A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - Page 111 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Thursday 16 June – part ten: that’s a lot of police to see us off…..
Eventually, we headed back to the room for some down time. When hunger took hold (and bear in mind we’d only had breakfast and then that ice cream at the top of the Round Tower), we headed up to the Oceanview Café for dinner for the last time this cruise, as we’d be dining at speciality restaurants on our last two nights on board. I went for my sushi…
… and Mark had his usual of roast…
… plus he also got some salad, made up of watermelon, feta cheese and lime. I tried it too and it wasn’t bad.
Once again, they had an amazing array of desserts, some Danish themed…
We decided to head back to the room, and sat out on the balcony for a while, as the sun formed some beautiful colours and shapes at twilight…
We also saw this circling around a lot, which was a bit odd, and not something you usually get at home, unless they’re expecting trouble somewhere…
The sun even came out for a while.
When it became a bit cooler, we retreated inside, but kept an eye on the beautiful skies outside…
We were also fascinated by the various comings and goings below. We saw about 10 people head out about an hour and a half by all aboard, which was a bit odd, but we saw a number of them come back half an hour or so later, so maybe they just went out for a quick walk. Mark even spotted Jay, Stephanie and Ethan returning, but we thought better of waving and hollering at them, as Stephanie didn’t look very impressed from our vantage point at being back so late.
All aboard was 9:30pm, and we saw the final three stragglers, one of which was a toddler return about five minutes after that, then we heard the gangway pulled on board.
We were then on our way out of the harbour, but sadly the sunset that I thought might be stunning never really arrived, as there was just too much cloud.
This was really bizarre – as we left, we could see about seven police vans and I counted more than 20 police officers, who all seemed to seeing us off. We couldn’t quite work it out. I guess they had nothing else to do this evening. Note: We would find out why the next day….
We watched until we were on our way, and then we headed to bed.
The weather today was a real mixture, with heavy rain in the morning, followed by cloudy but humid weather, then finally sunshine and very warm, with temperatures reaching the low 70s. The best thing today was walking around Copenhagen and seeing the sights. The worst thing today was the rain in the morning. The funniest thing today was finding a Disney Store without even looking for it! Today we tried climbing up the Round Tower And the result was it was tough work, but we did it. The most magical moment today was visiting Tivoli Gardens and imagining it through Walt’s eyes.
Great photos as always! Your dinner looked good and especially your sushi which I love, even though it looks like standard fare, but still good! Nice sendoff from Copenhagen and certainly interested with the large police presence!
__________________
October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Friday 17 June – part one: little do they know where we’re going…
I know Mark didn’t have a great night’s sleep, as he woke me up at 4:00am to say I was snoring and there was just no way of shutting me up, except for pinching my nose, which of course freaked me out, as then I couldn’t breathe! I went back to sleep in the end, but surfaced about three hours earlier, as I wasn’t sure what the time was, and I didn’t want to lie in too long, given we had our tour of the bridge at 9:15am. I did not want to miss that.
We headed down to the hot tub at around 7:30am, and spent some time in there, before heading into the Persian Garden. Once again, we were the only ones in there, and it was a bit disappointing, given the steam room wasn’t overly hot, and neither was the aromatic suite.
We headed back to the room briefly, as I wanted to grab some shots of the Danish coastline we were passing, and when I zeroed in, it was fascinating, as what we thought were beaches really weren’t. They seemed to be more sand dunes…
We made our way up to the Oceanview Café, where I had a close call. I asked for a Scottish eggs benedict, as I do most mornings, and only realised after I walked away that it was in fact a different one, as I had bacon on it, rather than smoked salmon. Thankfully, I noticed before I bit into it, otherwise that would’ve been a bit unpleasant. I got a new version, and settled down to enjoy that and some French toast.
We were both very nervous before our tour of the deck, as we weren’t quite sure what to expect. Having been told the tour couldn’t go ahead because there weren’t enough numbers, we wondered if we’d be the only ones, or perhaps there’d be one other couple, as we knew the minimum size for the tour to run was six people. Well, all I can say is I think they had the minimum number, and sanitisation fears were the real reason the original tour didn’t run, as there were about 11 of us who got taken on the bridge tour.
You should’ve seen us all waiting at the deck 10 forward elevators. The amount of people who thought we were in line for an elevator, and we had to tell them they were fine to go ahead! Little did they know where we’d be going…
All names were checked off the list, and we were asked to sign, and we also had to show our Sea Pass cards and our photo IDs. Then we were wanded to see if we had any metal on us. I was lucky, as I had no pockets, given I was wearing leggings, but I watched everyone who had visible pockets have those checked. It was pretty thorough. We were then given a 37 sticker, which they took back off us at the end of the tour. That was a shame, as I’d like to have kept it as a souvenir, but I guess that’s the only time they use 37.
We walked to the front of deck 10, and literally right across from the front stateroom was the entrance into the bridge. You opened one door, and you were just in what I’d call a backstage area with no carpeting. Even here, it took about three attempts for them to get through the second door that actually leads on to the bridge, so tight is security. That’s no bad thing.
When we walked in, I was expecting it to be the same as the stairwell in terms of very basic and no carpet. Well, you couldn’t have been more wrong. It was all carpeted and they even had comfy chairs. It was much more luxurious that I was expecting.
We were greeted by Charis, who is one of the first officers and from Greece, as most of the ship’s senior officers seem to be. He was very nice and friendly, and obviously had a background in cargo ships, given how many times he made references to how things worked there.
We were shown over to this area, which is where we spent the majority of our time…
On the way, we saw this, which was very neat, although how on earth did they collect all the fragments of the bottle together after it was smashed?
This is the port side of the bridge and is what we can see from our room if we look ahead. We were told that control of the ship can either be done from here or the traditional centre of the bridge, literally just by pressing one button.
There was a lot of technical talk that didn’t mean much to me, as he explained how everything on the ship worked. We learnt about the azipods that are basically the ship’s propulsion and rudders. They rotate the whole 360 degrees, and they’re controlled by tiny buttons and dials. I was amazed there were no massive joysticks to be seen anywhere. I can’t begin to imagine dealing with these, where any tiny movement could have a massive impact on where the ship is going.
We also talked about the stabilisers and apparently they come out automatically and reduce the roll of the ship from 2 or 3 degrees to just 0.5 degrees. I was relieved later to see the stabilisers weren’t out. Phew!
We learnt about the different watches on board the bridge. They are done in four hour shifts, and they double the people that they have on duty between 4 and 8, both am and pm, as that’s usually when the ship is either docking or leaving. During those times, if I remember right, they have a minimum of four people on deck at any one time, whereas at other times, it’s a minimum of two people. I couldn’t help but think how boring some of those jobs must be, as they had a couple of sailors at the front of the deck, literally just looking out to sea occasionally through binoculars. I don’t think I could do that day in, day out.
Charis also explained to us that this…
… is not a trap door (I was tempted to say that people line up on a certain Disney Cruise ship to wait for the trap door to open to be taken off on the AquaDuck! ), but is for the senior officers to be able to see just how close they are coming into port.
On that subject, Mark couldn’t resist asking whether when we left Warnemunde it was done by a person or computer, and apparently it was personally steered out by the captain. I couldn’t help but comment that’s where he earns his money.
We talked about everything you can see on the radar screen, and once again, we were told that the closest land to us right now is beneath us by about 50 metres. Mark asked what the purple line was across the screen, and that’s apparently ferry routes. They really do have details for everything.
One person asked how far away they have to keep from other ships, and when we’re at sea, they usually keep two miles away, but when coming into harbour, depending on the conditions, it can be a mile or even half a mile. Charis did say that when that happens, the bridge is packed with everyone keeping an eye out everywhere for any problems. I can imagine.
These cameras are constantly showing the view along the side of the boat and at the end, although there are a total of 1,000, so if there are any problems anywhere on board, they can immediately look at that specific area, and work out what’s happened.
What a cool tour! The security was, indeed, quite strict. I never thought about how secure the bridge must be, but, of course, that makes perfect sense.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
We couldn’t quite work it out. I guess they had nothing else to do this evening. Note: We would find out why the next day…. 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Now I'm curious as to why all the police. 
Your dinner looked good and especially your sushi which I love, even though it looks like standard fare, but still good!
Linear Mode
