Canals, diamonds and red lights – an Amsterdam getaway 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
PassPorter Guide Community Rank: Legend Extraordinaire
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Jacksonville, FL
Concierge Level: 6
Posts: 31,940
Post Thanks / Like
Likes (Given): 2
Likes (Received): 7
Thanks (Given): 0
Thanks (Received): 1
Pixie Dust (Given): 0
Pixie Dust (Received): 0
Just caught up - your trip to Amsterdam looked very enjoyable, albeit a little chilly (sarcasm). The Van Gough Museum sounds very interesting - he has always been a favorite of mine. Starry Night is my all time favorite. I love the greenhouses, and the history of the transportation box to bring exotic plants across the ocean.
Saturday 11 February – part eight: are we going to taxi the whole way home?
Having browsed various shops, we decided it was time to get some food and headed for the sushi bar. There was only one other guy there, but despite that, the sushi was excellent. We shared a tray between us, forgetting to photograph it, until it was almost gone...
... however, we decided that we’d enjoyed it so much and as we were still a bit hungry that we’d get another one, so at least I was able to photograph that one.
As we sat there, more and more people came to join us, so I guess we started a trend! When we were done eating, we had a quick look around the delicatessen. I liked the idea of getting some Dutch cheese, but the packs of Gouda they had came in weird flavours, including paprika, so I decided to pass.
We headed upstairs to just sit and chill, and Mark read while I worked on the trip report.
Once our gate number was up, we took a leisurely stroll up that way, as we had plenty of time. We cleared security, which had no wait and actually encountered a friendly bunch of security staff, which makes a very pleasant change.
We made it to the gate and there were only about three or four other people there. We were called to board pretty early on and were one of the first on board. The guy in front of us took forever putting his suitcase away, so I got mine away as quickly as I could to let others go past, but that was a bad mistake, as I moved into the row behind where we were seated and had to wait for almost every single person to then go past. That’s what you get for doing people a favour.
As we’d boarded so early, we had ages to wait until we actually took out – and the taxiing took forever. The captain had warned us about this, saying it would be about 20 minutes and it was. At one point, I did think that perhaps we were going to taxi the whole way home!
Finally, we were up in the air, and even as we were still climbing, they began the drinks service. Well, the flight is only 40 minutes and tonight it took a lot less time than that, as we had tailwinds pushing us back. I opted for a glass of white wine, actually a small bottle, which gave me quite a bit of wine and crisps, while Mark had some tea and biscuits. It’s pretty good, as this is all complimentary.
Soon the captain was telling us that we were coming into land and would be going over Maidstone, our home town. Mark did joke that perhaps they could just drop us off there!
A few minutes later, we were touching down and thankfully this time we had a walkway out to the plane, although that was still pretty cold as we came off. As soon as we were in the airport though, it was lovely and warm again.
Thankfully, we didn’t have that long a walk back to the terminal and quickly cleared passport control. In fact, we were so quick that we had about a five minute wait to find out which carousel our luggage would be on. When it came up, we headed over there and I thought to myself “now, wouldn’t it be nice for once if ours was the first suitcase out?” I’ve envied so many people so many times when they’ve been the first to have their bags out, but tonight our luck was in and our suitcase trundled out first!
We walked through customs and called the meet and greet parking people to let them know that we were ready. I told Mark that we should take our time, as I know how long the car takes to defrost and it would certainly need defrosting. It was a lot warmer than Amsterdam, but it was still just below freezing.
I headed to the restroom and then when I came back, we got approached to do a survey about Gatwick, so we did that. The woman who surveyed us was shaking with cold and we couldn’t help but laugh. She thought it was so cold, but we told her that it was much colder in Amsterdam!
Once we’d finished that, we headed outside, following the signs for passenger drop-off. Although the north terminal has only been recently renovated, it’s already, to my mind, looking a bit sorry for itself. The south terminal, with its flashy refit, looks 100 times better, which is a shame. I wonder if they’ll come back and spruce this one up again anytime soon?
Eventually, the car arrived and she looked absolutely fine. We loaded up and set off and were home about 40 minutes later, having had a wonderful couple of days away in beautiful Amsterdam.
Total amount we got “free” from the I Amsterdam card today:
Diamond Museum € 7.50
Hortus Botanicus € 7.50
Allard Pierson Museum € 6.50
Van Gogh Museum €14
Total for today: €35.50
Total for first day: €25
Total for second day: €38
Travel card for three days: €15.50
Total savings for the whole trip: €114
And how much did we pay for our I Amsterdam cards again? Well, they should’ve been €60 each, but we actually paid more like €55 each, as we got them in a 10% off sale, so our savings were about the equivalent to double what we paid for them... sounds like a good deal to me!
The weather today was very cold, but dry and sunny, with temperatures in the low 20s. The best thing today was just strolling around the city, taking it all in. The worst thing today was how cold we got. The funniest thing today was Today we tried visiting the Diamond Museum And the result was it was really enjoyable, much more than I expected it to be. The most magical moment today was finally getting some photos of the two of us together in Amsterdam.
Next: a non-Disney cruise along the Norwegian fjords... coming in late April/early May
Great trip! Glad you didn't opt for the drop off over your house!
And I cannot WAIT for your fjord TR!! Are you by chance using Hurtigruten? We get emails from them all the time, and I know they're based in the UK. We think that will be our next trip to Norway, as we'd love to see more of the small coastal cities, and more fjords. The Baltic cruise certainly whet our appetite for that part of the world. And, since DH is part Norwegian, he has a special affinity toward the place!
A great trip to Amsterdam! You really saw quite a bit despite the cold. Looking forward to your upcoming ferry trip and also to the fjords. I love Norway!
Great trip! Glad you didn't opt for the drop off over your house!
And I cannot WAIT for your fjord TR!! Are you by chance using Hurtigruten? We get emails from them all the time, and I know they're based in the UK. We think that will be our next trip to Norway, as we'd love to see more of the small coastal cities, and more fjords. The Baltic cruise certainly whet our appetite for that part of the world. And, since DH is part Norwegian, he has a special affinity toward the place!
and I can honestly say I've never heard of them! We'll be on P&O Cruises. I would still love to do a Baltic cruise one day - having visited a number of those cities, I'd love to go back to some of them and explore other new ones.
and I can honestly say I've never heard of them! We'll be on P&O Cruises. I would still love to do a Baltic cruise one day - having visited a number of those cities, I'd love to go back to some of them and explore other new ones.
I know recently they were offering free airfare from London to Bergen (? maybe). We've thought some of their offerings looked pretty cool - although certainly not as high end as a Disney ship!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
Ooo, fjords! That's something that I've looked at one and off for many years now. My best friend and I constantly talk about doing a trip somewhere, but it hasn't happened yet. I'll be paying very careful attention to your fjords TR to see if maybe we may want to try that!!!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
I know recently they were offering free airfare from London to Bergen (? maybe). We've thought some of their offerings looked pretty cool - although certainly not as high end as a Disney ship!
Thanks for the link! They do look like they've got some good offerings.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
We shared a tray between us, forgetting to photograph it, until it was almost gone...
When we were done eating, we had a quick look around the delicatessen. I liked the idea of getting some Dutch cheese, but the packs of Gouda they had came in weird flavours, including paprika, so I decided to pass. 
and crisps, while Mark had some tea and biscuits. It’s pretty good, as this is all complimentary. 
Thanks for taking us along for the ride! 
My normal everyday computer routine!
and I can honestly say I've never heard of them! 
We'll be on P&O Cruises. I would still love to do a Baltic cruise one day - having visited a number of those cities, I'd love to go back to some of them and explore other new ones.
Linear Mode
