A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure UPDATED 9/7 - Page 16 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Ok, I have some catching up to do, but I wanted to quick comment on your garden. It is so beautiful! Can I borrow your Mom and Dad to work some miracles in my backyard?
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Ok, I have some catching up to do, but I wanted to quick comment on your garden. It is so beautiful! Can I borrow your Mom and Dad to work some miracles in my backyard?
They are amazing when it comes to plants. Honestly, you should see the set-up they have an home - three greenhouses to grow things from seeds. They are literally out in the garden year round, which I completely admire, as I don't mind confessing that we are only warm weather gardeners. Usually, once the summer flowers are out, we either plant bulbs or leave the bulbs in from the previous years and let the garden get on with things over the winter and then don't do anymore with it until the summer flowers go back in in May the next year...
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Pre-trip report – part eleven: exploring a unique tunnel system
Sunday 2 August
This morning, I happened to be on the Disney Cruise Line, looking at something else, but out of interest, I decided to have a look and see whether our cruise was sold out or not. Well, not only was ours sold out, but so too was every other Alaskan cruise during August! Wow, I guess they’re selling well then!
Today, I also decided to go ahead and order our tickets for the Walt Disney Family Museum, as I knew we wanted to go there, and heck we might as well purchase it now, instead of waiting to get there, so that’s another thing done.
As we go forward, I did say I was going to use this pre-trip report to share some of our adventures with you over August, as we have a few travels planned. The first of those was today, as we were due at our friends for lunch. Now they live on the Kent coast, where I used to work for nearly 15 years. It’s about 45 miles from where we live, and we tend not to go there very often now, given how far it is.
Our friends had told us about the Ramsgate Tunnels, and how much they’d enjoyed their visit there, and funnily enough, I then heard from two other people who’d also visited them, and they raved about them as well, so I decided that we’d go down in the morning and tour the tunnels. Thankfully, our friends warned us that even though they said on the website that the tours were an hour, they could take considerably longer than that. They told us that they’d been there the best part of two hours, so I opted for the 10:00am tour, rather than the midday one, as that could’ve made us very late for our lunch.
We got to Ramsgate just before 10:00am, and at that time, the beach was pretty deserted:
Isn’t it beautiful? We made our way over to the tunnel entrance…
They’ve done a great job of trying to make it look as if it’s straight out of the 1940s.
We checked in for the tour, and as we were a few minutes early, we had a bit of time to explore the exhibition here. It was fascinating.
This shows the tunnels laid out underneath Ramsgate. The orange bit was the original railway tunnel – more of that in a moment, while the blue line was the tunnel that they built to accommodate people during the Second World War.
There were also some very sobering reminders of how life was in war time…
We learnt later that sadly this beautiful Art Deco building was demolished in the 1970s. What were they thinking?
We then settled down to a short film, which focused on the use of the tunnels as air-raid shelters during the Second World War. We learnt how something insane like 500 bombs were dropped by the Germans on the town in just one night, but thanks to the tunnel system, only 31 people were killed, which I found absolutely amazing. They also explained that, in the bombing, a lot of people lost their homes, so some people moved into the tunnels for the remainder of the war. I can’t even begin to imagine.
Once that was done, we were given our hard hats, and hand held lanterns, which we’d need later on. You’ll see in the photos that some of the tunnels had lighting, but others didn’t, and that’s where we had to use the lanterns.
We headed into the tunnel system, and learnt how it was originally built in the Victorian era in the late 19th century. At that time, Victorians were heading for the seafront, as they believed that seawater had healing qualities. Now the problem Ramsgate had was that the station in the town was about a mile from the beach, which put holidaymakers off, so they dug this tunnel to have a station right on the beach:
Adrian, who was our guide, explained that the gradient was quite steep, and the brakes on the trains had a habit of failing sometimes. On one occasion, the train kept going and ploughed through the station. Somehow, miraculously I thought, only one person was killed – a poor guy selling oysters.
The line only lasted until about the 1920s, and after that they decided to use it for a miniature railway from the main station. That apparently passed some early Disney characters in the tunnels, which were lit, as otherwise it would’ve been pitch black. As time wore on, the money ran out to illuminate the tunnels, and all the visitors were left with was darkness. In the 1960s, there was another brake failure, and although there were no serious injuries or deaths, that was the final straw, and the railway line was closed down for good. This is what it looked like when the miniature railway was running…
… and believe it or not, they’ve actually got the lettering you can see in the photo!
Oh - and trust me, you haven't seen the best of it yet...
Quote:
Our cruise in July was not fully booked. You could tell in the dining room especially.
Wow, that surprises me, given that the latter ones were full. I was surprised ours was full, as I think most American schools are either already back (judging by all the photos I've seen on Facebook in the last week or so) or are back in the next few days. For us Brits, schools don't start until early September, but I can't imagine there'll be that many British families on board with us.
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Pixie Dust
Your garden and patio are gorgeous. Love all the flowers! 
Waiting for our next adventure after enjoying our Alaska cruise. 
Jenn
Wow, I guess they’re selling well then! 
On one occasion, the train kept going and ploughed through the station. Somehow, miraculously I thought, only one person was killed – a poor guy selling oysters. 
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