A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM 12/2 - Page 51 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Oh wow, free champagne? That's awesome! What kind of feedback did you give? Was it negative stuff? I wonder if in that case, they felt bad that you didn't enjoy your meals?
Oh wow, free champagne? That's awesome! What kind of feedback did you give? Was it negative stuff? I wonder if in that case, they felt bad that you didn't enjoy your meals?
It was a mixture. Obviously we gave our feedback with what happened with the tuna they'd served up a couple of nights earlier, but we also talked to them about the character breakfast, how we felt it could be improved with a bit more time allocated to the characters to get round the tables and bigger portion servings. We did praise some of it, but I'd say it was probably best described as constructive feedback.
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Wow, free champagne?!
Love the false start on Mark's birthday by your dining team! Obviously they wanted to practice to be ready for the real presentation!
Overall what a very nice day you had. I know the weather wasn't the best but the excursion seemed nice, especially with the bear sightings and those beautiful birds!! Loved the photo shoot of you & Mark - great photos! I especially liked the one with the porthole. Dinner seemed fun and Mark looked like he was enjoying it
Wow, free champagne?!
Love the false start on Mark's birthday by your dining team! Obviously they wanted to practice to be ready for the real presentation!
Overall what a very nice day you had. I know the weather wasn't the best but the excursion seemed nice, especially with the bear sightings and those beautiful birds!! Loved the photo shoot of you & Mark - great photos! I especially liked the one with the porthole.
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Dinner seemed fun and Mark looked like he was enjoying it
He had a great time - not bad, fun at two birthday meals two nights in a row...
Sunday 6 September – part one: learning the story of Boo
I woke up about 6:10am, and the next thing I knew, it was an hour and a half later, and I was still tired. I resisted the temptation to get up for as long as I could, as obviously my body was telling me that it needed to recharge itself a bit, and heck, we wouldn’t be having a lie-in tomorrow, when it came to disembarkation.
We got going, and headed down to Triton’s, as we hadn’t made it there once for breakfast this cruise, and I always prefer a sit-down meal to start the day if one is available. It was a bit surreal when we entered, as it was very dark inside, and obviously something had gone wrong with the lighting. We were assured that they were working on it, and were accompanied to a table by the window, presumably so we could read our menus.
I knew immediately what I was going to go for, the French toast and pineapple stack, made up of layers of French toast and grilled pineapple, topped with strawberry coulis, maple glaze and fruit salad and it was just what I needed.
Mark had the express, made up of scrambled eggs, grilled ham, bacon, sausage and hash browns:
We headed back to the room, and the view outside was a bit miserable…
It wasn’t raining, and it wasn’t that cold, but it was a lot murkier outside than it had been before.
We headed out just before 10:00am for this presentation…
It was absolutely fascinating, and we learnt so much from it. Doug Jones is just so easy to listen to, and is such a knowledgeable guide. He explained that there is a lot we don’t know about whales, simply because they spend a lot of their time under the water, and he was also at pains to encourage younger members of the audience to think about this as a career, as there was still so much we’re yet to discover about these fascinating creatures. Despite saying that, he did have a huge amount of information to share with us.
He told us that they’d found a whale with a Japanese harpoon embedded in it, and the harpoon was 130 years old. Now as the Japanese would only hunt fully grown animals, which gives you an idea of its lifespan. Doug said until that point, they’d only thought that whales lived to around 80 or 90 years old, so they were way out on that.
We heard the story of Boo, which stood for baby orphaned orca, whose mother they think became separated from the pod, and then the mother died. Well, she didn’t learn any of the typical orca behaviours, and became very friendly with humans out in boats, as she was desperate for attention, given orcas are normally social creatures, and would mix in the pod. The authorities started to get worried about her behaviour for obvious reasons, as she was leaving herself open to problems, but sadly she didn’t know any better. They found her pod through the various sounds they make, but at first the Canadians refused to let them take her back, as she was in Seattle, and her pod was just outside Vancouver. Eventually, they relented, and she was put back. Her own pod rejected her, but a neighbouring pod took her in, and her great aunt taught her the skills she needed to know, and eventually she re-joined her original pod. The story really did have a happy ending, as the last slide Doug showed in this section was Boo with her own calf.
We also learnt how there are three types of orcas, residents, which eat mainly fish, transients, which mainly eat things like seals, and offshore, which eat on fish, but occasionally sharks, but they all make totally different noises, and they’re now even thinking that one set is so different from the others that it might be a sub-species.
Other things we heard were about the different sets of whales in the Pacific, with most by the American coastline, but a few over towards Russia, although they’re finding that the few remaining there seem to be heading towards America. They tagged one whale which came all the way over from Russia to America and back in five months, covering a staggering 14,500 miles in that time.
There were some photos and videos shot by people on other Alaskan cruises on the Wonder, which made you realise just how many whales you might see in Juneau, and what antics they might perform. Someone even got a shot of a whale coming out of the water, while another shot clearly showed an orca pod. Mark was exceptionally jealous at seeing that!
I’m so glad we did this presentation, as it was just wonderful to see all the amazing photos, and to learn so much more about whales than I ever thought I would. My only problem was trying not to fall asleep. I was saying to Mark that I didn’t know if I could make it to brunch at Palo or not, I was that tired, but when we left, he suggested going up to the Outlook Café.
We didn’t get that far, as we realised just how close we were to the coast, and how stunning the scenery was, so we headed outside on to deck 10 to get some photos…
I even found a Cast Member to get a couple of photos of us.
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Dinner looked great! 
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