance, but obviously not. We heard staff say something about a 50 minute wait, so with sunset just 10 minutes away, it was clear that we wouldn’t be up in time for that.
We waited it out and it was about 45 minutes start to finish in the end, so the staff weren’t far off with their estimate.
We got our group photo done and once again e-mailed it to ourselves when we got home. This one was excellent.
Considering how long we waited, we thought it would be packed when we got up there, but actually it wasn’t. We headed straight outside and walked the whole way round and nowhere was it that busy. We got lots of shots of the city at night laid out in front of us and it was very cool.
Of course, there were lots of American Fisheries people there, including one who was either an official photographer or who fancied himself as one and kept taking photos of other people with extra long exposures. The trouble was I was sitting down next to where he was standing on a bench, as the wait had really taken it out of me, and every time he took a photo, he completely blinded me with his flash.
By now, I was absolutely done in and just wanted to get back to the hotel, so we headed back down and through the gift shop, where Barb and Bob got a couple of bits and pieces and Mark got a Christmas ornament of Seattle for me, which was very sweet of him.
We headed for the monorail station, getting a couple of shots of the Space Needle, which looked very cool, all lit up.
When we got to the station, we were told not to get on the train that was in the station, as the doors were about to close and it looked as if it was standing room only, but as it pulled out, we could see that there was lots of space further down. People just couldn’t be bothered to walk down the carriage.
We only had a couple of minutes to wait and our monorail rolled up and we jumped on and grabbed seats. I don’t think ours was nearly as crowded though, with no-one standing as we left the station.
At the end of the short trip back to downtown, we once again had to say our farewells to Barb and Bob, as they were heading for the light rail system and we were on our way back to the hotel. It had been a great night and I’m so glad we were able to meet up with them again. Hope to see you both soon guys!
We headed out on to street level, with the aim of finding a cab as soon as we could and we only walked a block or so when one pulled over. The fare was only $3.55, but I topped it up to $5, as we were so glad that we didn’t have to walk.
When we got into the hotel, we used their business centre to print off our boarding passes for our flight tomorrow and to pay our luggage charges. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the charge for the second bag per person was the same as for the first, $20, so we decided to go with four bags, as that would make our lives much easier.
It was up to the room and we spent some time online and sorting out the photos. Just as we were about to head to bed, Mark went to pull the curtains and, in a repeat of my party trick from Vero Beach, he managed to pull the drapes down. I think both of us were so tired that neither of us thought to get a photo of the situation.
We called maintenance and were told someone would be straight up. It probably took about 10 minutes for the guy to make it up to us and he warned us it would take a while to sort it out. Great – and just when we wanted to go to bed. We started to watch the second episode of Doctor Who, until he was finally done and then it was straight to bed.
The weather today was hot and sunny, but pleasant, with temperatures in the low 80s. The best thing today was going up the Space Needle. The worst thing today was how much walking we did. Today we tried catching the monorail to the Space Needle And the result was it was really neat. The most magical moment today was seeing Seattle from the Space Needle at night.
Next: do I really need to take dirty tissues out of my pocket to go through security?
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The line stretched outside of the covered area and wound round and round. And guess what? Our old friends from the American Fisheries Society were everywhere. We did think that maybe they should have their own entrance, but obviously not. 
We heard staff say something about a 50 minute wait, so with sunset just 10 minutes away, it was clear that we wouldn’t be up in time for that. 
I think both of us were so tired that neither of us thought to get a photo of the situation. 
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