A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM 12/2 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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.
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.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Well, if you have to do laundry on a cruise, at least, you had glacier watching to occupy your wait. How crazy about that one washer! The close up of Tracy Arm is why I'll only sail on a Disney ship to Alaska. You could do a whole book of just yours and Mark's photos here.
Yep, cutting down those photos for a book is definitely going to be a challenge! I'm working on San Francisco right now, but I keep putting Alaska off, as that's going to be a job and a half.
Wednesday 2 September – part eight: that is not a “light” sauce
Eventually, we tore ourselves away from the view, and headed down to Parrot Cay, where we were eating tonight. I really do not like this restaurant at all, and I think it’s a shame that it’s still on the Wonder. Carioca’s is a bit better, but this place is just insanely loud. That was certainly the case as we walked in, with a constant loud buzz of people talking, and to add to it, they were playing music. Thank goodness that stopped after a few minutes.
We were the first ones there, and I decided to get a melon vine cocktail, made up of Bacardi rum, midori, pineapple and lemon juice and sauvignon blanc, and it was really nice.
For appetiser, I went for the baked crab Martinique, jumbo lump crab baked in creamy cheese sauce served with tortilla and plantain chips, and this was absolutely superb, perhaps the best thing I’ve had in one of the main restaurants so far.
Mark went for the fried Jamaican Jerk-marinated chicken tenderloins, which did not look good at all when it arrived. Mark pretty much validated that view, saying he’d had better chicken in KFC!
I then had the cream of green asparagus with crabmeat and asparagus tips, which was very nice.
Now here’s where the meal went rapidly downhill, from my point of view anyway. Mark had the mixed grill, made up grilled beef tenderloin steak, lamb chop, bacon wrapped sausage and jumbo shrimp on mashed potatoes, asparagus, and grilled tomato with a cabernet mushroom sauce.
Now the rest of the menu was made up of chicken breast, pork chop, prime rib and creole crusted grouper on shrimp jambalaya rice with Cajun slaw, which sounded like it could be spicy to me, so that was out.
I looked at the vegetarian menu instead. Maybe I should have gone for the St. Maarten Stack but it was made up of grilled Calabaza, and I didn’t have a clue what that was , zucchini, and mozzarella. The only other options outside of the one I went for were soup or salad or grilled Portobello mushrooms, and I just wasn’t in the mood for those, especially as they came with brown lentil and parsley sauce, and I can’t stand lentils, so I opted for the pearl-barley cakes with shallots, rosemary and leeks over sautéed Julienne of carrots, root celery and leeks with a light saffron sauce.
The pearl-barley cakes themselves were fine, the problem was they were practically drowning in oil, and that was not a “light saffron sauce”, it was dripping in saffron, which was completely overpowering. I just couldn’t eat it at all. I had the chef at the table, no doubt because of last night’s disaster with the tuna, and he kept asking what he could do. I just told him I didn’t like the taste of the dish at all, it was too strong, and I didn’t want anything else from the menu, as to be blunt, there was nothing else on the menu that appealed to me. I’d already had the same from our servers, and had told them twice the menu did nothing for me. I told them they could just deliver a good dessert menu, and that would partially make up for it.
The dessert menu was much better. Both Mark and I got two items each. He went for the sticky date pudding, served with butterscotch sauce, vanilla ice cream and phyllo crunch, which he described as the best part of the meal.
I’d say the same about my first dessert, which was also Mark’s other choice. That was the paradise coconut pineapple layered cake with banana, mango and passion fruit puree, and that was just to die for. It was wonderfully light, and full of beautiful tropical flavours. For me, that was the standout dish so far this cruise in the main restaurants by far.
The other dessert I went for was the tropical sundae, rainbow sherbet with marinated coconut cream, pineapple and macaroon. Well, let’s just say their idea of a macaroon is not the same as my idea of a macaroon. I guess I’ve been spoilt by the French ones over the years… I didn’t eat much of this, as it was so loaded with sugar. I did say that if any kid ate this, they’d be bouncing off the ceiling all night in between the sugar and all the colourants in it.
Before we left, we were given the menu for the next night, so I could see if I could find something I liked the look of. I have to say the menu looked very cute:
However, in all honesty, it was the same story as tonight, some of the appetizers looked great, but the entrees again didn’t do much for me. They had great names, but when you read a little bit further, they were nothing spectacular. Anyway, we’ll be out on an excursion, so I doubt we’ll get to sample any of it. Parcha did tell us to come to the dining room, and if they could fit us in and give us some food, then they would, so we may well do that…
We headed out…
We made our way over to the lobby atrium to get some more photos done…
We were told to pretend to be scared in this shot and I think we did a pretty good job, but I think it would’ve been better with something to be scared of in shot – perhaps a bear
I have to say it was absolutely heaving in here, more so than formal night, and the noise levels from everyone talking was unbearable. We didn’t stay long, before heading up to deck four to get some photos of the views outside…
We made our way back to the room, and we were greeted by this cutie, who I absolutely adored and he ended up coming home with us… or should I say his friend… I was really upset when our stateroom attendant tidied up and removed all our towel animals a couple of nights before the end of the cruise, because he took my teddy bear. I know it’s dumb, but I loved this one, and I asked him if he’d do another one for me, as I wanted to take it home with me, and thankfully he did, so I still have his friend.
We didn’t last long again before we were heading to bed. I kept trying to stay awake, and watched a nature documentary that had been Disney-tised shall we say? Let’s just say that there were no deaths, and the circle of life was not exactly complete…
The weather today was wet and windy first thing, but warm and sunny later on, with temperatures in the low 60s. The best thing today was seeing all the beautiful scenery along the fjord The worst thing today was the entrée at dinner. Today we tried watching the scenery in Tracy Arm Fjord from deck four And the result was it was a lot quieter there and much more relaxed. The most magical moment today was seeing the glacier.
What a shame about dinner. As nice as it is to have a sit down meal, sometimes a buffet is just easier due to the multiple options. I'm not a seafood eater, or a steak eater, or spicy food eater. So while not vegetarian, I'm often left with not much to choose from either! Tastes like chicken....
Beautiful sunset shots! And yeah, the "scared" photo is cute, but what are you scared of?
__________________
Tanya
Every click helps feed .6 bowls of food to rescued animals. Give a quick click every day and help animals in shelters! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
Sorry you had such a bad experience tonight with dinner.
Not sure if you'll end up having anything tomorrow or not, but I can say the Coronation scallops were good, and the Jarlsburg tart was DELICIOUS!
I agree, don't love Parrot Cay at all. Somehow I feel it's aged the least well - seems very dated to me. I'm anxious to sail on the Magic again to experience Carioca's! (and we're considering the DVC member's cruise in Sept 2016 to do just that!).
Sorry your meal at Parrot Cay was disappointing. Your starter looked really good! Maybe you should've had them bring you another for a main course. That towel bear is so cute!
__________________
Mickey's so happy to see me back, he can barely contain himself!
What a shame about dinner. As nice as it is to have a sit down meal, sometimes a buffet is just easier due to the multiple options. I'm not a seafood eater, or a steak eater, or spicy food eater. So while not vegetarian, I'm often left with not much to choose from either! Tastes like chicken....
Love it!
Quote:
Beautiful sunset shots! And yeah, the "scared" photo is cute, but what are you scared of?
Sorry you had such a bad experience tonight with dinner.
Not sure if you'll end up having anything tomorrow or not, but I can say the Coronation scallops were good, and the Jarlsburg tart was DELICIOUS!
Ah well, you'll find out shortly what we did the next night...
Quote:
I agree, don't love Parrot Cay at all. Somehow I feel it's aged the least well - seems very dated to me. I'm anxious to sail on the Magic again to experience Carioca's! (and we're considering the DVC member's cruise in Sept 2016 to do just that!).
That is an improvement, but in all honesty, it's still not great - it's fairly obvious they did a quick makeover, shall we say? It's better, but I could still see it was originally Parrot Cay, if that makes sense?
While dinner was a bit better, the whole tuna episode would have been avoided totally if they just asked questions. I would find it totally normal to as how you wanted it cooked, just like you would do with a steak.
I am glad all was ok with the ship emergency, it would have taken some time to settle down however after the announcement. Not what you want to wake up too.
The pictures of Tracy Arm were amazing - just so beautiful and you had such wonderful weather for the day as well.
Dinner again just not up to par - from the picture it did not look like sauce at all, more like saffron flavored oil.
You probably would have enjoyed the Calabaza - it is a winter squash, kind of like pumpkin in a way (sweet but not overly), really delicious.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
How crazy about that one washer! The close up of Tracy Arm is why I'll only sail on a Disney ship to Alaska. 
You could do a whole book of just yours and Mark's photos here. 
I'm working on San Francisco right now, but I keep putting Alaska off, as that's going to be a job and a half. 
, zucchini, and mozzarella. The only other options outside of the one I went for were soup or salad 
It was wonderfully light, and full of beautiful tropical flavours. For me, that was the standout dish so far this cruise in the main restaurants by far. 
I didn’t eat much of this, as it was so loaded with sugar. I did say that if any kid ate this, they’d be bouncing off the ceiling all night in between the sugar and all the colourants in it. 
They had great names, but when you read a little bit further, they were nothing spectacular. 
I know it’s dumb, but I loved this one, and I asked him if he’d do another one for me, as I wanted to take it home with me, and thankfully he did, so I still have his friend. 
That towel bear is so cute!
Linear Mode
