Returning to Roman times… COMPLETED - Page 5 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Technically, I'm sure it wasn't, as you'd have to have these things planned out probably a year in advance. It's just we didn't know anything about it until the last minute...
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Yikes, glad you sorted it out before you left! Maybe Mark means he doens't have many non-Disney shirts....
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As I write this, it’s now Friday evening, and Mark is upstairs packing… the immortal quote I’ve just heard is “I don’t have many T-shirts”. I did point out that he managed to find plenty for our trip to the States for a mere 28 nights, while this is just two nights… enough said!
LOL! Love it!
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Dreams, Wishes, Hopes... these are the parts of childhood we should never lose.
Saturday 4 May – part one: I am not usually spontaneous…
It was an early start for us, with the alarm going off at 5:00am. It threw Mark for a moment, who was trying to work out why it had been set so early for a weekend….
We got going, and grabbed breakfast, and were ready to go just before 6:00am. It’s nice going away at this time of the year, as it’s already light outside. I had packed the camera in my hand luggage, which was in the boot of the car, so I’m afraid there are no photos of our drive up to the airport, but I can tell you that it was a very quiet drive, and it was a beautiful day. We even saw some cows as we drove along, so that made me a very happy girl!
We called the valet parking company, as instructed, when we were 10 minutes out from the airport, and soon we were pulling up there, and were met by one of their staff. The process couldn’t have been smoother. We literally got the paperwork, and about a minute later, we were heading up into the terminal.
We headed to the check-in area for bag drop, and promptly chose the wrong line. There was only a couple in front of us, but after they sent their first (lighter) suitcase through, their second one came up as overweight and they had to pay an excess. Honestly, who doesn’t check the weight of their cases these days before they leave home? Even if you don’t, you must have an idea of which one’s heavier, and that’s the one you put on the scales first.
We had no such problems, and our small case was soon on its way, and we were on our way to security, fighting our way past everyone getting clear plastic bags for their liquids (why not just bring one from home people? ).We were told that security at the end had no line, and they were spot on. We literally walked straight up, and thankfully straight through. Those of you who read our German trip report from Easter will know what problems we had with security checks at both ends, so I was very relieved when neither of us was singled out for a pat down, and our hand luggage made it through fine as well, without needing to be emptied out and re-packed.
That done, it was into the departure area. The whole process, from dropping the car to getting to this point had literally taken no more than 20 minutes. Now that’s a pleasant change from our last airport experience.
We had a browse in a couple of shops, but in truth, bearing in mind it was a three day Bank Holiday weekend, we couldn’t believe how quiet it was here.
We wandered through the duty free shop, where Mark got a cheap, back-up watch, as the battery on his is failing again and it needs to be sent away to have it replaced, and he needs something in the meantime. On the way in, we’d seen a guy in a kilt, who didn’t exactly look Scottish shall we say, offering whiskey samples. As it’s not my sort of thing, I said thanks, but I had to get a photo of him, as he just looked so silly. It’s not the sort of job I’d want to do, dressed like that – and if Hazel’s reading this, no insult to the Scots – a lot of people look really good in kilts, it’s just he didn’t.
From there, we wandered through the rest of the departure lounge, and I had a quick look in Harrod’s.
We decided to have a look in Dixon’s, which specialises in electrical goods. Now I swear what happens next was not expected at all. In fact, a few days earlier, the silly question of the day on the boards had been “what was the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?” and I genuinely could not come up with an answer. Well, this might not rank at the top, but it’s certainly unlike me.
I started to browse the cameras, and spotted a Sony camera that had a 50 times zoom on it. Now, one of the things I really hate about my Panasonic Lumix camera is having the interchangeable lenses. I thought I’d get used to them, but honestly, I haven’t. I just find them an absolute pain, and now I’d found a camera that had a much better zoom than my Lumix with just the one lens. Hmm….
I looked at it, picked it up, and found it wasn’t as heavy as I thought, then I checked out the zoom. Wow, that was pretty spectacular. I had a look at the Canon as well, but in all honesty, I’m at home with a Sony, as that was my first digital SLR camera, and I still miss that beauty. She was such a wonderful camera. Even better, after having really gone downhill with their cameras, Sony had now re-introduced the Carl Zeiss lens on this camera, something my original Sony had. I was pretty sold, and decided to get it, along with a spare battery (well, heck I do take one or two photos… ) and a battery charger. That was it – within 10 minutes, I had a brand new camera to my name! I still can’t quite believe it as I write this…
We browsed a couple of other shops, but we didn’t make any other purchases – heck, I don’t think I’d done too badly so far. We settled down to wait for our gate number to appear, and I got rid of as much of the packaging from my new purchase as I could. It was amazing how much I was able to bin straight away. In fact, the new camera fitted nicely in my hand luggage, and I ended up putting the laptop in the plastic bag I’d just got from Dixons, so I could use it on the plane.
Mark went to check the board, and we were supposed to get our gate at 8:05am. A few minutes after that, it came up and said that it wouldn’t be announced until 8:45am. Ok, so I guess we’ve got a pretty big delay then.
Mark was starting to get hungry, and so was I, so I suggested heading upstairs to check out the cafés and restaurants and get something to eat to while away the time. Just before we chose, we checked out the departure boards again, and thank goodness we did, as now our gate was showing up. Ok, then back downstairs and off to our gate then…
Upstairs… … and going back downstairs!
We were across the taxiway, which means an escalator up, and down at each side. I got some neat shots as I was on them:
There was a couple who were rushing, and pushing past people, so we assumed that they were running later for their flight. Not a bit of it! How do I know this? Because they were at our gate when we arrived.
When we got to that part of the airport, it was pretty dead…
… but it soon started to fill up at our gate, as I knew it was a full flight from the issues I’d had getting the seats booked yesterday.
Wow. What kind of sony did you get then. Was it an slr too or a deluxe point and shoot? I love my slr, but changing lenses can be a pain. I did get a new all in one lens and I really like it for vacationing. The bad thing is it was really heavy.
A new camera!! I thought I was bad for getting a new one 3 days before a trip. But literally before you get on the airplane - now that's spontaneous!!! It must be an awesome camera since you took so many pictures on this trip......
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Wow. What kind of sony did you get then. Was it an slr too or a deluxe point and shoot? I love my slr, but changing lenses can be a pain. I did get a new all in one lens and I really like it for vacationing. The bad thing is it was really heavy.
Now this just shows how spontaneous the purchase was - I had to go and find it to check. It's apparently an HX300.
A new camera!! I thought I was bad for getting a new one 3 days before a trip. But literally before you get on the airplane - now that's spontaneous!!! It must be an awesome camera since you took so many pictures on this trip......
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Hopefully things somehow got better for you and Mark!!!!!
I did point out that he managed to find plenty for our trip to the States for a mere 28 nights, while this is just two nights… enough said! 
Dreams, Wishes, Hopes... these are the parts of childhood we should never lose.
Honestly, who doesn’t check the weight of their cases these days before they leave home? Even if you don’t, you must have an idea of which one’s heavier, and that’s the one you put on the scales first. 
thanks, but I had to get a photo of him, as he just looked so silly. 
I thought I was bad for getting a new one 3 days before a trip. But literally before you get on the airplane - now that's spontaneous!!! It must be an awesome camera since you took so many pictures on this trip......
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