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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wow! The pics around Junea are amazing! I'm hoping to go to the Mendenhall Glacier and Mt. Roberts Tram next year...... Sounds like you had a wonderful time! Looking forward to more.....
Did not do the tram.. just passed it. It did not seem to get many good reviews when I checked various sites. If you like Juneau... wait for Skagway....next. My favorite stop. 8 hr trip up to Yukon territory and back (last 25+miles by rail)
Did not do the tram.. just passed it. It did not seem to get many good reviews when I checked various sites. If you like Juneau... wait for Skagway....next. My favorite stop. 8 hr trip up to Yukon territory and back (last 25+miles by rail)
I can't wait to hear about it- I'm dying to do the White Pass/Yukon RR, is that the same thing your talking about?? I thought it was only 3.5 hours.....
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I can't wait to hear about it- I'm dying to do the White Pass/Yukon RR, is that the same thing your talking about?? I thought it was only 3.5 hours.....
Yes..
I did a 8 hr bus tour up into Yukon territor. At the border station at Fraser BC we left the bus and boarded the WPYRR for the southbound trip.
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Skagway Day 4
Early arrival today. Dock at 8 excursions at 8:00. Since mine is a long one, we meet at 8:15 and get on the road at 8:30. We will be travelling 67 miles up Hwy 98 to Caribou Crossing (near Caracross, Yukon territory) going from Alaska into British Columbia and then into Yukon territory. After lunch there, we will meander back down the same HWY to Fraser BC and leave the bus and travel on the Yukon and White Pass Railroad for the 28 miles back to Skagway.
Approach to Skagway..no pilot required, nice wide channel
Our friend the Mercury was still behind us
With lunch included on the tour, I went up and got my morning mocha and some fruit before leaving the ship.
Ships paintings on rocks. By tradition at Skagway, when a passenger ship first visits Skagway, the captain anoints a couple of crew members to climb the rocks and paint the Ship’s name (sometimes the Captain’s name, and date of first visit
Boarding our bus, we found our driver was a year round Skagway resident. He noted that in the dead of winter the population is about 400. Most people return to man the stores, etc., in April and leave in September. Skagway has almost no medical facilities (closest are Whitehorse in Canada by road and Juneau by air). As a result all families with a pregnancy must leave (by law) at 7months and return after the baby is born.
He loved welcoming us to ‘his office’ …. The area between Skagway and Whitehorse.
Approaching Skagway
st visit).
Photos from the bus trip up:
The glacier (flat area above) is the one where our tour guide asked his now wife to marry him while camping on it.
One of the rare pictures of me (of course wearing proudly my Passporter Pouch ).
The Captain Moore bridge is a suspension bridge anchored on one side of the chasm only. In case of an earthquake, they don’t have to rebuild the whole bridge, just the connection/highway on the other side.
We had to clear Canadian Immigration at Fraser, BC (14 miles beyond the border).
I got a picture of a bear through the bus window
(you have to look carefully to find it)
This cabin is the original cabin from the Gold rush that made this area famous. This was a Canadian Mounted Police stop, and where the miners had to prove they had brought the required provisions (which entailed 20-30 trips from Skagway to get it all in place.
Me getting ready to leave the province of British Columbia and enter Yukon Territory
This is the smallest Desert in the world.
At Caribou Crossing (Near Caracross, Yukon) we had a lunch of barbecued chicken, coleslaw, baked potatoes, iced tea or water and homemade donuts
Also loved this sign
Here you could write a cart pulled like a dog sled (these dogs were disappointed because ‘mom’ had left with another group…they wanted to pull the sled ) :sad:
The owner is a race in the Winter.
One of the husky pups
There was a display of wonderful taxidermy, too. The Wooly Mammoth was an estimate by the owner. He went to Russia to measure the sizes, then guessed that the fur would be similar to musk ox, so he used that fur to make his ‘representaion’.
Lake Bennett at Caracoss.
It was a fun stop, because my driver from the Juneau Mendenhall Glacier tour was here driving the same route as our driver (same company in both locations) but this time he had passengers from the Celebrity Mercury instead of the RCL Rhapsody of the Seas. This was a popular tour as each bus had a full load of 46 people.
Remember most of the territory you see on this days report was hiked, with backpacks 20+ times by each sourdough to get his gear up from Skagway before they could enter at the previously shown cabin, and they then had to float each load across this lake.
We reboarded the bus and headed to the boarder at Fraser BC, where the Yukon and White Pass Railroad train met us. We boarded and headed towards Skagway, the train was mostly on the East side of the canyons, while the bus was on the west.
Train Interior
White Pass Summit ..
1901 Bridge (stopped using in 1969)
You can see how we are on the side of the cliffs at times.
Train on Siding Ahead
Hikers waiting to board train (There are excursions where you ride the train up early in the morning, with a packed lunch, then get off and go on a hiking or snowshoe expedition, and are picked back up by an afternoon train.)
The back of our train
Old snow plow in Skagway
(we arrived back in Skagway at 4:15 ) Passports were checked as we got off the cars. (Remember we had been in Canada and back.. so US immigration came aboard and each car was allowed to get off , only after everyone in that car had been cleared. (Just a look at passports this time, nothing like in Vancouver). Whether or not you have to carry a passport will be told to you by the cruise line when you book it, and in our case, our excursion ticket reminded us.
All of the excursions involving the train are expensive. Train fares directly from the RR start at $110 depending on the route. My bus/train tour was $188 (-10% early booking discount). More information on the train can be found at www.wpyr.com
I walked the streets of Skagway a little, but saved most of my shopping for Ketchikan (coming up)-where I would have plenty of time to shop with a short excursion .
It was an easy 4 block walk back to the ship, though a shuttle was available.
Dinner tonight was Antipasto, Lamb Shanks (the best entrée on the trip ) and Tiramisu for desseert.
Our musical tonight was Pure Country..A tribute to Country music.
Since tomorrow as a sailing day (Tracey Fjord) I stayed up and went into Casino and put my $10 bill in the same nickel slot machine, and came away with $16.50. Starting to get my money back I then watched a lady who had put $10 in a penny machine win $238 (on a penny machine).
I made a brief stop in the ‘Shall We Dance Lounge” for the country dance party. Then off to bed to be greeted by my day’s towel animal.
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! I'm hoping to go to the Mendenhall Glacier and Mt. Roberts Tram next year...... Sounds like you had a wonderful time! Looking forward to more.....
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Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
and some fruit before leaving the ship.
and return after the baby is born. 
while camping on it.
, they don’t have to rebuild the whole bridge, just the connection/highway on the other side.
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