A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Tuesday 14 June – part two: how many calories were in this!
We headed back to the room to enjoy some more down time. Mark caught up on some of the TV programmes he’d downloaded before we went away, while I caught up on the trip report and listened to my iPod. Ironically, it seemed to think we’d only just left Stockholm, as that night, it didn’t give me a single ABBA song (it’s on random) and this afternoon, it gave me loads – that figures.
We got a call not much after 5:00pm to say that the "See how it's done" tour won’t be taking place this cruise. If you remember, we’d put our names down for it on the day we boarded and this would’ve been a three hour tour with a visit to the bridge, mooring desk, crew areas, engine control room and main galley, followed by a wine-paired lunch in the main dining room. They obviously haven’t got enough people interested for it to go ahead, which is a shame, but…
… they then went on to tell us that they were going to offer us the chance to have a tour of the bridge at 9:15am on our next day at sea. Mark took the call, and got the impression that there wouldn’t be a charge for this. Certainly one wasn’t mentioned to him at all, and they said they were refunding the cost to our credit card, so if that’s the case, we’ll be very happy indeed!
We headed down to Murano for our dinner a little before our 6:30pm reservation, but we were seated immediately, and our table this time gave us more of a view of the whole restaurant.
Most of the staff recognised us from our previous visit, including the maitre d’, our server and the assistant server, although the sommelier didn’t at all, and gave his introductory spiel he’d given us last time. We were waiting to see what his reaction was, as we weren’t planning on buying a bottle of wine tonight, as we’d done last time, as now we knew we could just get glasses of wine on our wine package, which we hadn’t realised on the first night. He brought it into the conversation, saying if we were on a classic or premium package, we could use that, which I was impressed with, and he kept us nicely topped up with White Zinfandel all evening.
We started off with the amuse bouchee, which was the same as last time, but at least this time, I got the standard version with asparagus.
Our server did apologise for that, and said he’d mis-understood last time and had given the kitchen the wrong information, as he couldn’t keep track of all my allergies, and in fairness, there are a few…
Much as I’d loved what I’d chosen last time, I was determined to have something different tonight, so for appetiser, I opted for the creamy Maine lobster bisque with leek and shallot flan, cognac cream, and crispy sweet yellow corn beignets. Look at the wonderful presentation of it:
I was told that the cognac cream could be used if the flavour of the bisque was a little overpowering. I figured it would be fine, but the first taste was a little too much, so I ended up using all the cream and it was fascinating to taste the difference it made to the dish.
Mark opted for what I’d had last time, the smoked salmon and peekytoe crab parfait layered with avocado, salmon caviar, crème fraiche and petite greens, and he enjoyed it as much as I had.
For entrée, tempted as I was by the lobster, I figured it would be overkill after the bisque, and we still had another night back her to enjoy that, so I went for the loup de mer or the grilled Mediterranean sea bass, with red pepper melange, crispy eggplant, balsamic syrup and sauce nicoise. It was very nice, although personally I’d have liked a little more of the crispy eggplant on the dish. There didn’t seem to be much, and that was a shame.
Mark had the herb crusted lamb rack with pea puree, tomato confit, baby carrots, spice meatball, and garlic jus. He commented that he’d have liked to have had some form of potato with it, and looking at the presentation, it did seem to me that it could’ve done with something other than just vegetables.
For dessert, I knew I didn’t want the soufflés again, as last time that was a disappointment, so that limited my options a bit. I ended up going for the assorted gelato and sorbet degustation, made up of chocolate, pistachio, mango and strawberry – my favourites!
Mark decided to get the crepe ballon rouge, with balsamic strawberries, vanilla ice cream and chambertin sauce, and we were told it would be prepared table side. Cool!
The photos I got of the preparation weren’t the greatest, as I didn’t want to use flash and irritate other diners, and the sport mode, which would’ve captured the movement came out far too dark. However, hopefully you get the general idea…
We were both very surprised that the crepe wasn’t cooked table side, it was the strawberries, and you should’ve seen the massive lump of ice cream that went inside the crepe. Oh my goodness, I dread to think how many calories were in this!
After that, I still had room for some cheese, so they brought the cheese trolley around, and there was quite the selection…
I ended up trying a piece of each, and the winner by miles was the blue cheese, which was the best I’d ever tasted, deliciously moist, whereas a lot of them are very dry and crumbly. I asked for the name of it and was told it was fourme j’ambert, so I may have to go looking for that when we get home, that’s how much I liked it.
The service was excellent. We had Nenad from Serbia and we asked if he could be our server again when we returned later in the cruise for our final time dining here. When he said that he was bringing out the chocolates, I remarked how much I liked macaroons, and look what turned up:
On the way out, we asked if we could book the Tuscan Grille again for our next at sea day, and it’s just as well we did, as that day, we were supposed to be in Murano. He swapped that to our final sea day and added in the Tuscan Grille, so we were all set on that front.
Before we headed out, we got our server to get a shot of us:
We decided to head up to deck 14, which was distinctly on the cold and blustery side…
As we walked along, it was just starting to drizzle. We headed into the Sky Lounge, found our favourite loungers….
… but this was the only view we had outside, as it was raining. Oh well.
We enjoyed a couple of glasses of Bailey’s there and then headed back to our room, exhausted from our day of really doing nothing.
The weather today was dry and sunny with temperatures in the low 60s. The best thing today was just being able to relax all day long. The worst thing today was not having much of a view from the Sky Lounge in the evening due to rain. Today we tried going back to Murano And the result was it was just as good as the first visit there. The most magical moment today was sitting out on the balcony together, soaking in the sun.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
Mark took the call, and got the impression that there wouldn’t be a charge for this. Certainly one wasn’t mentioned to him at all, and they said they were refunding the cost to our credit card, so if that’s the case, we’ll be very happy indeed! 
However, hopefully you get the general idea… 
Oh my goodness, I dread to think how many calories were in this! 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Threaded Mode
