Four go wild north of the border UPDATED 6/23 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What a beautiful garden! I sure hope you get a few nice days like that in Scotland too.
Weather like that would be heavenly after the intense humidity yesterday (worse than Florida... honestly!) and then the chill of today. We are going through the whole repertoire of weather right now!
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Yes, they do pack lightly. Impressive Mari and Raleigh! Or she's thinking like I do sometimes - I'll buy more clothes while I'm there.... But it's usually just shirts and sweatshirts I end up with!
Hmmm.... she hasn't bought that much on previous trips, at least not that I've noticed anyway...
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My parents celebrated their 50th last year, and we didn't do much either. Of course she wasn't feeling well, but we managed just a family get together for dinner. Oh well! We surprised them with a big party for their 40th, so perhaps we did that backwards... Congrats to your parents upcoming big number!
I did the surprise lunch thing for my parents for their silver wedding anniversary.
Always pretty cool to see TV programs of places you'll be visiting for an upcoming trip, which always makes it more exciting! Congrats on the travel insurance and have used many times and usually on my package tours and the cruise I took.
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Pre-trip report – part eight: they’ve got fairly widespread snow!
Saturday 15 April
I wasn’t expecting to have anything to add from this weekend, as we were actually on vacation in another part of the United Kingdom – Northern Ireland. However, as we were driving along the coastal road in Northern Ireland, we saw something in the distance, and we were trying to fathom out what it was. Eventually, with some help from good old Google Maps, we worked it out – Scotland! And even weirder, it was actually Kintyre, which we’d be visiting and spending the night in.
Thursday 20 April
As I was driving along today (I was heading to Brighton for work on the dreaded M25 motorway and I was stuck in traffic – again!) I spotted a foreign vehicle registration plate that I didn’t recognise. I looked it up when I got home, and discovered it was Ukraine, but that got me thinking. Perhaps I should print off a list of these, and then see how many we can tick off on our road trip? It’s normally a game we play anyway whenever we’re driving a long distance (well, Ok, we play the “how many state licence plates can we find” whenever we’re in the States ), but I figured maybe we’d just formalise it a bit more… I doubt we’ll get many from our tour around Scotland, but heck, you never know!
I also emailed Mari, as I’ve been meaning to ever since we got back from Northern Ireland. She and Raleigh are going to Ireland, which I knew, but I gathered from her comments on Facebook over the weekend that they’ll be in the northern part of the country, which I didn’t know. I’m now very curious to see what they’re going to be doing, and maybe we can help out with advice…
Friday 21 April
As of today, we are just 50 days out from this trip! It feels as if the time is now starting to fly by… I can’t believe it’s almost May! Where is this year going?
Saturday 22 April
I bought 100 blank CDs for backing up all my photos, as I discovered when trying to back up our photos from Northern Ireland that I’d actually got one left spare and that was it. That’s not going to work. While technically I was buying these for our Iceland trip (we fly out on Friday! ), I figured 100 should also do us fine for this trip as well…
Sunday 23 April
I heard back from Mari, and she’s sent me her itinerary. My goodness, it looks amazing! We really need to get around Ireland at some point. I can’t believe we’re so close, and we haven’t seen any of the country, yet a number of our friends from the other side of the pond will have done. I’m glad they’re going to be seeing some of the places we enjoyed on our recent visit to Northern Ireland. They’ll also be able to put their National Trust membership to good use, as they’re visiting plenty of properties while they’re over there.
Talking of properties, Mari posted a beautiful photo of Eilean Donan Castle on Facebook, and asked if it was on our itinerary. Well, let’s put it this way… it wasn’t, but as it’s on the way in between two places we’re driving, it is now! I don’t know whether we’ll have time to actually visit it, as it’s the day we’re visiting Skye, and we’ve got a lot already planned for that day. We’ll see how we go… don’t you love the way the plans just keep changing as we go along?
My parents have also decided what they’re going to do on the day of their golden wedding. We’re going out to dinner with them at La Boheme, which is their favourite restaurant locally. We’ve eaten there a couple of times now, and have always enjoyed our meals there. During the day, we’re going to go to the Churnet Valley Railway. It’s not somewhere I’ve ever heard of before, but if that’s what they want to do, I’m happy, so long as they’re happy, as it’s their day.
Monday 24 April
Mari came back to me about some of the comments I’d made on the itinerary, and in her email, she mentioned that Raleigh was a bit worried about doing the driving in Ireland for two weeks and she wasn’t sure if he’d want to do much driving, so I went back to her immediately to reassure her about that, as there’s no way we expect either of them to drive. We’re in our car, it’s our issue. And Mark will be doing 99.9% of the driving anyway, as he’s such a bad passenger… The only times I ever drive him around is when he’s feeling really, really ill…
Tuesday 25 April
I had another email from Mari this morning, and this is the part of her email I loved!
Scotland is going to be fun and exciting!!! My son and I were talking last night and we agreed that the closest we've been to Scotland is sipping some good Scotch! (never mind I've been to Wales and Ireland in 2011) hahaha!!
As I watched the weather forecast this morning, I couldn’t help but think that in about seven weeks’ time, we’ll be in Scotland… yet right now, they’ve got fairly widespread snow! In fact, there’s the possibility of snow over a lot of the country (hopefully not as far south as us… ), which is very unusual for this late in the year. Apparently last night, the snow got down as far as the Midlands, which are about 150 miles north of us. I’m wondering, given the lateness of the snow, whether we’ll still see any on our trip. It’s not something that had even crossed my mind before now, but now it’s got me curious… oh well, only a few weeks until we’ll find out for ourselves…
Tuesday 2 May
Ok, so this update comes to you from Iceland… We were at the Blue Lagoon earlier today, and I was looking up details about their new hotel, which is coming online in fall 2017, a bit later than originally planned, as once upon a time, it was due to be open in spring 2017. Anyway, I digress. The site I was on had an advert about the top five things to do in Scotland, so I couldn’t help but look at it.
The first one was definitely not one we’ll be doing – making your own beauty products somewhere in Glasgow. I don’t think so… The next one was about making your own whiskey. Well, we’ll be doing whiskey tasting, not quite the same… but similar. The remaining three we have either done or will be doing. There was the Falkirk Wheel, which we did with Hazel and her family back in January 2016. Gosh, was it really that long ago now?
The final two were taking a trip around the Highlands, yes we’ll be doing that, and then there was going hunting for Nessie – we’ll certainly be doing that, although as Mark said, if we find her, we’ll be very rich! Well, here’s hoping…
I just realised as well, as I write this, we can now officially say we’ll be in Scotland next month! Wow, this will be here before we know it…
A Ukraine license plate?! Wow! We order my daughters custom rhythmic gymnastics leotards from a woman in Ukraine. Excellent quality!
The extra castle you're putting in the itinerary looks to be very cool. Hope you can squeeze in a few minutes there. Very picturesque all surrounded by water. Sounds like your parents should enjoy their special day too!
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Tanya
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Wow! I'm off the boards for a week and you have a whole pre trip report for a Scotland road trip done! You are one fast and organized lady! Your trip and places you are staying looks amazing, especially the castle hotel. What a great time you are going to have with your friends. Best wishes to your parents on their 50th wedding anniversary.
A Ukraine license plate?! Wow! We order my daughters custom rhythmic gymnastics leotards from a woman in Ukraine. Excellent quality!
Oh wow, how neat (and slightly bizarre in a good way ) is that?
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The extra castle you're putting in the itinerary looks to be very cool. Hope you can squeeze in a few minutes there. Very picturesque all surrounded by water. Sounds like your parents should enjoy their special day too!
You need to start out on this trip before there are so many additions that you need to add another week!
Oh I know, that's always the danger of any trip though, isn't it? Actually, I was just reviewing our itinerary earlier and what struck me is that I thought it was pretty reasonable without too much crammed in each day - I hope...
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But it's usually just shirts and sweatshirts I end up with!
Congrats to your parents upcoming big number!
Congrats on the travel insurance and have used many times and usually on my package tours and the cruise I took.
It’s normally a game we play anyway whenever we’re driving a long distance (well, Ok, we play the “how many state licence plates can we find” whenever we’re in the States 
Where is this year going? 
That’s not going to work. 
During the day, we’re going to go to 
I don’t think so… The next one was about making your own whiskey. Well, we’ll be doing whiskey tasting, not quite the same… but similar. The remaining three we have either done or will be doing. There was the Falkirk Wheel, which we did with Hazel and her family back in January 2016. Gosh, was it really that long ago now? 
Alaskan Mom aka Bonnie
Oh I know, that's always the danger of any trip though, isn't it? 
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