A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM - Page 21 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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All I can say was the Upper Class Flight looked just amazing. And for a long flight definitely the way to go if you can. Glad that you have arrived in SF and are now all settled in at your hotel.
20 minutes wasn't bad at the car rental desk. I think we were closer to 45 to get to the front, and let me tell you that people were getting very irate in line.
Wow, I'm not surprised. We've never had to wait that long at any airport for a rental car. They need to get more people in to deal with people, as it sounds like they just can't cope.
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That actually worked in our favor as we were given an upgrade and a free tank of gas, we think perhaps because we were still polite and pleasant, at least compared to many of the other people waiting. Your hotel looks very nice. Our long wait in the car rental line was followed by a long wait in traffic getting through the city as we were staying with my cousin in Richmond.
Oh phew! Glad the car rental line wasn't terribly long.
Excellent choice on the hotel room indeed! I always request the top floor to avoid trampling feet overhead. Plus the views are better too!
That's a very long day. Nearly 24 hours is just too long. I've done that on some runDisney race days and it's exhausting!
Oh my goodness and you were running on those days? Wow, how did you manage that?
That was a long day for you! The hotel looks very nice, and dinner was about what I'd expect cost-wise with the combo of it being a hotel restaurant, and being in San Francisco.
It looks like it was a Doubletree, so I hope you got warm chocolate chip cookies when you checked in? I those things!! If I worked there, I would surely be tempted to go into that warming drawer far too often!
It was a Doubletree. The cookies are always such a nice surprise to me - I always forget that they offer them, so when they mention them, I'm always like "that's such a nice touch."
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Oh my goodness and you were running on those days? Wow, how did you manage that?
For the night race, Wine and Dine Half marathon. There's a 5K in the morning, wake up call around 5am or so. And then the race starts at 10pm, after a 2.5-3 hour race time (13miles), some fun in Epcot, and returning to the hotel to stretch and whatnot... it's about 4am by the time I fall asleep. Long day!
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For the night race, Wine and Dine Half marathon. There's a 5K in the morning, wake up call around 5am or so. And then the race starts at 10pm, after a 2.5-3 hour race time (13miles), some fun in Epcot, and returning to the hotel to stretch and whatnot... it's about 4am by the time I fall asleep. Long day!
Your room looked so nice and it's always great to get the top floor for the peace and quiet (along with the great views)! Your soups look so delicious!!!
Great finish to your flight and lunch looked very delicious! Glad customs didn't take nearly as long as the line seemed to predict. Very nice hotel -- great view, too. Dinner looked very delicious, but I have to agree that the price seemed a bit high.
The day began at 1:30am, when my body decided it needed to visit the bathroom – I guess something to do with all the water I was drinking towards the end of the day. I came back to bed, but only really dozed, and didn’t sleep, and eventually got up at 4:30am. Although technically it wasn’t eight hours of sleep, at least it was more than eight hours of lying down, so that’s something… right?
I caught up on a few things while we had good Internet (no point in paying on the boat when you can do a few things while it’s free ) and tried to check in for our flight tonight, but the Air Canada site didn’t want to play ball. The fact that the search engine on it wasn’t working didn’t bode well either… I checked the weight of luggage, and it’s the same as to come here, so that’s good, and they have a much more generous carry on allowance, so I took my backpack out of the suitcase, as I figured I could use that as my personal item – something I wouldn’t necessarily get away with on British flights.
The sun was just starting to come up, and it was getting lighter outside, so I took some photos of the view.
I have to say it was very scary how busy the roads had already been this morning – at around 5:00am on a Sunday morning, not exactly what you expect.
We headed down for breakfast a bit before 7:00am, which is when breakfast started. I happened to look out of the bedroom window and realise the sun was out, and looking stunning, so on the way, we headed to the end of the hall to get some photos of it:
When we got down to reception, we enquired about a late check-out, as Mark had come up with that idea, instead of leaving the luggage with them at reception, but they could only do as late as 1:00pm, and we’d really have needed more like 2:00pm – 2:30pm, so that didn’t work for us.
I noticed there were coffee making facilities in the reception, along with a hot water dispenser, so we got ourselves two teas, complete with milk, as that was in a jug there – all very civilised.
We wandered around the reception area and I got some photos…
… and then we headed outside and I did the same:
We went to go and look at the information board for departures, while waiting for breakfast to open up. They were a bit slow off the mark, and at 7:03am, just as I was about to go and ask what was going on, someone came to open up. He was our server, and I have to say, he was very surly, and not very good. He didn’t once take our plates (we went for the buffet option) and we literally only saw him when he came over and headed us the check.
Thankfully the food was much better than he was, and there was a good selection:
I started off with some eggs with breakfast potatoes, then had some cereal, followed by fresh fruit and finally cheese. Loaded up with all that, two cranberry juices and our large tub of tea (it came in a huge container! ), I was ready to face the day…
We headed out about 7:45am, and were soon on the freeway, heading into San Francisco. The traffic was pretty quiet, given the hour, and later on, we’d realise just how much of a blessing that was.
I was very impressed with the in-car GPS, not that we used it, as we had our own, but I liked the amount of information it gave…
Soon we were seeing the skyline of San Francisco. It’s strange, as we both said that we didn’t remember it from our previous visit. We must’ve seen it of course, but I guess it just didn’t stick in our memory.
From here on in, I'll update whenever I can, as we fly out to Boston tomorrow. I'm probably going to have enough time tomorrow to do an update, but after that, don't worry if you don't hear anything from me until 1 October now. If there are any updates in that time, then bonus!
I hope you have a wonderful trip, Chez! Boston (and the East Coast in general) is on my bucket list so I can't wait to read about this vacation as well
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We've never had to wait that long at any airport for a rental car. They need to get more people in to deal with people, as it sounds like they just can't cope. 
I always request the top floor to avoid trampling feet overhead. Plus the views are better too! 
those things!! If I worked there, I would surely be tempted to go into that warming drawer far too often! 
) and tried to check in for our flight tonight, but the Air Canada site didn’t want to play ball. The fact that the search engine on it wasn’t working didn’t bode well either… 
I checked the weight of luggage, and it’s the same as to come here, so that’s good, and they have a much more generous carry on allowance, so I took my backpack out of the suitcase, as I figured I could use that as my personal item – something I wouldn’t necessarily get away with on British flights. 
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