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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Hi my name is Anne and i went alone to a tour of Europe with a group of 35 people and added 5 days at the end to visit DLP, my first time visiting it; although i had been in Paris twice before. i was solo when i visited DLP after the tour ended. My trip was from May 20 to June 5. I loved my tour to Europe, but i was disappointed with the DLP part. I love WDW much better and i wouldn't returned to DLP, i much prefer going to WDW if i want to go to Disney, but i will go back to Europe.
i will be posting pictures for this trip, but i have to enter them in my computer first and in photo bucket before i can post them here. So i will just start with my departure day where i didn't take any pictures.
Departure Day - May 20, 2010
I was working in the morning that day, so i got up at 5:15 and left for work at 5:50. got breakfast at work (white chocolate blueberry muffin and small caramel machiato from Starbucks, worked the morning, did on line check in and printed my boarding pass. I finished work at noon, but stayed there a bit longer, went on the computer, got lunch from Tim Horton's (chicken sandwich and coffee), hung around at work and talked with co-workers, e-mailed my son, phoned my daughter.
Finally left for the airport at 2:15, arrived at the Park and Fly and 3. Took shuttle to airport. Checked my luggage at 3:15, went through security, finally got through at 3:40. Then i walked around the airport, checked out stores, then read my book. At 5:10 had a donut. Finally boarded the plane at 6:30 (a 767 aircraft), the flight was a duration of 8 hours 20 minutes in direction to London Heathrow. The plane left at 7:40, it was late leaving. I watched the movie "Shutter Island", we got our own TV. AT 9, they served us dinner (chicken, rice, vegetable salad, bun, brownie, sprite and coffee). After the movie, i slept a little, it was hard to rest, there was a kid who cried almost the whole flight and the mother never did anything to quiet or calm down her kid.
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At 2:40 am, they served us breakfast (still on the plane): Yogurt and blueberry muffin, OJ and coffee, then i watched the movie "It's complicated". Arrived at London Heathrow at 11 am (7 hours ahead of Edmonton). Went through customs, picked up my luggage, then i got met by a Cosmos representative (the tour company i was travelling with). we left for the hotel (Novotel) at noon. (1/2 hour drive). Registered at the hotel, then paid for the optional excursion for tonight (dinner and cruise on the Thames River) which leaves at 5:50 pm tonight. brought my suitcase to my room
Then i asked the Cosmos representative what she suggested me to do and she suggested Harods, the big department store, so I took the underground at 1:30 to Harods. i looked around the store, it is huge, there is no way you could see the whole thing in an afternoon. at 2:50 i was starving and wanted to try their Devonshire scones. so i went to one of their restaurants where they serve high tea and had 2 raisin scones with cream and jam and coffee, so i was stuffed after that, it was very good and i was really hungry. then i checked around and bought a Harods purse, tea and 3 containers of biscuits. I took the underground back to the hotel at 4 (Harods is at Knightbridge Station and my hotel was at 4 stations away at Hammersmith station). At my hotel's station, there was some stores, so i bought a brush and a comb since i had forgotten mine at home. I also bought a Mars bar, since i wanted to get rid of my British change. Got back to the hotel at 5, had a shower, washed my hair, changed into a skirt (which i shouldn't have, since it was pretty cold during the night cruise). Went in the lobby at 5:45 and got on the bus at 5:50. We left at 5:55 to the Taste of London optional excursion, which included a 3 course dinner at a pub on the Thames river in East London: Prospect of Whitby. We arrived there at 7:10pm, had dinner (glass of white wine, mushrooms with greens and bread, fish and chips, peas, tartar sauce, profiteroles (cream puffs), coffee. I took pictures of the meal which i will post when i enter my pictures on the computer. We left at 8:40 to Tower Pice for our cruise on the Silver Benito. Our cruise lasted from 8:50 to 9:45 (i also took pictures).
We took the but to the hotel and arrived back at the hotel at 10:40, i got everything ready for the next day and went to bed at 11:05
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In these tours, they tell you what time to get up and what time to eat breakfast because we are on a pretty tight schedule, which i like as you have to be disciplined if you want to see a lot of things, but i always got up earlier than what they said by about 1/2 hour. So i got up at 6, showered, suitcases had to be out by 6:30, so i think that this morning i think i got up when they actually said. went down for breakfast at 6:20 (breakfasts were included during the whole trip). I always ate a big breakfast because we always ate lunch pretty late on the trip. i had made good friends last night with 2 chinese girls from San Francisco, so i sat with them and actually i spent a lot of time with them during the whole trip, but the whole group was very nice, people coming from all over the world, phillipinos, malaysians, japanese, singapore, british, americans, ukrainians and actually those girls were from taiwan. our guide was polish and our driver italian, so quite a mix.
so for breakfast i had fruits, mushrooms, OJ, coffee, container of yogurt, one egg, small cinnamon roll, croissant, jam, cheese. went back to my room at 7:30 and went back down to the lobby at 8. we took the bus at 8:40 to Dover ( a 2 hour bus ride), then we took the ferry to Calais, France (1 1/2 hour ferry). we arrived at Dover at 10:40, went through French customs, then drove to the port. we arrived at 11:10, waited until 11:45 and then walked on the ferry. I sat with the chinese girls while they were having lunch, i was too full from breakfast, it is actually the only time during the trip where we got to eat lunch so early, the rest of the time was quite late, so i did eat lunch after today. the ferry left at 12:15. we arrived in Calais at 2:45 (one hour ahead in France). on the ferry we walked around and checked out the duty free shops.
In Calais we got on the bus and left at 3:25 for Burssels (2 1/2 hour ride). we arrived at our hotel (Thon Hotel Brussels airport) at 5:50, went and got settled in our room. we then left for our optional sightseeing tour at 7pm. (we ate supper very late during the whole trip, they actually eat supper very late in Europe) and we were not allowed to eat or drink on the bus, so every meal, i ate quite a bit to hold me up to the next meal, as we really didn't have time to eat between meals as we were either on the bus or visiting. so we drove by the Nato headquarters, we stopped at 7:25 at their arc de triomphe built 50 years after their independance from the dutch. at the parc du cinquantenaire (they speak french in Belgium). we stopped for 10 mins. Brussels has 1 million people, Belgium 11 million. then we drove in the EU (European Union) district, founded in 1957 (EU building - berlemont), we stopped at the Royal Palace at the Royal Park at 7:45 for 5 mins. we stopped at 7:55 at the square La grande place or Market Square - hotel de ville, musee de la ville de Bruxelles, walk to Mannequin Boy then we got a drink included at a pub, i got white wine, then i got one of their famous waffle for dinner with strawberries and whipped cream and chocolate (at the market square).
Then i bought 6 Newhaus chocolate bars (our guide said that they were famous belgian chocolates) and 2 Leonida chocolate bars. i also bough a Brussel scarf. We had a bit of free time for dinner and shopping, so i went with the chinese girls and that's when we had the waffles for dinner and bought the chocolates (famous belgian chocolates) (i brought it home). met back with the group at 930pm and walked to the bus, got on the bus at 9:50, left for the hotel. arrived at the hotel at 10:15. i went to bed at 10:40
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