On the road (1) – Six countries, nine days COMPLETED - Page 31 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous photos of the lake and the sunsets. Especially the night pictures. Oh my, they're beautiful!!! If this doesn't get up the courage for my DH to make that long flight over the Atlantic, I don't know what will!!! I can't wait to show him these later tonight.
Glad you got some good parking spots, it sure sounded tricky. Dinner sounded delicious!
Tuesday 23 March – part one: do we really have to leave here?
We were awake not much after 6.00 and, I’ll be honest here, I didn’t have the greatest night’s sleep. It wasn’t anything to do with the room, which was very comfortable. It certainly turned out to be a lot warmer than I thought it would be last night. It had more to do with all the noise outside. The darned church nearby seemed to chime on the hour most hours during the night, which drove me insane and there was a fair bit of traffic around. The French women who crashed in at just after 11.00 (I knew what time it was from the clock chiming! weren’t exactly quiet either. It’s a shame, as it was a nice hotel, reasonably priced, but the location just didn’t work for me in getting a good night’s sleep. Mark did say that he’d be happy to come back here, but I’d prefer a lakefront hotel... more of that in a moment...
At least breakfast was included in the price and it wasn’t a bad spread either. You could choose from cheese, cold meat, a selection of drinks, croissants, rolls and cereals. We both had a few plates of food to start us off for the day and got some photos of the unique reception area. It’s certainly got a unique feel to it.
Then we headed back to the room to finish packing our stuff. Mark headed down to the car to load it and I went down to reception to check out, with me managing the whole exchange in French, which I was pretty impressed with. My next stop was the bakery across the road from where we’d been parking and, again, I was able to get what I wanted in French. Mind you, as I said to Mark, it wasn’t hard when one thing you wanted was a pain au chocolat and the other was a croissant! Having said that, I did spot something I liked the look of and was able to ask what it was in French. It turned out to be a chocolate croissant, so I went for that, instead of a plain old croissant.
With that done, we set off and decided to head back down to the lakefront to get a final few photos. We really had fallen in love with the view down there and were both very sad to be leaving it behind. Montreux had definitely found a special place in our hearts.
We parked up and wandered along the lakefront, getting a few last shots.
As I wandered back to the car, I spotted various hotels that looked as if they had nice views of the lake and the mountains and made a mental note of them. Hmmm.... maybe if we came back here, we could stay in one of those next time?
Sadly, we couldn’t put it any longer and it was time to leave Montreux, so we drove out, heading for Bern. On the way, I decided that we should stop at Fribourg. My guidebook listed it as one of Switzerland’s most attractive towns and it wasn’t wrong.
I wanted to see the town hall here and the Cathedral St. Nicholas and both were duly ticked off the list. We stopped so that I could take some photos and Mark could check why his cell phone kept making a noise. The answer? We’ve no idea. Maybe it kept thinking it was going between France and Switzerland or just different cell phone operators. There was no rhyme or reason to it.
Okay, I am finally all caught up after having major internet problems over here. First, all of your pictures of the lake are just gorgeous! I hope you get to go back there again, and get to stay in a room with a spectacular view! Second, that castle was very interesting, especially the latrine photos ! I do have to say though, it looks like they use to sleep in very small beds .
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So I had like 6 pages to get caught up on, but I am caught up now.
The hotel in Geneva was beautiful as well as the city! And what a great room, especially with that balcony!! The Jet d’Eau was neat, but I can see where you’d want to stand back quite a bit from it.
Another beautiful cathedral in Lausanne! Did you ever really get sick of them?
Great photos of the castle in Montreux. What an incredible place. That was some interesting artwork at your hotel, especially in the room. Loved the pictures of the sunset! Sorry about your tummy troubles! I hope you were over them soon.
Great photos as usual too!
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