A tale of two cities… and a few other places… COMPLETED - Page 28 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Quite an amazing memorial and glad she was able to see it and keep it together. I'm sure this meant a lot to her. It's astonishing how few police officers are killed in the U.K as opposed to the states.
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Tuesday 19 September – part eight: Royal gifts from across the decades
We carried on walking up the Mall…
We saw filming for a Victorian TV series.
We were later told by a member of staff in Buckingham Palace that it’s for something called Good Omens, starring David Tennant. Cool! However, when I looked it up on imdb, it seems as if it may not be for a Victorian TV series after all. It says that it’s:
A tale of the bungling of Armageddon features an angel, a demon, an 11-year-old Antichrist and a doom-saying witch.
We made it to Constitution Hill and got some photos of the Queen Victoria Memorial, which was put up in 1911, as part of the work to create that memorial to her…
… and Buckingham Palace:
Buckingham Palace was first converted from a house to a palace in the 1820s for King George IV, but both he and his successor King William IV, so Queen Victoria was actually the first monarch to live here. We’ve been watching a drama series about Victoria, and it’s been fascinating to see how the building is progressing, with more and more added each episode (in CGI of course ). The palace is the official residence of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, and about 300 people work in the palace. Around 50 of those have rooms at the palace, as does Prince Edward, Princess Anne and the Duke of York (Prince Andrew).
From there, we made our way round to the entrance for the State Rooms. Sadly no photos are allowed in here, which is a huge shame.
The palace is amazing, and this time (we went last year as well), I felt as if I had more time to spend admiring each room, rather than being dazzled by the displays. In 2016, it was the Queen’s outfits, and there was a lot in each room. This year, the theme was Royal gifts, with the gifts given to the Queen over the 60 plus years of her reign, and there was a lot less in each room.
The gifts come from either visits that the Queen has been given when she has visited countries and by 2016, she had made 89 official state visits to 117 countries and a total of 188 official visits to Commonwealth countries. Gifts also come when the Queen receives heads of state on state visits to the UK and by 2016, she had received 109 state visits from 61 countries. Not bad, but then again, she has been on the throne for more than 65 years…
So what were some of the most bizarre gifts, shall we say? Well, perhaps the young elephant from the President of Cameroon? He was named Jumbo and was housed first at London Zoo, before moving to their sister park, Whipsnade. Another one was the 100 foot totem pole sent by British Columbia to commemorate its centenary, which is now in Windsor Great Park.
Obviously we didn’t get to see those, but there were so many highlights:
The portrait of the wreck of the Sea Venture, a seventeenth century English sailing ship, from Bermuda
The woven raw wool panel of a village scene from Botswana – the amount of detail on it was just staggering
The tree of life from Mexico, which depicts figures and symbols from the Mayan, Mixtec and Aztecs, except this one depicts her life. It featured her, the Duke of Edinburgh and various landmarks. I had great fun spotting which each one was!
The silver and gilt model of palm trees and camels from Saudi Arabia – I would’ve missed it, had it not been for the information, which told me that the dates in the trees were amethyst
The beautiful glass vases from Norway and Sweden
The mahogany and gilt metal presentation candlesticks supported by the scarlet ibis and the cocrico bird, which feature in the coat of arms from Trinidad and Tobago
However, in truth, some of the best were also gifts from within the United Kingdom, like:
The aerial view of Windsor Castle engraved into a glass panel presented on the opening of Heathrow’s terminal 1 in 1969
The lacquered silver model of the tunnelling machine used on the second road tunnelled under the River Mersey in 1971
The famous London Underground station sign with Buckingham Palace on it presented in 2010
There were so many more, and really had to be seen to be believed. I honestly wish they had a permanent display of them somewhere. I ended up buying a souvenir gift book about them, as it was reduced from Ł13 to Ł5.
That sounds like a great exhibition. I really loved the fashion one last year, and this sounds equally amazing. Do they have a different one every year in the months the palace opens to visitors? Good you were there toward the end of those dates, as I’m sure that was in part the reason the souvenir book was marked down.
Well it'll be interesting if you are able to catch whatever they were filming for TV and see what it actually is!
It is a shame you didn't get to take any photos! But glad you could at least purchase that book to remember some of it - if just the exhibit. I'm imagining the rooms are all ornately decorated and looking just perfect!
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Tanya
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The exhibit at Buckingham Palace sounds fascinating!
Is the Victoria series the one starring Jenna Coleman? I watched the first season of that, and I'm looking forward to the second season when it airs over here (I think starting in January).
That sounds like a great exhibition. I really loved the fashion one last year, and this sounds equally amazing. Do they have a different one every year in the months the palace opens to visitors?
Yes, they do a different one each year, which I think is a nice touch and of course a good reason to return. Honestly? Without the change in exhibition, we wouldn't have gone back so quickly.
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Good you were there toward the end of those dates, as I’m sure that was in part the reason the souvenir book was marked down.
Well it'll be interesting if you are able to catch whatever they were filming for TV and see what it actually is!
It is a shame you didn't get to take any photos! But glad you could at least purchase that book to remember some of it - if just the exhibit. I'm imagining the rooms are all ornately decorated and looking just perfect!
Oh gosh yes. In a way, like many of the world's palaces and grandest buildings, you do end up like "it's another stunning room... whatever..." which sounds terrible, but honestly, there is only so much you can take of it, and then it just all blurs into one...
Is the Victoria series the one starring Jenna Coleman? I watched the first season of that, and I'm looking forward to the second season when it airs over here (I think starting in January).
Yes, that's the one! The second season just finished over here about a week ago and we apparently have a Christmas special to come, which looked intriguing from the preview they showed of it.
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Quite a time at Buckingham Palace and that is quite an exhibit with some very unique gifts from various countries! Great details on this. I hope you were there for the changing of the guard so Jan could see this. I saw this once and quite amazed with the process and show.
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
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I'm sure this meant a lot to her. It's astonishing how few police officers are killed in the U.K as opposed to the states. 
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However, when I looked it up on imdb, it seems as if it may not be for a Victorian TV series after all. It says that it’s: 
). The palace is the official residence of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, and about 300 people work in the palace. Around 50 of those have rooms at the palace, as does Prince Edward, Princess Anne and the Duke of York (Prince Andrew). 
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