A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - Page 96 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 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.
French onion soup can be dangerous with that cheese keeping it scalding hot. I've had some awful burns in my mouth from that more than once - the kind where the skin on the roof of your mouth peels off. Ouch!
I do like the visual of the crowd dancing to such a.......an interesting song!
That's so weird to still have daylight at that late hour. I have forgotten that this cruise was during more daylight hours!! Very cool though.
Even if the service wasn't the best, the food sure looked yummy! Ahhh, yes. French Onion soup. So good, yet so sneaky....
And yes, I know both of those bands and songs! Quite surprised to hear that on a cruise, that's more alternative music and not usually mainstream stuff! It does have a good tune though, if you just ignore the lyrics.
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
PassPorter Guide Community Rank: Legend Extraordinaire
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Ballston Lake, NY
Concierge Level: 6
Posts: 46,162
Post Thanks / Like
Likes (Given): 94
Likes (Received): 241
Thanks (Given): 0
Thanks (Received): 139
Pixie Dust (Given): 3
Pixie Dust (Received): 4
Glad you were able to find something to spend your remaining rubles on. Great pictures as you leave port. Sorry the service at dinner was lacking. Looking forward to seeing where your headed next!
French onion soup can be dangerous with that cheese keeping it scalding hot. I've had some awful burns in my mouth from that more than once - the kind where the skin on the roof of your mouth peels off. Ouch!
I do like the visual of the crowd dancing to such a.......an interesting song!
That's so weird to still have daylight at that late hour. I have forgotten that this cruise was during more daylight hours!! Very cool though.
Yes, it was a while ago now... four months! Good grief, where does the time go? It's a bit weird to look at the photos, given how the nights are coming in at the moment.
Quote:
Even if the service wasn't the best, the food sure looked yummy! Ahhh, yes. French Onion soup. So good, yet so sneaky....
And yes, I know both of those bands and songs! Quite surprised to hear that on a cruise, that's more alternative music and not usually mainstream stuff! It does have a good tune though, if you just ignore the lyrics.
Tuesday 14 June – part one: where’s the nearest land?
I woke up around 8:50am, which I was really pleased with, as it meant I’d had a good 10 hours sleep overnight, allowing me to catch up a bit on the lack of sleep from previous nights. We got going slowly, as I had a lot of work to do on the trip report.
At 10:00am, we had the daily update from the captain, and we were both very surprised to hear from the captain that the closest land to us was actually 50 metres beneath us! We were apparently 25 nautical miles from the coast of Estonia, and at the moment, from the top decks, we had a view of 10 – 12 nautical miles. Wow, I guess it’s really clear out there then right now… to prove it, I grabbed these photos:
This honestly looked more like the Mediterranean than the Baltic Sea with the sun reflecting on the sea below. It looked so beautiful and calm.
We figured we’d better get going, as the full breakfast in the Oceanview Café is only available until 10:30am, then they change to the late breakfast and remove some options. Given I wanted my staples of Scottish eggs benedict (although in fairness, I haven’t had it in a few days now…) and French toast and I figured they might be casualties of the changes, we headed up there about 10:15am. I got both and we sat there enjoying our late breakfast.
As we did, we saw Phylis, and we told her she’d made the right call about yesterday, as we reckoned she would’ve found it tough going. Apparently, she woke up at 8:00am, and went back to sleep, and stayed in her room until 2:30pm. My goodness, we were back on board just a couple of hours later.
On that subject, we wondered if a lot of people were lying in today, as the Oceanview Café was pretty packed, way more than we expected for this time of day. We thought we’d be the only mad fools eating this late, but apparently not.
When we were done eating, we took a stroll along deck 14. On this side, which didn’t face into the sun, it was pretty cold…
However, on the other side, where the sun was shining, it was packed out! Obviously there were some serious sun worshippers there already…
We passed by the Solarium, and that looked busier than we’d seen it all cruise, so we decided that we wouldn’t head there.
Instead, we had a quick look in the Sky lounge, which wasn’t too busy…
… then we made our way back to the room. Our attendant was still cleaning up, but we told him to carry on, as we’d be in the room for some time. We ended up settling ourselves on the balcony to keep out of his way, but the sun was shining directly at us, so we figured we might as well enjoy it and it was far more private than deck 14. Why more people don’t do this, I do not know, as I’d much prefer to be on my own enjoying the sun than sharing it with lots of other people.
We ended up spending a good couple of hours out there. Mark retreated when he got too hot, but then again he hadn’t lathered himself up in factor 100 sunscreen, so that didn’t surprise me. I ended up coming in a bit later, because the sun was moving around, and it was starting to get a bit chillier outside.
We decided we’d watch another pay-per-view movie, and opted for Spotlight. I knew this had won an Oscar, and my dad had watched it and thoroughly recommended it. I figured we’d watch it for free when it came on to Sky Movies, but as we had time to kill and it was only $13, why not? Wow, I am so glad I watched it. What a great movie and I can see why it won an Oscar. I can also see why it didn’t win any individual actor awards, as frankly there are just so many great performances, you cannot single out one person. It was also very funny for us to watch actors that we mainly know from US TV dramas in a movie, but they were excellent in their parts.
When that finished, we took a stroll up to the Oceanview Café to get a mid-afternoon snack. I ended up getting some cheese and biscuits, while Mark went for French stick and ham, and we got a glass of wine to accompany it.
We were going to sit outside by the Oceanview Bar, but frankly it was too cold out there, so we retreated into the relative warmth of the café and enjoyed our food there.
We both got desserts, with me stockpiling on the pineapple sorbet that I’d enjoyed so much last night…
… while Mark went with apple crumble…
As I was tucking into my sorbet, and Mark was up getting his dessert, a waiter asked if I’d like another glass of White Zinfandel. Ok, so now you just twisted my arm. He brought the bottle over, and we both had another glass.
We were talking earlier about whether or not we’d have broken even had we paid for the drinks package. I think it came to around $1,000 for the whole cruise for the two of us (thank goodness it was free! ) and given each glass of wine is $7.50 and each spirit measure is $9.50, I think on some nights, we probably have got our money’s worth.
As we were eating, we noticed land in the distance. I guess, based on what the captain had said earlier, it could still be 10 – 12 miles away. I suspect this was Finland…
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
I'm loving this lazy day. After all the activity the last few days, this is perfect! Yes, enjoy that balcony - that's what it's there for! The weather was just perfect for that. Well, a little chilly but the sun was perfect! All the foods look delicious too.
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
Dinner looked delicious, but sad that the service was slow. 
I ended up coming in a bit later, because the sun was moving around, and it was starting to get a bit chillier outside. 
) and given each glass of wine is $7.50 and each spirit measure is $9.50, I think on some nights, we probably have got our money’s worth. 
Linear Mode
