National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 79 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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That train set up was amazing! The kids were absolutely enthralled with it. They followed one train around the whole thing - it was great fun! The details were really cool. Oh, the baby chicks! My son was in heaven! These 2 things, the trains and the baby chicks, are his most favorite things in the world! As far as he was concerned, that alone was worth coming to the museum!
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That train set up was amazing! The kids were absolutely enthralled with it. They followed one train around the whole thing - it was great fun! The details were really cool. Oh, the baby chicks! My son was in heaven! These 2 things, the trains and the baby chicks, are his most favorite things in the world! As far as he was concerned, that alone was worth coming to the museum!
I'm with him - the baby chicks and the trains were both amazing!
Loved going to that museum as a kid, and wish there was something like it here. Even with all the Smithsonian museums here, I don't think they're as awesome as MoS&I. Aren't those baby chicks the cutest?! I'd stand there forever when I was little. I wanted my own hatchery! Do they still have the coal mine? That was my other favorite!
The cow was from Cows on Parade, when they had the cows all over the city - like here in DC one year they did pandas, and another year it was donkeys and elephants ("party animals").
Loved going to that museum as a kid, and wish there was something like it here. Even with all the Smithsonian museums here, I don't think they're as awesome as MoS&I. Aren't those baby chicks the cutest?! I'd stand there forever when I was little. I wanted my own hatchery! Do they still have the coal mine? That was my other favorite!
The cow was from Cows on Parade, when they had the cows all over the city - like here in DC one year they did pandas, and another year it was donkeys and elephants ("party animals").
You're right - the Smithsonian museums are awesome, but they are also very different to what's on offer at the Museum of Science and Industry, which is just so much fun really!
Saturday 17 September – part four: learning about U505...
Finally, we were at the U505 submarine display. This started off ordinarily enough, telling the story of U-boats during the Second World War and then more specifically the story of U505 and how it came to be here.
I thought we were finished, but : you then head downstairs to carry on your tour and learn even more. We knew that tickets to see inside were separate and we half kept expecting to be stopped at any point, but we were allowed to carry on and see around the whole submarine, learning more about it at every stop. I was amazed at the way that they were able to keep the capture of this vessel secret until the end of the war, even if it did mean breaking a few rules along the way, as these photos show...
Finally, we got to the exit and Heather suddenly realised that we were running very late for our dinner date. We’d said that we’d leave at 11:30am and it was well past that time. We said our goodbyes to Tanya and her family, who were staying on to enjoy more of the museum and I can’t say I blame them one bit. : You could easily spend the whole day here, if not two days and not finishing exploring...
We headed outside with Heather and found a cab with no problems. However, getting into the city was a little more problematic. My goodness, the traffic we found! It was just crawling along, although we think part of that was down to a college football game at Soldier Field. At least, as we were moving slowly at times, I was able to get some photos on the way...
Next: if you didn’t know where this was, you could easily miss it!
We had a great time at the museum didn't we! There was so much to see--it was well worth going a little out of the way. It was great to see Mark and Cheryl and to meet Tanya and her family!
We had a great time at the museum didn't we! There was so much to see--it was well worth going a little out of the way. It was great to see Mark and Cheryl and to meet Tanya and her family!
We had a great time at the museum didn't we! There was so much to see--it was well worth going a little out of the way. It was great to see Mark and Cheryl and to meet Tanya and her family!
We certainly did. It's been a long time since I've come across a museum that has so much variety.
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I have an inbuilt cow detector... 
: you then head downstairs to carry on your tour and learn even more. We knew that tickets to see inside were separate and we half kept expecting to be stopped at any point, but we were allowed to carry on and see around the whole submarine, learning more about it at every stop. I was amazed at the way that they were able to keep the capture of this vessel secret until the end of the war, even if it did mean breaking a few rules along the way, as these photos show... 
We said our goodbyes to Tanya and her family, who were staying on to enjoy more of the museum and I can’t say I blame them one bit. 
It was just crawling along, although we think part of that was down to a college football game at Soldier Field. At least, as we were moving slowly at times, I was able to get some photos on the way... 
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