Putting a boot into our original Easter plans… COMPLETED 5/3 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Saturday 31 March – part five: disaster strikes with hot chocolate!
We had a bit of time to kill after this talk finished, as I wanted to do the guided tour of the sanctuary at 2:00pm, so Mark suggested getting a hot drink. First we went over to the marquee near the miniature donkeys to see if we could get a hot chocolate there, but they were only serving cream teas and we had afternoon tea to look forward to in a couple of hours’ time at the hotel.
As the marquee was near my minis, I had to have a quick look in on them…. William was busy hoovering up straw….
… and even Benji was sticking his head out.
We decided to try the main restaurant, but it was lunchtime and the line for that was practically out of the door. Oh well, so long as the Donkey Sanctuary are making money today, that’s the main thing. However, we did still want something hot to drink, as it was cold out.
Mark remembered there was a little hut serving up snacks, so we headed over there to see what drinks they did and they did hot chocolate, so we got one each, while Mark got a sausage roll and I got a bag of chips.
We sat down outside to enjoy it, albeit in the cold, but at least we could use the hot chocolate as a hand warmer. As I went to take the first sip of mine, disaster struck and the lid came off, sending hot chocolate all over me, my top, my jeans and my camera. I couldn’t believe it. I told Mark what had happened and he just sat there, I think unable to comprehend the situation. I didn’t have anything to wipe it up with, so told him to go back to the hut to get something. I will be honest, I was more concerned about my camera, but thankfully it continued to work, although the display screen was a little sticky, shall we say? Mark was more worried about me being burnt, but I wasn’t. I was more worried about my top and my jeans, but once it dried, you couldn’t see anything, so a lucky escape all round I think.
We headed back to the visitor reception just before 2:00pm for the guided tour and asked where to wait. We were told just outside by Lucky the Donkey, who was giving hugs to the kids. I couldn’t resist and asked for one and look what I got! Good donkey!
There was a very entertaining conversation about how Lucky didn’t like Eeyore. The staff members asked if Lucky wanted to go to Florida and he was very enthusiastic about that. Apparently he wanted to go on the rides, but when asked if he’d get into a fight with Eeyore, he was thankfully good and said he wouldn’t.
It turned out that our guide would be the volunteer Jill, who we already know, and when she came to find us, we were the only ones on the tour. A woman joined us a few minutes later, but that was it, which was nice, although of course people did listen in as she was talking at various spots. Normally, the tour would be a lot more encompassing of the site, but quite a bit of it was inaccessible, as it was so muddy and, with me on the mobility scooter, trying to get to the muddy bits wasn’t an option. This is why I chose adoption donkeys that are in the paved areas, so we can always see them.
Gill started off by explaining about the history of the sanctuary. It was started in 1969 by Dr. Elisabeth Svendsen, affectionately known today by everyone at the sanctuary as Dr. S. Sadly, she passed away in 2011, but my goodness, her legacy lives on.
She’d always liked donkeys and after a successful life in business, she and her husband bought a hotel in Devon that was run down with eight acres of ground, so that she could keep some donkeys of her own. Naughty Face was the first to arrive and she then took on another seven, after finding them in a terrible state. It was at that point, when she saw the state of them, that she decided the rest of her life would be dedicated to saving donkeys in distress.
In 1974, Dr. S. was left a legacy, but a very unusual one. It wasn’t money though. It was 204 donkeys. She was told to take as many as she could, otherwise any she couldn’t take would be shot. Needless to say, she took them all on and that’s where the sanctuary really started in big numbers…
Today, the Donkey Sanctuary has given more than 15,500 donkeys and mules lifelong care in the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe. They work in a total of 40 countries.
The other aspect of the Donkey Sanctuary’s work is the donkey assisted therapy, as I mentioned earlier. It used to be all about children riding donkeys, but these days, it’s more about them spending time interacting with the donkeys. They do more than that though. They take donkeys out into the community and particularly into old people’s homes. They even take the donkeys up in elevators to visit the elevators, which I just think is amazing.
We then talked about all sorts of things, including how donkeys have six different noises they make and apparently you hear every single one of them when they’re let out into the fields in the spring for the first time, as they’re so excited. I’d love to be here to see that. They were let out weeks ago, but haven’t been out for a while, due to the rain and the snow. She also explained that every donkey’s bray is different, which I already had an idea about.
We talked about the sanctuary’s work all over the world and how vital it is, because donkeys don’t show weaknesses. It’s part of their survival trait, but obviously it makes it very difficult to know when they’re suffering and need help, as they just keep going.
She told us that they’re now helping something like 1.6 million donkeys, but their aim is to help two million by the end of this year. Days like this will certainly help them to raise the money to do that.
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As I went to take the first sip of mine, disaster struck and the lid came off, sending hot chocolate all over me, my top, my jeans and my camera. I couldn’t believe it. I told Mark what had happened and he just sat there, I think unable to comprehend the situation. I didn’t have anything to wipe it up with, so told him to go back to the hut to get something. I will be honest, I was more concerned about my camera, but thankfully it continued to work, although the display screen was a little sticky, shall we say? 
Mark was more worried about me being burnt, but I wasn’t. I was more worried about my top and my jeans, but once it dried, you couldn’t see anything, so a lucky escape all round I think. 
She was told to take as many as she could, otherwise any she couldn’t take would be shot. 
Needless to say, she took them all on and that’s where the sanctuary really started in big numbers… 
She also explained that every donkey’s bray is different, which I already had an idea about. 
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