Dreams do come true – our Med cruise! **Updated 6/30** THREAD 1 *COMPLETE* - Page 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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Monday 28 May – part two: a real taste of Sicilian life!
By the time we got to the Gallerie d’Arte Moderna and turned off to another street, we felt much safer. None of the residents really paid us any attention.
We kept walking in the general direction we wanted to go and eventually found a street packed with market stalls, The fruit and vegetables there were amazing, full of colour and huge! It was like stepping into a real slice of Sicilian life. Of course, we’ve never have been able to do anything like this, had we been on an organised tour.
When we got to the end of that road, we could see that we weren’t that far away from the Cathedral or Duomo, so that’s where we headed next and suddenly the place as full of tourists again, with buses everywhere and even some Disney Cruise Line tours in sight.
The cathedral was built between 1179 and 1185, but very little of that original structure now remains. Instead much of what you see today dates from the 1700’s. It’s one of those places where this is much more impressive on the outside than on the inside. It’s nice enough inside, it’s just nothing that special. The Palazzo Arcivescovile and Museo Disocesano (Disocean Museum) opposite the Cathedral The Cathedral, both inside and out, including the square in front of it
Monday 28 May – part three: no, we’re not with you!
While we were outside the cathedral, I decided to buy a guidebook to Palermo, as I like to get one everywhere we do. While we did, the guide of one of the Disney Cruise Line excursions came running over to us and asked if we were with them. I don’t think so! : She was quite insistent and almost tried to drag us off with her group. We later found out the reason was she’d lost two members of her group, but that wasn’t us, honest!
Next we walked through Piazza della Vittoria to take some photos of the Palazzo dei Normani, which has been the home to the city’s rulers since the 11th century and the Cappella Palatine, which was founded in 1132. We didn’t go into either, but they are both beautiful from the outside.
We started to make our way back to the ship, having now got to the furthest point of our walking tour. We walked down Corso Vittorio Emanuele, probably one of the main roads in Palermo, but much more pleasant than the one we had walked down from the Disney Magic. This had shops lining the roads, some with obviously souvenirs, like olive oil, plates and books, but others were evidently more geared at the local market. Occasionally on a side street, we’d get more glimpses of Sicilian life and nearly everywhere you’d find bizarre car parking spaces. We had been amazed by the car parking earlier in Piazza dei Normani, literally any space you could fit a car, there was one. There were even some on the pavements and blocking each other in. This is not somewhere I would ever want to try driving or parking.
[b]More views of the Cathedral
We came to Quattro Canti, which dates from the 1600’s and is known as Palermo’s must fashionable square. It was originally formed when the town was divided into four parts and on each corner is a fine building. I’m sure this is where we could’ve benefited from a guided tour, to find out more about the buildings you see here and why they were built.
Just around the corner is the Fontana Pretoria, originally known as the Fountain of Shame, because of the nude statues around it.
More great pictures and I the fact that I get to learn. You should be a professional tour guide or better yet do a podcast so we can walk in your footsteps and take your tour.
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: She was quite insistent and almost tried to drag us off with her group. We later found out the reason was she’d lost two members of her group, but that wasn’t us, honest! 
the fact that I get to learn. You should be a professional tour guide or better yet do a podcast so we can walk in your footsteps and take your tour.
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