A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 44 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What amazing photos, the gardens were beautiful and what landscape. Glad you enjoyed some new things for lunch. Can't wait to hear about your evening but I am concerned about the rain....
Cheryl, I love your new installment and your pictures are excellent as ever. I'm glad you got to try some delicious food from the vendors for your lunch that looked Yum-O! I can't wait to hear about your night with the Gaishas. How sweet your cab driver tried to play tour guide during your ride over.
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Saturday 4 April – part four: and the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down…
As we got out at Ryoan-ji, we could see that the rain that had been very light when we left the hotel was now much heavier. Not a good sign. This place was founded in 1490 and is most famous for its simple rock harden that consists of just 15 stones. To be honest, that’s all the guidebooks really talk about, so I honestly thought that was all that was here, but that couldn’t have been more wrong. There’s also a beautiful set of gardens, set around a lake and of course the cherry blossoms were making it look even more gorgeous. We walked around, taking photos of the main garden:
Boy, was I glad to see this sign welcoming us to this temple!
Then we headed into see the rock harden. I had read that it’s not exactly the place to seek solitude, because of its popularity and that we right. This place was packed with people and the noise in there was quite something. Still here were some people in there trying to get away from it all and it was strangely calming, despite the noise. I had no idea what it all meant and apparently there is no one interpretation, so I didn’t try too hard to figure it out. I just enjoyed it. It’s undergoing a lot of restoration work, which is a shame, but again, it’s good to see it being looked after.
The viewing area over the rock garden
From there, it was back out into the rain and we walked around the rest of the gardens, with Mark getting more and more wet, as the time wore on. The umbrella we had wouldn’t go over both of us, so gallantly, Mark gave it to me, as he became more and more like a drowned rat.
Cheryl, I loved your update and the pictures are beautiful. I'm sorry you got rained on and Mark got drenched (but what a gentleman of a hubby you have to let you have the umbrella to keep dry). At least the Rest Room sign was probably in handy for when you arrived and it not being a Japanese style one (my bad knees couldn't handle that type). The Cherry Blossoms look so much more beautiful over in Japan than they do in our front yard (I did notice in one of your posts where you said they were on the ground, I could see the "Pink Snow" as we call them here). More please
I agree, the pictures look very peaceful and beautiful. The picture of you with your umbrella looks like a modern day Mary Poppins.
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the Rock Garden, it looks so peaceful.
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