A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 24 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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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The night photos are stunning. I was wondering what the lanterns would look like at night in your previous pics. I'm going to guess that you discover a tea stash to start off the next installment.
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Your pictures are simply gorgeous! And I would just love to try a Fanta Melon. I wonder if it is similar to the watermelon soda that they have at Club Cool in Epcot?
Okay, what is a Bento box?? Did you see many people wearing those face masks?? And last, but most important question: How many of those adult movies did you sit in?
Fantastic photos yet again!
Oh gosh, classic!
To answer the questions, bento boxes are (according to Wikipedia anyway! ):
And yes, we saw a fair few people wearing face masks, not as many as when we were in Hong Kong, but I'd say between 10 - 15% of people were wearing them. They're generally used by people with allergies, we learnt during our trip.
The Sony place would have been so interesting! It looks like Mark really enjoyed himself in there. In the one picture he is looking at what looks like a cell phone or PDA, and the man next to him is playing with a small white thing that looks like a palmtop computer? I think I would have had my head in the clouds in that store too!
The blossoms lit up by the lanterns are so beautiful in your pictures that I suspect the photos don't show all the REAL beauty that your eyes and senses experienced that evening (I don't mean that your photography is lacking, on the contrary, I think it is superb. A picture can show what your eyes saw, but it cannot show the feelings, sounds, and smells that you experienced. Does that make sense?)
The "Animals in Lights" are amazing!
Mark's got a digital camera in his hands - tiny, isn't it? I don't know what the guy next to him was looking at though, although we were in the camera section at the time that was taken.
I would fully agree with what you said about the cherry blossoms at night - there is no way that photos can ever do that sight justice. :
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Your pictures are simply gorgeous! And I would just love to try a Fanta Melon. I wonder if it is similar to the watermelon soda that they have at Club Cool in Epcot?
I did think that - I will be sampling that next week to see!
I think I would have loved visiting that park, it seems so peaceful. I love the shape of the trees, and your flower pictures were beautiful. Nice to see your nighttime pics as well, I liked all the lights everywhere, and the way all the buildings were illuminated. Jay would never have left that Sony store!
Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
the lights and lanterns at night. Very beautiful and very interesting about the parties and such. I would've had a blast in that Sony store.
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Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
Thank you so much for that link! We did shoot some video of Rolly, but I haven't got around to looking at how to post to YouTube yet and seeing that just made me smile so much - some great Rolly memories there!
Wednesday 1 April – part one: a great discovery to start the day!
A great discovery began this morning, that we hadn’t left the large bag of teabags in the UK. Magically, after having hunted for the darned things yesterday, they appeared in the suitcase today. Yay! We now have tea supplies to see us through for the next couple of weeks and our plan of re-using one teabag two days running (yes, seriously, that’s what we were looking at doing!) remains just a plan that we won’t have to put into action after all…
We got going fairly quickly today, bearing in mind that we’d only surfaced a bit after 7.30. We were off by about 9.00 and headed for the Imperial Palace. We took the subway to Tokyo station, catching a different line to see if it was less crowded and yes, it was. Lesson learnt then.
It gave us a chance to get our bearings at Tokyo station, as this is where we would be getting the Shinkansen to Kyoto from on Saturday and where we would also be catching the train out to Maihama next Tuesday night to get to Tokyo Disney. It’s a huge station, but not the biggest in Tokyo. We would be visiting that later on today.
Tokyo station
We found our way out eventually and headed for the Imperial Palace, crossing first one moat and then another. It’s quite something to think about how much of a defence the place must’ve had in years gone by.
Work outside the entrance to Tokyo station
The Imperial Palace is still lived in today by the Emperor and his family, although we learnt later in the trip that the family today consists of him and his wife. Apparently, as soon as the children marry, they have to move out (I don’t know where to) and they’re all married now, so they’ve all moved out. The Imperial Palace is only open to the public twice a year on New Year and on the Emperor’s birthday on 23 December. I suspect it must be murder to visit the palace on those days. I can just imagine the lines.
It was busy enough today with tour parties, with them all lining up together. Instead we could just go at our own pace and take it slowly, seeing what we wanted to see. I didn’t regret tour this independently at all. :
We walked around the outside of the moat, seeing a few cherry blossom trees in bloom and then saw the palace itself. From what I had read in the guidebooks, I though that we would only catch a glimpse of it, but actually you could see quite a bit of it and we were able to get some lovely photos. We overcame our shyness (yes, us, shy! ) from yesterday and asked a couple of people to take our photos. It’s not that I can’t do it in Japanese, because I can, it’s just that people looked so busy and they all seem happy enough to just take photos of each other and leave it at that, so it seems almost rude to ask anyone to take a photo of the two of us together, when no-one else is doing it.
Once again, the Imperial Palace was rebuilt after the Second World War. A few photos with the Nijubashi, a double arched stone bridge to the east of the park, which was finished in 1888, and we were done. This picture postcard view is the one that you see everywhere of the Imperial Palace, yet getting a photo of it was fairly easy, as it was less busy than I thought it would be there. Result!
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I don't know what the guy next to him was looking at though, although we were in the camera section at the time that was taken. 
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the lights and lanterns at night. Very beautiful and very interesting about the parties and such. I would've had a blast in that Sony store. 
It’s a huge station, but not the biggest in Tokyo. We would be visiting that later on today. 
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