National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 25 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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It looks like late fall there with those beautiful colors! Gorgeous!
Love Yukon Jax, and the pictures with the PP pouch-wearing bear crack me up, just as they did in Sue's report.
When we were there in mid-June, the walkway to the little cabin was non-existent! Looks like they have had a busy building summer. I think I remember stacks of lumber over near the cabin.
Wow, they really did do a lot of work in those couple of months!
Friday 2 September – part four: two hours of the most amazing views!
Soon it was 10:00am and time to get back on the coach, but not before I’d found some stamps and stamped my National Parks passport. We were also given a Scenic Railway passport on the way back on to the coach and got that stamped as well.
We got some wonderful views on the way back to Fraser, with the sun providing some beautiful shots.
We made it to the train and said goodbye to Brian, who had been truly wonderful. We all tipped him and he looked genuinely surprised and thankful, which was such a pleasant change to previous cruises. When we were cruising, both in the Caribbean and in the Med, you got the feeling that people were looking out for it all the time, but not here.
We boarded our train carriage, number 346, as every group gets a different one, meaning that again, we had no children on ours. This really was truly adults only!
We must’ve cut it a bit fine, as we were literally the last ones to board and then the train headed off. Soon we were making our way along the 20 plus mile route, slowly climbing first to the top of the pass and then making our way back down. You didn’t realise how much we were going down until we were near the bottom and we looked back and saw where the tracks were. I guess the fact that we weren’t on the side closest to the edge of the road helped with that illusion as well.
The whole way along, there were wonderful views and we all grabbed seats on the right hand side, as that’s where most of the best views were to be found. It was just spectacular and we were all continually taking photos as we moved along. We all agreed that this was a superb excursion and we were so glad that we had taken it.
Crossing the border back into the States
You could out on to the platforms at the end of each carriage to get photos without taking through the windows and we all took the opportunity to do that from time to time. Unfortunately, this was where we did encounter one very rude guy, who just held his position for probably a good half hour out there. I don’t think we’d have minded so much had he been taking photos the whole time he was stood there, but he didn’t. He just stood there, looking and blocking everyone’s way and we had all been asked to be courteous and to regularly give way to others. Obviously those rules did not apply to him. We all heaved a huge sigh of relief when he finally went inside, only to emerge a few minutes later on the platform at the other end of the carriage. For goodness sake!!
Stopping to pick up hitchhikers (or “bear bait” as our guide called them! )
As we headed into Skagway about two hours after we started our journey, we were told that a US customs official would be boarding the train to check our passports and, because we have to have a stamp saying that we can enter the US, he needed to check that as well in our case. Good grief, he took forever to get to our carriage!
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Wow, that's a long train! Such beautiful scenery. And I love how you can see the cruise ships towards the end!
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Is that a normal stop on the train route, or do they just stop to pick any up "hitchhiker"?
I think - and I don't know for sure - that they know roughly where they need to pick people up, as they were advising us beforehand that they'd be stopping. How it's arranged though, I don't know.
For $50 a kitten, I could be rich...even in todays standards. We are always having kittens around the farm. I am trying to get rid of cats all the time.
The pictures are just stunning. I am loving everything you did. It is really remote, but so beautiful. Thanks you so much for sharing.
For $50 a kitten, I could be rich...even in todays standards. We are always having kittens around the farm. I am trying to get rid of cats all the time.
Well, maybe it's a sideline you should look into...
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This really was truly adults only! 
He just stood there, looking and blocking everyone’s way and we had all been asked to be courteous and to regularly give way to others. Obviously those rules did not apply to him. 
We all heaved a huge sigh of relief when he finally went inside, only to emerge a few minutes later on the platform at the other end of the carriage. For goodness sake!! 
) 
And he ended up being on the cruise with us! 
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