Oh the Places We Go, The People We See Updated 11/03/2013 - Page 26 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wonderful port photos. You have a knack of picking great excursions, or maybe you just have a knack of having fun! The shots of the girls with the flamingos are too funny. Abby has such an expressive face and the look she was giving those birds is hilarious.
I love the eyes that Alexis is giving to the Flamingos! She's like, come any closer and I'll grab you like my sister did! I don't blame her!
Great pictures from of the lighthouse and fort, I love the ones with the ship off in the distance.
She was not too thrilled. She no longer had her sister to protect her and Claire wasn't helping her either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
Wonderful port photos. You have a knack of picking great excursions, or maybe you just have a knack of having fun! The shots of the girls with the flamingos are too funny. Abby has such an expressive face and the look she was giving those birds is hilarious.
Thanks. I think we just tend to try to have fun with what we pick, not matter how good or bad they are. I try to take it all in and learn new things.
I kept switching cameras, so I am not sure if these are in exact order. It was really neat and I was so tempted to go inside. But I knew everyone else would be waiting on me.
I just love the views!
Another fantastic view.
We all got back on the bus then and soon we were headed into town.
I tried to take pictures as we drove, but they aren’t the greatest from a bus with tinted windows.
At times we would see beautiful houses and other times we basically saw holes in the ground. My family did NOT like Nassau at all. They thought it was dirty and falling apart. I have to agree with both, but also recently seeing some other ports just about 6 weeks prior, I didn’t really think it was all that much worse than the other ports civilian areas. And we have to remember that a hurricane had come through just a week or 2 prior.
As we drove along, our bus driver did point out things and tell us what certain places were or represented.
Some of us look a little tired.
Or perhaps bored?
We then approached Fort Fincastle.
As we drove around it, our driver asked if we would like to stop and take a look …and yes I did …but everyone else shouted no! UGH! I didn’t say anything, but I really did want to check this place out, more so than Ft. Charlotte. Oh Well, maybe next time.
Not far from there is the Queens Stairs.
This was made for the Fort so they could escape in an invasion. I actually think I read or heard that it never was actually used in that matter though.
We did stop here and some of us took a look around.
I wasn’t about to head down the steps …..because then you had to climb back up!
There was a man sitting there telling tidbits about the stairs, but he was there to make money. He wanted a tip. We didn’t stick around too long and then headed back to the bus and off back towards the port.
When we got dropped off, that is when we learned that our driver was brand new. He did such a great job and I never would’ve known it if we hadn’t been told. We all gave him a tip and headed on our way.
Sorry that the rest of the bus didn't want to stop at Fort Fincastle. The Queen's Staircase does look interesting, but I would hate to have some guy there looking for tips.
Maybe the next time we're in Nassau (which may be a while, as we prefer the longer cruises), we will get off there and do that tour, as it looks pretty good.
I stayed on the ship in Nassau, having heard it was nothing special. Your tour does sound good, though. I'm not surprised everyone was getting tired by the end.
Sorry that the rest of the bus didn't want to stop at Fort Fincastle. The Queen's Staircase does look interesting, but I would hate to have some guy there looking for tips.
There is a lot of that in the area, well at a lot of ports. people really try to make a buck anyways they can.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Maybe the next time we're in Nassau (which may be a while, as we prefer the longer cruises), we will get off there and do that tour, as it looks pretty good.
it was neat. not fantastic, but still a neat experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
I stayed on the ship in Nassau, having heard it was nothing special. Your tour does sound good, though. I'm not surprised everyone was getting tired by the end.
It's not a fabulous port, but there are a few decent things to do. I like to at least see a little bit of the ports.
After we got done with our tour, we all made our way back to the ship via the customs House.
I was on the hunt for a magnet. They have a few shops there, but nothing was grabbing my attention. I decided I wanted to stay in port a bit and look around at some shops. I had not had an opportunity to do so on our last cruise here, so today I wanted to take a look around. No one else wanted, to, including Claire, so she headed off with the family and I went off on my own.
I browsed a few shops and found a magnet and also found a sun dress for Claire that was really cute. She has not worn it yet, so I sure hope it still fits for this upcoming summer.
I kind of just hung back and took pictures. I liked this horse and carriage.
See the guy walking behind the carriage? Well he liked me! UGH. I kind of got nervous as he came right over as he saw me take the picture and started talking. Let’s just say, he was CREEPY! He was missing the majority of his teeth yet he thought he was some sort of prize. He came over and told me how beautiful I was and how he would never let me walk around by myself if he was my husband. ICK>>>> Get away from me! Finally he did leave. Thank goodness. I made sure to stay in plain view of other people and right near an entrance to a shop.
After he went on his way, I took a few more pictures.
And I made my way back to the customs house, being sure to walk the long way around where that guy was standing.
I had to take a few pictures of the Dream in port. It’s one of those things you can never have enough pictures of.
A look back at the customs house.
A look up at the Aqua Duck.
Isn’t she just “dreamy”?
And back on the ship I went.
While I had been shopping in Nassau and talking with Mr. Creepy, the rest of the family made their way back to the ship.
Rob later told me that the girls took off with Aunt Mary and they were on a mission to get back to the rooms and change and go swimming. I guess at one point, Claire panicked because she didn’t have her swimsuit, but Alexis, the wise, pointed out she was wearing her lanyard and it had her room key in it, so she would be able to get her suit. Yay, crisis averted!
Rob, Gail, Geoff and Abby had taken it slower to get back on the ship and when they got to the atrium there was a mass meet and greet going on and they stopped off to get many pictures.
Abby is all about the princesses, so they stopped and waited in line.
Evidently they didn’t have the ships photographers out, because there were no pictures of this meet on our CD. I do have Geoff’s pictures though.
Abby seems a little unsure with her meet with Cinderella.
Getting a bit friendlier with Tiana.
She was more comfortable with Belle, now getting into meet and greet mode.
I didn’t ask Gail how this worked, but it almost looked like they had to wait in a separate line for each princess. I know in the past, they had one line for all of them and that worked really well for us.
Sorry about the problem native. Glad you were able to get away from him. You are right the Dream really looks great sitting at port. Nice shots of the girls and the princesses.
Glad you got rid of the creepy guy! The shots of Abby with the princesses are so adorable. I agree, never too many photos of the beautiful DCL ships from all angles!