Dreams do come true **Updated 7/24** THREAD 2 *COMPLETE* - Page 11 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Friday 1 June – part three: I think I prefer my tea!
We went and bought a few things in the shops, a T-shirt of the Med cruise for me, book for Mark and some chocolates for my work. Then it was back to the room to change for our afternoon tea at Palo.
This was a great experience and I liked the fact that you have to dress up for this. At first, I thought that we were overdressed, but not at all, as a lot of other people got into the lift dressed up as well. We were seated on a table for two nowhere near anyone else, which was nice.
First, we were brought a menu, so we could pick the tea we wanted to try. As you’ll know, I love our tea, but we love my British PG Tips and take it everywhere with us. To me, there is nothing else better and this afternoon confirmed that for me. Very bravely, we tried the Imperial Orange Pekoe and the Osmanthas Oolong (sounds daring, doesn’t it?!), but I couldn’t really taste anything. I guess I’ve got very used to my beloved PG Tips and that’s what I want to have.
For food, we started with scones with a choice of cream and jam or marmalade. Then we were brought out a tray of sandwiches. There were cucumber and cream cheese, smoked salmon, curried chicken and shrimp. Out of the ones I tried, the best by far was the shrimp, so much so that we got another round of those brought out.
Trying out the tea!
Those wonderful sandwiches
Enjoying tea and scones
The view out to sea
Next came the petits fours, coconut macaroons, chocolate éclairs (way too rich) and shortbread. We finished with English trifle, which Mark was able to eat, as there was barely any cream init, instead there was lots of custard and sponge drenched in brandy. Very nice!
It was all over too soon, but the high tea had been a great experience and one you should definitely try out if it’s available when you cruise.
Some of the wonderful detail in Palo
We wandered around the ship for a little while and I couldn’t help but think that it was fascinating how people make this place a home from home. It was full of people knitting or doing cross stitch in the Promenade Lounge for example.
Doesn’t the sea look wonderful?
I wanted to model my new inaugural Med cruise T-shirt, Mousefesters expect to see this one in December!
Tea looked great at Palo...glad you could enjoy the experience! I have become so particular about the tea I drink that I usually carry it with me and will order hot water so I can make my own!
Love your new shirt, too!
danielle
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~Shoot for the moon, if you miss, you will land among the stars~
Wow! That's alot of food for just "tea". It looks delicious though. I love tea and like trying other but I have my favorites as well. Love the shirt! I look forward to seeing it in December.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Doesn’t the sea look wonderful?
It's quite beautiful but it looks more rough than what I'm guessing a wavelet looks like which can't be a good thing.
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Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
Friday 1 June – part four: Twice Charmed – charming!
Then it was back to the room to change for a semi-formal night. It was soon time to head out for the evening show, another new one for us called Twice Charmed, based on Cinderella. Before we made it to the Walt Disney Theatre, we got waylaid by a cool looking character.
The show was excellent, a lot better than the Art of the Story a couple of nights ago. As Deb said later at dinner, that show has the makings of a Broadway show, it was that good.
When we came out of there, we headed back to the room briefly and found this waiting for us:
Friday 1 June – part five: these desserts are real – honest!
As we headed out to meet some more characters, we bumped into these smart looking people:
Heck, we didn’t scrub up too badly either! I was worried that we would be over-dressed for semi formal night, but not a bit of it. There was a real range of styles on show that night, from quite informal to tuxedos. As I said to Mark, I guess if you have paid to rent a tuxedo on board, you want to try and get your money’s worth out of it. The bottom line is if you make an effort, no matter how much, you shouldn’t be out of place on semi formal night. I still think that the formal and semi formal nights are one of the real highlights of the longer cruises, as it’s such a pleasant change to be able to dress nicely.
Dinner tonight was at Parrot Cay, not the best place for semi formal night, but never mind. We are rapidly coming to the conclusion that Parrot Cay though is better for food than Lumiere’s. Tonight I went for the scallops baked in a Cognac flavoured bisque, with a spaghetti of vegetables and topped with crispy pastry, for appetiser as did Mark, followed by the coronation of mixed leaves for me, featuring vine ripened tomatoes, blue cheese, apples, candied walnuts and aged red wine vinegar, while Mark had the Beast’s potato and sausage casserole soup. I couldn’t fault either of mine, although again, I would say that the size of the servings are lacking a bit.
For main course, I had the pan seared turbot “Musule D’Oro”, steamed bass served with a Mussels and Golden Tomato sauce, with chives, sticky rice and braised tomato. It was superb, probably some of the best fish I’ve had on board so far, apart from Palo of course. Mark had the rosemary, lemon and garlic roasted leg of lamb.
We had such a fun evening with our table, much of it spent trying to explain to Rob about the English desserts we have. He really didn’t believe the names of them or the descriptions and in the end, we had to get some help from a fellow Brit – Edward who was serving on a nearby table – to persuade Rob that we weren’t making it all up!
I’m so glad we were able to sit with Bruce and Marta and meet the others and I hope to see them again in December.
Dessert was a bit of a disaster. Neither Marta not I could see anything on there that we liked the look of. I felt that they had tried way too hard with the options and, as a result, a lot of people would be put off. Options included pumpkin cake, Rocky Road ice cream sundae, which I found out included things like marshmallows. There just wasn’t anything that was basic on there, so I had vanilla ice cream instead. If I’m honest, I didn’t eat very much, as by then, we were rocking and rolling again.
We had been rocking a little during the show and it had just got worse as the night wore on, so much so that Keith went back to the room earlier on just as the main course arrived. Fortunately he reappeared just as we were done with dessert, looking a lot better than he did before. I wasn’t sick, but I was just starting to get a bit annoyed with all the motion. I don’t mind staggering along corridors when I’ve had a bit to drink, but not when it’s the motion of the ship. We were hoping to do the 70’s disco tonight, but because of the rough sea, we decided not to.
We headed straight back to the room because we were rocking so much and when we got back, we discovered that it was fresh to gale force outside. No wonder we were moving around so much!
The weather today was cloudy with temperatures in the low 70’s. Today we walked 1.51 miles The best thing today was high tea at Palo. The worst thing today was how rough it got again at night. The funniest thing today was dinner – we had so much fun with Bruce, Marta, Keith and Rob! Today we tried high tea at Palo. And the result was it was excellent and something everyone should try. The most magical moment today was semi formal night and meeting the characters.
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You two are having the most wonderful experiences!
Great update, Cheryl!! More please!
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