Our own flower and garden festival COMPLETED - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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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This trip report will cover a weekend where my parents came down to visit us. It won’t cover the bits where we were at home, or out in the garden working (don’t ask – that’s just how it is with my parents! ). Instead, it will focus on the two days out that we enjoyed.
On the Saturday, my mum and I went to Leeds Castle for their flower festival, while my dad and Mark went to the Royal Engineers’ Museum. Let’s just say that neither of them were very impressed with the museum, so we’ll pass that one by, as I wasn’t there, and I can’t say for sure, and of course Mark didn’t shoot anywhere near as many photos as I did so I don’t have a good record of what they actually did and saw.
On the Sunday, all four of us went to Sissinghurst Castle, which is about half an hour’s drive from where we live. I have to say to call it a castle, to me, is misleading. Sure, there’s a tower in it, but we see the main attractions here as the gardens, hence the title of this trip report. It’s a National Trust property, so Mark and I get free entry with our lifelong tickets, thanks to our friend Maureen’s generous gift a few years ago, and one of the reasons we were going to go that day is that she’d be on a coach tour taking in Sissinghurst, so we’d get to see her as well.
My mum and I set off just before 10:00am, as that’s when Leeds Castle opens. My goodness, when we got there, I think our hearts fell. The main car park was already full, and we were down to parking on one of the fields. Our first thought was “this is going to be busy”… although as we made our way up to the entrance, we didn’t see that many other people. We showed our tickets, which incidentally would expire a couple of days later. They’re good for a year, and I’ve certainly got my money’s worth out of mine over the last 12 months.
We headed in, and made our way through the gardens. We didn’t exactly rush, but we certainly didn’t take as much time as I had with Debbie a couple of weeks earlier. For starters, we didn’t have the luck of the wildlife sightings this time. Not a peacock in sight, never mind any of those cute peacock babies… There were some signs of fall colour just starting to peak through…
We found this guy – look at the size of his feet!
We had one lonely swan sighting…
… then we started to glimpse the castle – I always love getting my first sight of it as you make your way down to it.
Soon we were up to the castle entrance, and once again, it was very quiet here, especially given how busy the car park was.
We headed through the new entrance, complete with the flyby video showing how the castle had developed over the centuries. My mum was very impressed with it.
We headed outside, and were greeted with this – isn’t it just amazing? It was the first exhibit of the flower festival. Most exhibits were inside the castle, but this one was one heck of a way to start off! We stood there for ages admiring it from all angles. It was just perfect and had such a wonderful backdrop of the castle behind it, so it made for some wonderful photos.
Very nice to do a late-season garden tour. The gardens at Sissinghurst are my favorites of all I've seen in England. Looking forward to seeing what's blooming in late September.
Very nice to do a late-season garden tour. The gardens at Sissinghurst are my favorites of all I've seen in England. Looking forward to seeing what's blooming in late September.
It'll be interesting to see what you make of what was in bloom. I thought there was a fair bit, but my mum didn't think there was much....
I was hoping there was going to be a TR after seeing your photos on Facebook. That floral arrangement out in front of the castle is stunning. They had to have considered how beautiful it would be with the castle as a backdrop.
I was hoping there was going to be a TR after seeing your photos on Facebook.
I said about halfway round to my mum that I'd have to do a trip report to share all the amazing displays. It's always quicker to upload photos to Facebook, but the trip reports take a bit more work...
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That floral arrangement out in front of the castle is stunning. They had to have considered how beautiful it would be with the castle as a backdrop.
I'm sure they did, as it was beautifully positioned.
Saturday 27 September – part two: I bet they charge a premium for this…
We made our way round to the castle entrance…
The first display we came across was in the heraldry room…
I loved the pollen in this shot…
They also had competition entries throughout the castle, although sadly they didn’t explain what the category was each had entered, which was a bit of a shame…
The next major display was in the Queen’s Bedroom, and it was absolutely stunning!
Sadly, the Queen’s Bathroom display was difficult to photograph, with the light streaming in from behind…
From here, it was into the Queen’s Gallery. This display didn’t do as much for me as some of the previous ones:
In the courtyard was this very bizarre display. I think, from memory, it was supposed to be something to do with poets, but it just looked like a mess to us…
We were delighted that we could get inside the Banqueting Hall, as we’d been told earlier there was a wedding on in there, so we might not be able to see it. We speculated for a long time as to whether these flowers were for the flower festival or for the wedding. I personally thought they were for the flower festival, and then they probably charged a premium to get married here while it’s on, as you then get your floral displays included, if that makes sense? Certainly, the programme said that the table pieces, and the display above the fireplace were part of the festival…
We headed upstairs…
The next major display was in the seminar room, and once again, it was very striking…
Saturday 27 September – part three: “festival obese cow”!
You’ll probably have noticed a lot of the displays had similar autumnal colours so far, and that’s why this competition entry really appealed to me, because it was so different.
The colours in Lady Baillie’s dressing room were very subtle, and I adored the shade of the roses in here:
It was a much more vibrant feel in her bedroom:
The next room was the Catherine of Aragon bedroom, although sadly this one was again very hard to photograph, because of the light streaming in through the window behind. Hopefully you can get an idea of what it was like…
There were a few more competition entries outside…
It’s interesting how much different people’s perspectives can differ on things, and no more clearly was that illustrated than in the next display around the main staircase. I really liked this, but my mum wasn’t keen at all…
However, we did both love the display in the yellow drawing room. I think this was perhaps my favourite inside the castle…
We went into the other drawing room, and while this was nice, it wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as the previous room…
There were a few final displays on the way out…
We headed outside to try and find “festival cow”, as it was noted on our guide. We hadn’t seen him on the way in, and we could tell from the numbering that he had to be outside. I asked a staff member where he was, and he pointed, quite vaguely we both thought, towards a tree. My mum and I both looked, and still couldn’t see anything, but we decided to head off that way in the hope we’d find him. We did, but he was under the other tree, not the one the staff member pointed at. I have to say neither of us were overly impressed with him, and we quickly called him “festival obese cow”. I’m sure you’ll see what I mean!
What gorgeous flower displays! And then with the backdrop of Leeds, even better! So it doesn't seem that you ever dealt with great crowds. Was the full parking lot the result of wedding guests? But where are they hiding? Sounds like you may be coming across them in the next installment.
Usually I'm a big fan of autumn colors, but my favorites of the displays so far are the more traditional arrangements in Lady Baillie's dressing room. They're gorgeous, yet blend in and complement the room.
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). Instead, it will focus on the two days out that we enjoyed. 
so I don’t have a good record of what they actually did and saw. 
There were some signs of fall colour just starting to peak through… 
We stood there for ages admiring it from all angles. It was just perfect and had such a wonderful backdrop of the castle behind it, so it made for some wonderful photos. 
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Waiting for our next adventure after enjoying our Alaska cruise. 
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