A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 10 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Hi Cheryl! Glad you made it back safe and sound! It was so good to meet you and Mark . The boys were quite taken with you both and took their toothbrushes that Mark gave them to "show & share" on Friday @ daycare . I'm glad you both enjoyed Cirque - it's definitely on our list to do! We told DD how much fun we had and she's off to DisneySea today with some friends. We can't wait to go back and hope we're still around when you guys come back. We had so much fun!!!
__________________
Enjoying Tokyo DisneySea with my Buzz & Woody...
I know'd I made a good choice! DVC - Saratoga Springs Resort
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Welcome back and safely too. Thanks for sharing the TR and the pix. Looking forward to the time you are able to continue. You really have a full plate. Hope all goes well with the course and the travels.
Before I get going on the trip report (yes, I managed to write enough while I was away to be ready to post something, even with these essays on my hands! ), I thought I'd share a few more photos with you of the rest of our vacation to give you an idea of what's to come:
Tuesday 7 April:
The famous red floating torii gate at Miyajima Island, one of Japan's top three views and what the torii gate at Epcot was based on.
The Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima Island
The A Bomb Dome at Hiroshima - the only building left after the bomb hit. It's an eerie reminder of what happened there.
The Cenotaph at the massive Peace Memorial Park at Hiroshima
Arriving at Maihama Station that night - the home to Tokyo Disney!
Now we're finally here....
Wednesday 8 April:
The monorail pulls into the Tokyo Gateway station
The Tokyo Disneyland Hotel
At the entrance to Tokyo Disneyland
Look who I found!
The castle glimpsed through the trees
The Hotel MiraCosta, which is actually in the Tokyo DisneySea park - our home for three nights!
Our room
And the view from our room over the Mediterranean Harbour area of the park
Thursday 9 April:
At the entrance to Tokyo DisneySea
The Fortress Exploration area of the park
Their Tower of Terror
The Arabian Coast area of the park
The Mysterious Island area of the park
Mediterranean Harbour in the late afternoon sun
Smokin'! The volcano at the center of the park, which really does erupt, at night
Their representation of the Ponte Vecchio bridge from Florence
Mediterranean Harbour shops at night
Friday 10 April:
Taking a gondola ride
The SS Columbia, home to two restaurants
Their afternoon land and water show, the Legend of Mythica
Their night-time show BraviSEAmo
Mysterious Island at night
Hope that whets your appetite for everything that's to come... and now without further ado, the first installment awaits...
Before I get going on the trip report (yes, I managed to write enough while I was away to be ready to post something, even with these essays on my hands! ), I thought I'd share a few more photos with you of the rest of our vacation to give you an idea of what's to come:
Tuesday 7 April:
The famous red floating torii gate at Miyajima Island, one of Japan's top three views and what the torii gate at Epcot was based on.
The Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima Island
The A Bomb Dome at Hiroshima - the only building left after the bomb hit. It's an eerie reminder of what happened there.
The Cenotaph at the massive Peace Memorial Park at Hiroshima
Arriving at Maihama Station that night - the home to Tokyo Disney!
Now we're finally here....
Wednesday 8 April:
The monorail pulls into the Tokyo Gateway station
The Tokyo Disneyland Hotel
At the entrance to Tokyo Disneyland
Look who I found!
The castle
The Hotel MiraCosta, which is actually in the Tokyo DisneySea park - our home for three nights!
Our room
And the view from our room over the Mediterranean Harbour area of the park
Thursday 9 April:
At the entrance to Tokyo DisneySea
The Fortress Exploration area of the park
Their Tower of Terror
The Arabian Coast area of the park
The Mysterious Island area of the park
Mediterranean Harbour in the late afternoon sun
Smokin'! The volcano at the center of the park, which really does erupt, at night
Their representation of the Ponte Vecchio bridge from Florence
Mediterranean Harbour shops at night
Friday 10 April:
Taking a gondola ride
The SS Columbia, home to two restaurants
Their afternoon land and water show, the Legend of Mythica
Their night-time show BraviSEAmo
Mysterious Island at night
Hope that whets your appetite for everything that's to come... and now without further ado, the first installment awaits...
Saturday 28 March – part one: living the life of luxury!
It’s an unusual vacation that doesn’t start stupidly early in the morning or with us working the day we fly out. Today we could relax and sort out a few final bits, before we headed up to the airport to stay the night up there, knowing our flight was the next day.
Much of the day, until we left, was taken up with those last minute tasks we all know and love, such as renewing library books, paying the bills, getting the last of the washing done and catching up with everything we’d recorded on the TV over the last few days. We headed into town and ended up buying a few last minute clothes items and grabbing lunch there. As I stood in the queue for McDonald’s, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were like in Japan and whether they were still called Big Macs over there… my Fillet of Fish in hand and Mark with his KFC, we headed home and finished up the last of our chores, which, as usual, took longer than we anticipated.
Just after 1.45pm, I logged on to Virgin Atlantic’s website and checked in and printed out our boarding passes, which meant all we had to do was drop the luggage off the next day and we only had to be there two hours before our flight. Bonus.
Finally, it was time to head out to the airport. We’d be flying out of London Heathrow, which is about an hour’s drive away and it was a pretty appalling hour’s drive up there. We had just about every type of weather along the way – some sunny spells, a lot of rain, a bit of sleet and a lot of cloud. We’d literally drive into sleet or rain coming straight at us and couldn’t see anything, then a mile or two down the road, it would be clear again with blue skies. It was bizarre.
When we pulled up, Mark recognised the hotel immediately as one we had stayed at previously, although it took me a bit longer, as the last time we were here, it was undergoing a major renovation and we entered through a completely different area. We were seen to immediately and made to feel very special and welcome, as Priority Club members. I knew we were in for a treat, when the guy checking us in told us that the health club had a Jacuzzi, but then again, so did our room! Woo hoo!
We headed up to the top floor and, sure enough, there was a stunning room awaiting us. It was huge and beautifully furnished and the bathroom, complete with Jacuzzi, was to die for. It was just like being back at the Bellagio in Vegas. It was lovely.
Mark enjoying his new surroundings… … and me enjoying my new surroundings! Our travelling companions for the journey – a lot less than we usually take!
The only problem was the temperature in the room. It was absolutely freezing and we soon found out why. The air conditioning was set to just 14ºC (that’s about 58ºF), so not warm. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get the thing to warm up. We called housekeeping and had to call again after about 20 minutes, as there was no sign of the engineer that they’d sent us. Just after the second call, the guy turned up and he was really apologetic that he’d been so long. A couple of minutes later and it was sorted out and starting to warm up.
We decided to leave the room warming up and headed up the corridor to the concierge lounge, where I had a glass of wine and Mark had a beer and we settled down to read the papers in one of the big comfy chairs in there. Wouldn’t you know it? The paper we picked had a whole Asia travel section, including a page on Japan. Talk about fate..! After sitting there for a while, drinking and eating crisps and peanuts, we were offered some canapés and they were superb. This is the life.
Eventually, we dragged ourselves out and back to the room, where we decided to treat ourselves to room service. I went for the stilton gnocchi and Mark had the Mexican beef burger. Mine was very nice, but far too much of it, although I did hear Mark say that his was a bit overcooked. Still, it filled us up and was just what we needed.
After finishing that, we watched the TV for a while, then it was back to the concierge lounge to have another glass of wine and a glass of Bailey’s for me. We also quickly logged on, using the computer system in there and Mark was able to see what I’d been writing in the pre-trip report. By then, it was starting to get quite late, so it was back to the room and off to bed.
Today we walked 0.56 miles The weather today was in the 50’s, with a mixture of everything from sunshine to driving rain to sleet. The best thing today was staying concierge. The worst thing today was the journey up. Today we tried staying concierge And the result was it’s something I’d definitely do again.
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. Can't wait to see your impressions of TD .
Hi Cheryl! Glad you made it back safe and sound! It was so good to meet you and Mark 
. The boys were quite taken with you both and took their toothbrushes that Mark gave them to "show & share" on Friday @ daycare 
. I'm glad you both enjoyed Cirque - it's definitely on our list to do! We told DD how much fun we had and she's off to DisneySea today with some friends. We can't wait to go back and hope we're still around when you guys come back. We had so much fun!!!
I know'd I made a good choice! DVC - Saratoga Springs Resort
Back! Can't wait to read the TR and see some more incredible pictures!!
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