A Swiss spring break with friends TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 6/27 - Page 36 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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A Swiss spring break with friends TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 6/27
A Swiss spring break with friends
Pre-trip report – part one: our love affair with Montreux
Dates: Saturday 5 – Monday 7 May Adventurers: Me, Cheryl (45) and DH Mark (52) Destinations: Montreux, Switzerland Resorts: Hotel Royal Plaza and Spa Meets: our friends Graham and Sara Celebration: Mark’s birthday and Christmas present and spending time with friends
I don’t know about you, but do you ever get to the stage where you think what’s the point in buying Christmas and/or birthday presents for each other? We reached that stage some time ago and, at that point, my attention turned to something more than keepsakes to clutter up the house to something that would be a better keepsake, things that would generate memories for many years to come. I think you can guess where I’m going with this… we moved into the territory of getting vacations for each other.
Now we’re not talking trips to Disney, as that would be absurd, given how much it costs for us to fly to the States, but we are talking weekends away around Europe. Last year, for example, I took Mark to see the Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo, which gave us a weekend away in Scotland’s capital. For his 50th birthday, I took him to Iceland and I’ve previously “borrowed” his credit card to get me a weekend away in Mallorca, Spain.
It was back in 2010 that we first visited Switzerland. I was really keen to go, as my mother is Swiss and I felt bad that I’d never visited the country. Well, apparently I had, but I was a baby, so oddly enough I don’t recall much of that… I was keen to explore some of the country, as I knew it was supposed to be beautiful. The trip ended up morphing into a nine day road trip, taking in a total of five countries (France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Belgium), more of which you can find out about in this trip report: On the road (1) – five countries, nine days.
During that trip, we stopped off at Montreux in the French speaking part of Switzerland and frankly we fell in love with it. These photos might help you to understand why…
Three years later, we did another road trip back there in early autumn 2013, spending much more time exploring Switzerland, as there was so much more of the country that we wanted to see. We made sure that we also headed back to Montreux and this time, we spent two nights there in a hotel on the lakeside, as we’d been so blown away by the stunning views over it last time. There’s more information about what we did on that trip in the trip report: A return to Switzerland – land of mountains, museums and moos!
To save you having to read through the whole thing, these photos should give you an idea of the views from our room… isn’t it just breath taking?
We were fortunate enough to be there in some stunning weather – it was baking hot even though it was early September….
So that’s our history of the love affair we’ve had over the last eight years with Montreux. Knowing how much Mark loves it there (and heck, I’m not adverse to its charms either ) I figured it would be the perfect birthday and Christmas present for Mark for this year… and what a shame – I have to tag along as well. Gosh, such a hard life!
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I was keen to explore some of the country, as I knew it was supposed to be beautiful. The trip ended up morphing into a nine day road trip, taking in a total of five countries (France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Belgium), more of which you can find out about in this trip report: On the road (1) – five countries, nine days. 
) I figured it would be the perfect birthday and Christmas present for Mark for this year… and what a shame – I have to tag along as well. Gosh, such a hard life! 
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