Guilt? What's that??? TR w/pics 9/9-9/14 - Page 2 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Great start so far! Beautiful photos of Canada - I've never seen that area either (due to touring with a child who wants to get going as soon as her passport is stamped ). I am going to be sure to spend time in that pavilion this trip!
Great start so far. I too fly out of BWI, mostly on AirTran, so I know exactly where you were at the airport. I will have to check into that parking option you mentioned, hopefully it will save us some money.
It's truly amazing how much more we get to see once we are minus the little ones. I am glad mine are older now, they even like to take pictures of the scenery and such just as much as I do. And they also like to point out pretty views as well.
The pre-paid parking was WELL worth it! It was super nice to be dropped off/picked up and treated so well.
Also - when we got back, we just went to door #14 (I think it's the main door). Then, go to the 2nd curb (you have to cross a little road - the same one where you were dropped off in the first place). Then, watch for the Park 'N Fly bus and wave your green slip at them. They look for those and pull over. (these directions are also on the green slip).
OK – what can I say about LeCellier except YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY! Seriously, folks… if this is what it’s like after it “went downhill” (as so many have said), I cannot imagine how good it was at its peak! I think I will be dreaming about this food for a long time.
We were seated in the Ontario Room near the fireplace. Our waiter, Brandon, was excellent and personable. He also kept the refills coming, which was good because we were not yet acclimated to the heat.
We both had Cheddar Cheese Soup with pretzel bread as our appetizer. (pic below)
I decided on the NY Strip, and my sister chose the Filet Mignon. Both were fantastic, but after trying a bite of her Filet, I was wishing I had chosen that one. It was fork tender… I’m not even sure we needed steak knives. And the mushroom risotto… OMG – it was EXCELLENT! My sister was so full from her steak, that she gave me her risotto and I skipped eating my au gratin potatoes. They were pretty good too, but could not TOUCH the risotto…
For dessert, we both chose the chocolate cake. We couldn’t eat most of it, but it was fun to get a taste of it. It has a dark chocolate flavor, but is still sweet. Actually a very nice balance between the two.
It was the 2nd most memorable meal of our trip!!! (the best one happened later).
I will definitely make this a MUST DO for future trips!!!
Mmm...pretzel bread! If there is a Trader Joe's grocery store remotely close to you, try their pretzel bread- it will take you right back to LeCellier!
I don't think I've ever seen the little cottage in Canada; can you go inside?
And if you're raving like this over the SECOND best meal, I can't wait to hear about #1!!!
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Mmm...pretzel bread! If there is a Trader Joe's grocery store remotely close to you, try their pretzel bread- it will take you right back to LeCellier!
I don't think I've ever seen the little cottage in Canada; can you go inside?
And if you're raving like this over the SECOND best meal, I can't wait to hear about #1!!!
I'm not sure if we have Trader Joe's here or not, but I'll definitely find out!
No, unfortunately you can't go inside the cottage. I wish you could!
If you go through the gateway to Le Cellier (under the sign I took a pic of in my last post), the cottage is in the background. It's such a serene place... it's worth taking a few minutes to relax and take it all in. Just beautiful and peaceful!
Great start Deanna.
LeCellier is delish. It is one of our favs even though we have only gotten in once. I can't believe they are raising it to 2 TS credits though. I don't know that we will be back anytime soon.
I can tell you are already enjoying your sister's trip. I can't wait for mine. My sister and I are going for my 40th.
Now, unfortunately, I did not have the forethought to take my shorts out of my carry-on and apply the anti-chafe Glide before I put it all into bell services and hurried off to the park in my capris (yes, I was like a 5 year old for a few mindless moments). This lapse in judgment would haunt me for the rest of the week in the form of a thigh rash that would have brought a merchant marine to his knees.
Realizing that my inner thighs were nearly bleeding by this time, we decided to head back to our resort to get our room number (I'm wondering why hadn’t they called us yet?). I desperately wanted to get changed into something dry (oh, and apply that Glide as an after-thought…)
As I mentioned, no one had called us, and it was 4:30 by the time we got back to the resort. Check-in is supposed to be at 3:00, so we were confused why no one had told us our room number yet. I approached the online check-in counter and asked if they had a room for us yet – since no one had called. A very confused young woman said that the reason they didn’t call is because we owed $38.66 on our hotel bill, and they wouldn’t give us a room until it was paid! I said (and I quote) “HUH???” Yeah, you heard me… my most intelligent and well-thought-out response to this ridiculous accusation was indeed the one syllable word, HUH. Quite the scholar, huh?
OK – I did finally mutter something slightly more intelligent eventually – something along the line of “That’s impossible, because as you know, trips booked through Disney Travel MUST be paid in full 45 days before the trip, or your trip is cancelled”. There you go… Deanna’s finally back and acting like a 42 year old again. That wasn’t supposed to happen until AFTER this trip!
Without saying a word (she was probably still dazzled from my initial “HUH” response), she picked up the phone and started calling someone somewhere who might know what was going on. She said nothing to me… just talked to the invisible person on the other end of the line.
It was at this point that I started getting concerned that Sharon and I might be camping out on a lounge chair near the pool for this vacation, or perhaps we could sleep in the food court – after all, it’s air conditioned.
A manager approached and began asking about the problem… and then realized that the young woman was incorrect. The $38.66 which the CM said was preventing us from obtaining a room, was just the tip we charged to our card at LeCellier and a small bottle of sunblock (since our sunblock was currently in bell services with my shorts and my Glide anti-chafe).
Voila! We were suddenly the proud new (albeit temporary) owners of room 4125.
I mentioned to the manager that no one had contacted us with a room number, and I just wanted her to be aware that something went wrong somewhere in the system. I was also annoyed that I spent a lot of my afternoon checking my phone – thinking I had somehow missed the call. She said she would mention it to the people in charge of the automated system.
She jumped on the phone right away… I’m sure she was getting right on the problem. How do I know that? I know that because my phone began ringing at 4:58 pm – merely 2 minutes after I left the lobby with a message that gave us our room number (can you say “covering your butt”?) Whatever… it didn’t matter. We had a room that was in the perfect location for us (near the food court, a few steps from the pool and transportation). We were excited!
Our first impression of the room was: “It’s cute.” We had a towel Mickey on our bed (just like the pictures I’ve seen). We flopped down on the beds and sucked up the air conditioning for a few minutes before realizing that our luggage had not yet arrived.
We called the lobby, and they gave us the standard answer: “It can take up to 4 hours to get your luggage from ME…”. OK, but it’s 5:00 pm now, and we landed at 9:00 am. This is concerning. They finally figured out that they had stored our luggage in bell services, since they were so late on assigning our room number. We had to call bell services to get our bags. So, we called bell services, and told them that they had our luggage and our carry-on bags… could they please deliver all 4 of them to our room as soon as possible? They were more than happy to do it for us.
Two minutes later, we got a phone call from bell services, informing us that they had 2 pieces of luggage and 2 carry ons for us… did we want them all? Uh… yes – we do want them all.
Two minutes after that our phone rang again. “This is bell services, we have 4 bags for your room… do you want them all, or just the luggage?” (OK – are we being punked here? Of course we want all of our bags!) Ten minutes later, our bags arrived at our room – and yes we tried to tip the guy, but he wouldn’t accept it.
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). I am going to be sure to spend time in that pavilion this trip! 
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