A tale of two cities… and a few other places… 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What a fascinating place! Interesting that you saw a sign for Dunkerque with the movie (Dunkirk) out right now! I had to look up the history of the Disney bomb, as I wasn't familiar with that story.
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What a fascinating place! Interesting that you saw a sign for Dunkerque with the movie (Dunkirk) out right now! I had to look up the history of the Disney bomb, as I wasn't familiar with that story.
Wow that is some place and you covered it well! So much history to this place. It reminds me somewhat of Verdun outside of Reims when I visited it in 2013. Especially the tunnels as I'll always remember the barracks in the tunnels with that cold damp feeling! Where is this located as may be a good place to visit if it's convenient the next time I visit France?
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Wow that is some place and you covered it well! So much history to this place. It reminds me somewhat of Verdun outside of Reims when I visited it in 2013. Especially the tunnels as I'll always remember the barracks in the tunnels with that cold damp feeling!
Hmmm... I've heard of that, but we've never visited it. I'll have to keep that in mind.
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Where is this located as may be a good place to visit if it's convenient the next time I visit France?
It's very close to Calais - literally about 30 miles away.
Saturday 16 September – part four: this is not fun weather!
When we came out of there, sadly it was still tipping down with rain, which was frustrating to say the least.
We made our way out, and thankfully it turned out we weren’t too far from the entrance. They certainly did take you on a convoluted route to get here!
It was a weird place, but I’m glad we went. We headed out with thankfully no more farm machinery in sight, although the rain was still tipping down. It wasn’t fun driving weather.
On the way, I spotted a sign for McDonald’s, and suggested it for lunch. I was starving! The rain was still pounding down when we got there. We headed inside, and used one of the touch screen kiosks, and then waited for our order. It took some time, but eventually we had it, and we headed back to the car. It was fine, except the Diet Coke was just disgusting. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t Diet Coke. Neither of us could manage more than one or two sips, it was that bad.
We set off again, and made our way over to this place…
La Coupole, which is the dome in English, is another Second World War bunker complex. Like Le Blockhaus, the Nazis also designed this to be a base for V2 rockets, and this is the earliest known modern underground missile silo still in existence.
Once again, the Germans were unable to complete the construction work here due to repeated Allied bombing. It was abandoned and remained derelict until the mid 1990s, re-opening to the public as a museum in 1997.
Now I will be honest here, I thought this was a family attraction, given it’s got a planetarium, but my goodness, we couldn’t have been more wrong.
As we made our way over to the complex, we could see the dome up high. Thank goodness they had a lift to get up to it.
We made our way through the tunnel complex, which was once a railway tunnel, although the rails have been removed and the floor levelled.
It had an interesting display about war. This is where I started to realise that this was pretty hard hitting stuff. I didn’t take a photo of it, but they had one shot of a solider with a bullet hole through his nose.
You walked through more tunnels than I expected. At some points, I did wonder if they would ever end, but eventually we found the lift… phew!
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Great WWII here and quite a bit to take in. Too bad the weather wasn't that cooperative.
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
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.
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Where is this located as may be a good place to visit if it's convenient the next time I visit France?
It wasn’t fun driving weather. 
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