Living the dream and remembering the Bagman UPDATED 3/21 - Page 76 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Sunday 25 September – part seven: the new look Flying Fish Café
We got to the entrance to the BoardWalk, and had to decide which way to go to see the sunset. We chose the BoardWalk, but we didn’t luck out sadly. We got some nice photos, but it wasn’t as great as the previous few days…
Eventually we made our way over to the Yacht and Beach Club…
We headed over to the Beach Club Villas…
… and there at the elevators, we could no longer put off the sad moment, and we had to say goodbye to Angie, Sue and Barb. It’s always so sad when you get to this moment of the vacation when you’re with good friends. If only we could’ve spent more time with them… next time I hope.
We headed back to the room, had some downtime, and got changed and ready for dinner at the Flying Fish Café. We left about 20 minutes before our ADR with Mark determined we’d catch the boat over. I thought we were pushing our luck, and to begin with, when we got there, we couldn’t see any boat. I really thought we would be late, but eventually one showed up…
We literally got to the Flying Fish at around 9:02pm, and for some reason, they’d already seated Bruce and Marta, rather than having them wait in the lobby, which we found a bit odd. I really liked the new feel to the place:
I have to confess I didn’t read the menu too closely, as having seen photos from Barb and Bob’s visit here the night before, I had a really good idea of what I wanted. I went for the blue crab bisque with jumbo lump crab, melted leeks, aged sherry and tarragon crčme fraiche. I was a bit worried about the presence of tarragon in this dish, as I really don’t like the stuff, but honestly, I couldn’t taste it at all.
Mark obviously hadn’t had enough of Piglet this trip yet, as he went for the Kurobuta pork belly with shank croquette, royal gala apple slaw, bing cherry gastrique, and shirred quail egg.
For entrée, once again I went for one of Barb’s recommendations, the Maine lobster Nero pasta, with golden tomato sauce, young artichokes, and micro lemon grass, and this was superb. I’m glad she’d been the night before and had some good options for me to choose.
Mark had the Wagyu fillet mignon with Okinawan potatoes, Chanterelle mushrooms, Romanesco and Bordelaise sauce.
For dessert, there wasn’t anything on the menu that personally grabbed me. Normally I’d have gone for Under the Sea, made up of Valrhona Manjari chocolate, chocolate coral sponge, pistachio sand, dehydrated milk foam, and tasting of three sea salts, or maybe panna “carpa”, a buttermilk panna cotta, with rhubarb, strawberry-lime consommé and basil sugar, but I wasn’t in the mood for something sweet.
Instead I opted for the chef’s selection of regional artisan cheese, all of which came from California, which according to the literature they provided is one of America’s greatest cheese producing states. The first was Pont Reyes Toma, a classic Italian cows’ milk cheese and is aged for a minimum of 90 days. The second was the Cypress Grove Truffle Tremor, produced at Cypress Grove Farm in the northernmost part of the state. It is described as earthy, elegant and sophisticated. The third was the Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk, which is a triple-cream, washed-ring, fully-flavoured cheese made from organic cow’s milk, which is aged six weeks and washed with a brine solution.
Mark had the Florida reef, which Bruce told us was on the menu at Citrico’s when it first opened. Way back then, it was supposed to have only Floridian cuisine, but that didn’t last long, as they decided it was a bit limited, and changed their menu to expand it to include other things. Personally, I think it would work now, but that’s just me. Anyway, I digress. The Florida reef is made up of lemon tart, toasted meringue, Florida citrus salad, and ruby red grapefruit sorbet. We had been told it would resemble a fish when it arrived, but we all thought it was more like a dragon, perhaps something from out of the Electrical Water Pageant.
Flying Fish Café
Appetiser 9˝ 10
Entrée 9˝ 9˝
Dessert 9 9˝
Service 9 9˝
Atmosphere 9 9
Value for money 9 9
Average score: 9.29
We walked back to the Beach Club Villas, getting some photos as we went, then it was straight to bed when we got back, as we had an early start in the morning, with breakfast booked at the Garden Grill.
The weather today was hot and sunny with temperatures in the mid 90s. The best thing today was our amazing brunch at the California Grill. The worst thing today was all the problems we had with our MagicBands in the morning. Today we tried the California Grill brunch And the result was we absolutely loved it! The most magical moment today was spending time with Sue, Angie and Barb – great friends, great times.
Your walk before dinner seems like the perfect way to end some quality time with friends.
Speaking of dinner, am I the only one who sees an "echo" of the amazing ceiling decor in your crab
bisque garnish?
Uh-oh, a cliffhanger !
Alas, every sunset can't be spectacular. The way the building lights are against the darkening sky is always nice to see though. My favorite time of day!
Goodbye's stink. But at least you had a wonderful dinner afterwards!
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Tanya
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Flying Fish looks like it was empty. I guess because it was such a late dinner?
Barb didn't steer you wrong! Your choices looked delicious. But I don't see the fish in Mark's dessert, either.
Your walk before dinner seems like the perfect way to end some quality time with friends.
Oh my goodness, it was!
Quote:
Speaking of dinner, am I the only one who sees an "echo" of the amazing ceiling decor in your crab bisque garnish?
Yes, I see it too, now you say it!
Quote:
Uh-oh, a cliffhanger !
You know the funny thing? This long after the trip, I can't actually remember what the cliffhanger relates to, so tomorrow's instalment will be a revelation for me too!
Monday 26 September – part one: “this doesn’t look good”
We had an early start today, as breakfast was booked at 8:35am. Mark got up first, and ended up heading down to the car with two of the cases while I finished getting ready. When he returned, he had the cheerful news that it was exceptionally humid out there, and you could barely breathe. Oh deep joy!
We took the final two cases down to the car, and somehow this time, he managed to get all of the cases and the two bits of hand luggage into the trunk of the car, which was a pretty impressive feat.
We very slowly made our way over to Epcot, dragging all the way, as the heat was very oppressive.
When we got to the gate, Mark turned round to me and said “this doesn’t look good”, as it was all roped off, but there were Cast Members behind it. I just walked up to them, and said we had a breakfast at Garden Grill. A quick scan of my MagicBand thankfully confirmed that, and we were in. Ok, I guess they don’t have to check names off a piece of paper any longer. That’s one way I can see MagicBands making Cast Members’ lives easier.
As always, it was lovely to walk through a deserted World Showcase. You really feel like a VIP with the park to yourself.
I was particularly pleased when this monorail came through, as it slowed right down, and it made for some wonderful shots. It was like it knew I was waiting for it!
We headed inside the Land…
… and down to the Garden Grill…
I was really looking forward to this, having had a wonderful dinner here on our last trip, and having really enjoyed their breakfast when we did it back on our honeymoon in 1999 and for a few years afterwards, until they stopped it. However, if I’m honest, it really didn’t meet those expectations.
Oh, that was quite a hike in the heat and humidity. We are so used to the humidity here in the South, but it is really what will drain you on a hot day. Here where I live summer humidities are nearly always 60% or higher and temps in mid summer are usually in the 90's. How fun to see Epcot so bright and clean and EMPTY.
Always sad having to say goodbye to good friends. Your dinner at Flying Fish looked wonderful and I really do like the new décor! Sorry the weather was just so darn humid for you this trip. I loved seeing how empty Epcot was on your walk over to the Garden Grill! It's always such a peaceful feeling getting the chance to walk through the parks before the crowds converge on the place! Sounds like your breakfast doesn't meet your expectations.
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It’s always so sad when you get to this moment of the vacation when you’re with good friends. If only we could’ve spent more time with them… next time I hope. 
I really liked the new feel to the place: 
I went for the blue crab bisque with jumbo lump crab, melted leeks, aged sherry and tarragon crčme fraiche. I was a bit worried about the presence of tarragon in this dish, as I really don’t like the stuff, but honestly, I couldn’t taste it at all. 
I’m glad she’d been the night before and had some good options for me to choose. 
However, if I’m honest, it really didn’t meet those expectations. 
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