It's Five O'Clock Somewhere--Mother/Daughter Trip #3--UPDATED 5/14/09 - Page 12 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Day 2, Part 2: A Parade, Some Fireworks, and a Fine Meal
A Parade, Some Fireworks, and a Fine Meal
So mom and I are back in the room enjoying our adult beverages on the balcony while overlooking the Seven Seas Lagoon. How lucky can I get? Mom and I were just chatting away when all of the sudden a flock of seagulls literally launched off the roof above us. (Now I know I am not the only who started humming, “I ran…ran so far away…”) Sorry cheesy 80’s music moment. Any who, mom literally jumped out of her chair and I so wished I had my camera as it was actually a cool site to see. Mom had enough excitement and headed in to get cleaned up and ready for our evening. I stayed out and put my feet up, taking a little happy nap.
I woke up when mom opened the sliding door and told she was done in the bathroom for now. I headed in to take a shower and was out getting dressed within 10 minutes. Mom took control of the hair dryer before I could get my hands on it and she ended up blow drying my hair for me. Total déjà vu moment for me of when I was kid. Make-up was next, and we were ready to head back out. Mom was taking her purse with her so she as in charge of my wallet and such. I just carried my camera long with me. We were back at the GCH and on a monorail headed back to the MK by 6:15pm. Spectro was at 7:00pm and since it is both of our favorite parade, we made sure we saw it this trip. We headed up Main Street and stopped to get a couple of PP pictures. How often am I going to be in a skirt while at a park?
We headed over to Frontierland to grab a spot in front of the Frontierland Shootin’ Arcade. There was a huge family setting up camp on most of the seating platform that is there, but there was enough room for mom and me to sit as well. I knew we would stand up once the parade started, but it would be good while we were waiting. I ran and got us a couple of drinks to tie us over until dinner. When I came back from the snack cart, mom was blowing on her watch for some reason. She luckily explained the situation to me. Apparently, after getting wet on Splash, her watch stopped. She didn’t notice it until she looked down.
Apparently it worked because her watch started up and it was good for the rest of the trip. Just a funny sight to see. While we were sitting there waiting for the parade, who comes out but Frontierland Donald. We didn't want to lose our seats, so we took turns going up to visit with him. Apparently Donald liked my mom's glittery apparel.
Before we knew it, the lights dimmed and the voice came over the loud speaker and I could hear the music. There were still open spots up on the rope, so mom and I took point and got ready for the parade. As always, I took a ton of photos but will only post my faves. Mom said I had to take a lot because she doesn’t have a scrapbook page of this parade in any of her books. Yes Ma’am!!!
Once the parade had passed, we rounded the corner and headed to restrooms and then made our way out of the park. We had an ADR at 8:15pm at Narcoossees so we zigged and zagged our way down Main Street through the stores as people were in mass on the street itself waiting for wishes. Mom wanted to take the boat over to the Grand Floridian since the restaurant was right there at the boat dock. We had just missed a boat but were still good on time. I asked mom if she minded holding our spots so I could go watch Wishes. She didn’t mind at all, so I found an out of the way spot and watched the first 10 minutes of the fireworks. I called Chuck and left a vmail message with the sounds of the fireworks and the song to let him know I was thinking of him. I saw the boat coming into the dock and headed back into line. There weren’t a lot of people waiting so we were on and headed to GF in moments.
We arrived at the restaurant and I checked us in. They were running behind, so we had about a 10 minute wait before being led to a table for two on the upper level. Mom went straight for the drink menu and decided that we needed to take Patrick’s suggestion and have the Magical Star. It glowed so mom was all for it. Our server came and was very attentive. He fixed our table that was a little wobbly with a folded up menu. We gave him our drink order and looked over our menu for our food choices. Samir arrived with our drinks, and they were very tasty! Can’t remember what is in them for the life of me but it went down smoothly.
Samir took our order for our appetizer and our entrée. Mom went with the crab cakes, and while I decided on the Caesar salad. For our entrees, I went with the Free range Chicken Breast with "loaded" mashed potatoes, baby spinach, Nueske's Bacon vinaigrette, and Mom went with the Surf and Turf. Our appetizers arrived fairly quickly, and you could tell we were hungry because we were really quiet. Mom finished off her crab cakes but I only finished about 1 ½ leaves of my salad. Our entrees arrived and boy did they look incredible. I had the Surf and Turf in November and enjoyed it but the chicken was SUPERB! Oh my goodness.
After we stuffed ourselves silly, we just had to decide on a dessert. Mom’s choice was easy for her as she wanted the key lime cream brulee. I went with the new “Celebration” dessert. (My menu is in a stack of stuff so I don’t have all that it contains.).
We were so full it was just plain pitiful. Samir was a dear and got copies of some menus for me since I forgot to ask for them when we were ordering. Once we settled up the bill, we thanked Samir again and headed over to the main building. Mom was disappointed that the shops were closed but I reminded her that we would be back here in a couple of days for the spa and lunch. That soothed her and we headed up to the second floor to catch the monorail. We were whisked around the lagoon and were back at the Poly in short order. We got back to the room, and I grabbed our mugs to go get us a couple of refills. By the time I got back, mom was already in bed. She kept commenting that it was still warm in the room, so I tried to lower the temp. I told her that I had it as low as it would go and if it was still warm in the morning, I would stop by the front desk on our way out the next morning. After doing my nightly routine, I climbed into bed and watched some TV before setting the wake-up call for the next morning. Soon we were both off to dreamland.
Coming Up: Only 3 Characters and Fullllly AWESOME!!!
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What a great afternoon sitting out on the patio and a wonderful evening, love the pictures of the parade and your dinner at Narcossee's looked amazing...your chicken looked delicious and so did the desserts.
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Dyan!!! Stoned Mickeys!!!
Dreams, Wishes, Hopes... these are the parts of childhood we should never lose.
We gave him our drink order and looked over our menu for our food choices. Samir arrived with our drinks, and they were very tasty! 
Can’t remember what is in them for the life of me but it went down smoothly.
Liz 
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