A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 55 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Oh. My. Goodness. Those pictures of the gardens were unbelievably gorgeous. I've spent 20 minutes looking at them and I'm exhausted from it! How did you ever take it all in one go? Just beautiful.
You're right about that - you just can't take it all in. I love doing trip reports because it gives you a chance to re-live everything and there were things in the photos I didn't remember seeing, so it was lovely to go back and look at them all again.
Tuesday 7 April – part one: don’t rush if you don’t know where you’re going!
We had a 6.00 wake up call, as we had decided to go for an early breakfast, as the hotel restaurant only did breakfast from 7.00 to 8.45 and, judging by the number of people on the tour group who were at dinner last night, we figured going early would mean missing the rush. Well, it was a lot busier than we thought, but we still got in fine.
It wasn’t a bad spread with both Western and Japanese food on offer. They had a good selection of pastries and bread, along with bacon, sausage and scrambled egg, some fruit and cereal, plus some Japanese items that I tried, including salmon, which made a very pleasant change.
Once we were done, it was back to the room to pack up again and then we checked out, leaving our luggage at the hotel. We headed for the station, not knowing if we were going to take the streetcar (essentially a tram system), which was covered by the free one day pass that we had been given when we checked into the hotel (part of our package) or whether to catch the train. In the end, we went with the streetcar and it was a really fun way to travel, although when we boarded, we did wonder if we would get a seat, as there were so many people waiting to board, we did manage to grab one. We were so keen to bag a seat that we didn’t stamp our tickets when we boarded. I then spent the rest of the journey worrying that we should have done that, but when we got to the other end of the line, everything was fine.
The journey took us just over here and as we travelled, you could see that Hiroshima was obviously a modern city, but if you didn’t know its history, there was no sign of it at all, until we got to the A Bomb Dome in the centre of the city. It’s a thriving place and it seemed to me that it was more liberal, judging by the clothes that people were wearing. There was less of the conformity that we saw in Tokyo, even amongst the businessmen and woman that we saw, which was interesting.
Some photos on the way At our destination station
When we got to Miyajima-guchi, which was our stop at the end of the line, we walked over to the ferry, boat service and got our tickets and waited for the boat to come in. When it did, we were amongst the first to board, although when we did, we were quickly overtaken by an Eastern European couple who were obviously keen to get the best viewing spot. Sadly for them, they hadn’t done their homework and went for the wrong side of the boat and we ended up with a perfect view of Miyajima Island with the great Torii gate floating in the sea. I took great delight from the fact that the Eastern European couple were stuck behind us now, trying to get their photos.
Ready to disembark
The journey only took about 10 minutes and then it was a really pleasant walk down to the Itsukushima Shrine, taking lots of photos on the way. We saw signs that the deer were not tame and may bite, so we made sure to keep well away from them.
More great pictures. Very cute pics of you and Mark . I recognize a former profile picture . Doing your homework really paid off. Looks like the weather was getting warmer for you too!
Interesting about the deer there too - didn't know they just hung out.
__________________
Enjoying Tokyo DisneySea with my Buzz & Woody...
I know'd I made a good choice! DVC - Saratoga Springs Resort
Okay - I'm sure whoever translated the sign about the deer just meant to watch your children around them but..."Please pay special attention to your babies" Am I the only one picturing Bambi gone wild and snacking on our infants ?
Chez, the pictures from the gardens on Monday are my favs so far - just breathtaking!
Just catching up. The gardens you visited were beautiful, and you seemed to have them all to yourselves. What great pictures! I love that you had the better view on the ferry than the pushy people!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
About This Page: 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
. I recognize a former profile picture 
Guess where we were headed??
The deer will eat your babies!! 
Linear Mode
