Canals, diamonds and red lights – an Amsterdam getaway COMPLETED - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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Okay...first, that hot chocolate with all the whipped cream piled on top...OMG did that look delicous!!! I bet you got a big 'ole nose full of cream though when you tried to drink it.
Saturday 11 February – part seven: why are there police all around?
Just outside the hotel, we saw that there were police all around and this is why:
a car on the tram lines! We couldn’t work out how on earth this had happened, but when we got back to the hotel and mentioned it to the guy on reception, he just rolled his eyes and said “not again”, so obviously it’s a common occurrence...
We got our luggage and headed out to the bus stop and finally had some luck with public transport, with the 197 turning up just a minute after we got there. We boarded and I got some photos as we drove along.
We were treated to the most amazing sunset on the way.
The nearer we got, the more snow and ice we saw. You couldn’t distinguish between the land and the canals, that’s how frozen everything was.
Soon we were arriving back at Schipol airport and, as we got off the boat, we couldn’t get over how much warmer it was here than in Amsterdam itself. This was much more pleasant.
We headed inside, getting some photos of the plaza as we did.
Our next challenge was to find our check-in area. I assumed it would be from where we’d come out, but when we checked the boards, it wasn’t. It was actually over the other side of the plaza. That just figures.
We found check-in area 21 and the woman tried to get us to check in using a machine, but it had problems reading our passports, then it needed our e-ticket details, and I’d realised at the hotel that I didn’t have that – it must have been in the suitcase so in the end, she just told us to go to the desk. It would’ve been so much easier to have done that in the first place...
All checked in, we wandered through to the main shopping area. You don’t clear security here until you get to your gate, which is certainly an odd way of doing things, although you do go through passport control. However, you should see the shops here. There are so many of them! It’s like your own mall. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an airport like this before.
The Rijksmuseum even has a store here, with a small display of artefacts.
They had a lot of elephants, as they’re doing the elephant parade, very similar to the cow parade, which we’ve come across before in Bordeaux. Beautiful though elephants are, of course cows are better!
Anyway, I soon found some cows from the cow parade in one of the souvenir shops. I love it when a country, like Holland, has such an affinity for cows!
Wow, that airport looks like a destination in itself. Love the giant Delft cups and the cow store. Those are some strange-looking cows, especially the cow-as-ocean, with the island and palm tree on its back!
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Car on a train track. There's something you don't see every day! Cool airport! Some of those cows are really cute. Kinda pricey, but cute!
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Wow, that airport looks like a destination in itself. Love the giant Delft cups and the cow store. Those are some strange-looking cows, especially the cow-as-ocean, with the island and palm tree on its back!
Didn't get a chance to read yesterday's installment until now. I noticed you took a picture of a certain museum's sign, but didn't mention going in?!
Did you get yourself a Cow on Parade?
That would be because we didn't... I just felt I should share it with you, so you had a full understanding of what you CAN see in the Red Light District, should you wish to...
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a car on the tram lines! 
We couldn’t work out how on earth this had happened, but when we got back to the hotel and mentioned it to the guy on reception, he just rolled his eyes and said “not again”, so obviously it’s a common occurrence... 
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