National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 8 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wednesday 7 September – part six: getting our money’s worth at the aquarium
When we came ashore, we headed a couple of piers up to pier 59 to the Seattle Aquarium, getting some photos on the way....
The aquarium was the fourth thing we had done today that was covered with our City Pass. I later worked out that had cost us something like $59 and we would’ve spent more like $75, had we paid for all those things individually we had visited today. It turned out to be a great deal for us. If you’re looking into something like a City Pass, you do need to work out how much time you’ve got and how many places you’ll visit out of those you have access to, to see if it will be good value for money for your group.
At first, when we entered the aquarium, I have to be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed, thinking “is that it?” but this was just the beginning.
There were lots of fascinating exhibits. I loved the way that they had the jellyfish on display, as you would walk underneath them and they also had changing light colours to illuminate them, which was very neat too.
The first section concentrates on life in the Pacific Northwest, understandably, and they have a couple of big attractions here, where you can touch the marine life, which was pretty neat.
After viewing that sea life, we then moved into the more exotic area, where the fish had some brilliant colours. There were some that were very ugly ( it’s the truth! ) and others that were very beautiful. There was quite a selection of them to see...
Then you next head outside to perhaps the best section of the aquarium. It starts off with marine birds, including these guys....
... and the puffins. I loved the way that they looked at me, as if to say “what are you doing?” Why, taking photos of you, of course!
Then we moved through the salmon on their ladder, which was fascinating to see....
... and you go through the amazing underwater viewing area, which is made up of a glass dome, surrounded by 400,000 gallons of water that’s home to all sorts of marine life....
... then it was through to see the big boys, including the seals and otters. They were so beautiful and all very expressive.
As I say, there was a lot more here to see than I realised when we first arrived and it’s well worth a visit. I have to be honest, if it hadn’t been for the City Pass, we would never have gone there, as often we find aquariums to not be worth the money, but this one was excellent.
The aquarium is on my list of places to see. Thanks for the info on the city pass. I think it'll be good value for me as I'll have two full days plus a morning to explore the city. I just hope I can duplicate the fantastic weather you had!
What wonderful pictures you were able to capture from your cruise and the aquarium!!! It sounds like a great deal if you have the time to do all the things that you did in one day.
That area for the jellyfish is really neat! That is a very nice aquarium; I'm glad you guys had time to visit!
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The aquarium is on my list of places to see. Thanks for the info on the city pass. I think it'll be good value for me as I'll have two full days plus a morning to explore the city. I just hope I can duplicate the fantastic weather you had!
My advice is go into it, expecting hideous wet weather - that's what we did. We'd watched the Killing before going and almost every scene in it, the weather is miserable and it's tipping down. That's what we expected and look what we got!
My advice is go into it, expecting hideous wet weather - that's what we did. We'd watched the Killing before going and almost every scene in it, the weather is miserable and it's tipping down. That's what we expected and look what we got!
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I have to tell you, its been so interesting reading about Seattle from a tourist's perspective! I live about a half hour from downtown, and commute over 3 times a week, and we love going to the market during the summer. I'm so glad the weather cooperated for you...There was a huge music festival the weekend before you came, and the weather was great for us, and I'm happy that it continued over
I have to tell you, its been so interesting reading about Seattle from a tourist's perspective! I live about a half hour from downtown, and commute over 3 times a week, and we love going to the market during the summer. I'm so glad the weather cooperated for you...There was a huge music festival the weekend before you came, and the weather was great for us, and I'm happy that it continued over
Wow, you live in such a beautiful part of the world and how lucky that you get to go into the city so regularly. Mind you, I'm guessing it's a bit like us with London - you end up taking it a bit for granted?
Wednesday 7 September – part seven: one of the National Parks Service’s best!
As we were leaving, we asked about the bus service to Pioneer Square, which was to be our next stop and the woman pointed out where the stop for the 99 service was. We headed outside and quickly found it. We really lucked out here, as the thing only runs about every half hour, but thankfully one pulled up about three minutes after we got there, just as the timetable said it would. I love the way that it’s a free ride area within central Seattle from 6:00am to 7:00pm. It’s so much easier, particularly for tourists, as I don’t know about you, but whenever I ride a bus in a new town or city, I’m always worried about how the fare system works, as it does tend to differ from one to another.
We got off as we entered Pioneer Square and were immediately greeted with the sight of Smith Tower, which we had been told on the harbour cruise was built for the owner’s daughter’s wedding. As Mark said, “I hope she didn’t get divorced after he did that for her!”
We walked down through a lovely square, although both of us felt a bit uneasy there, as there were some very odd characters and not really any other tourists around. Still, there were some good sights there:
We then came across the waterfront streetcar stop and this was my preferred way of getting here, but sadly it’s not running at the moment. What a waste. At least we did see information that suggests that they’re looking at how to get it running again in the future, so that’s something. I hope it does run again – maybe in time for our next Alaskan cruise and who knows, that could be from Seattle...
We walked down another tree lined avenue and here you could see how the recession has been biting, as many of the properties were derelict here.
Finally, we made it to the Klondike National Historical Park and this has to be one of the best visitor centres that I’ve been in from the National Parks Service in some time. There was so much to see and learn about in here and it all made so much sense, now having seen the Skagway end of the gold rush. I loved it here and it was definitely worth coming here.
On the way out, I made sure to get another stamp for my National Parks passport. We asked how to get back to our hotel and were directed over to the bus terminus, which turned out to literally be about three blocks on the way. On the way, we saw a bit more of the city and some very neat buildings:
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The National Park displays look great-- very well done! Apart from that, the area around Pioneer Square looks a bit sad. Every city has spaces like this, but it's sad to see the effects of the bad economy so clearly. I love the way the transportation works-- seems like it's pretty easy to get around.
WOW! You certainly got a lot done in one day. And you really had some beautiful weather for touring. First, the woman on the pig was hilarious. She seemed to be a bit of a grump anyway. I love all the aquarium photos, especially the seals and otter since I have a soft spot for all marine animals. That furry seal was adorable.
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If you’re looking into something like a City Pass, you do need to work out how much time you’ve got and how many places you’ll visit out of those you have access to, to see if it will be good value for money for your group. 
it’s the truth! 
) and others that were very beautiful. There was quite a selection of them to see... 
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Still, there were some good sights there: 
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