A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED - Page 3 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I think that's Mt Rainier, although I don't see it from the air very often. We call that cloud the mother ship when it's hanging over the whole mountain top.
The mother ship!!!
You got some amazing pictures from the plane! I love to do that too. I can't help but wonder if the other people on the plane wonder if it's my first flight or something. So exciting that I'm taking photos! I don't know and I don't care what they think! Photos of the earth from an airplane are always fun to look at!
__________________
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
You got some amazing pictures from the plane! I love to do that too. I can't help but wonder if the other people on the plane wonder if it's my first flight or something. So exciting that I'm taking photos! I don't know and I don't care what they think! Photos of the earth from an airplane are always fun to look at!
I gave up caring what people think of me photographing everything a long time ago. I figure a lot of the time you only get one chance to get a photo, so if it makes you happy and doesn't disturb anyone else (that's why I don't often use flash), then what's the harm? It also helps to make flights go quicker for me...
I wonder if the lake with all the red/orange was Mono Lake? It's in Northern California, and is a salt water lake - very popular with migrating birds.
I'd never heard of it and was shocked when I looked it just now and discovered it's just outside Yosemite. From looking at Google Maps, it looks like it would fit the bill.
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Tuesday 8 September – part four: seeing Disneyland from the air
Then we came in over land and over the sprawl of Los Angeles, and finally I saw some green bits, which seemed sadly few and far between. I guess part of that is the lack of rain, although I imagine some of that is also the fact that LA just sprawls everywhere and takes up any green land it can find.
Then look what I found…
I couldn’t believe it! I thought it might be Disneyland, so I zeroed in on it to find out that it was, so got as many photos as I could as we passed by. Very neat!
Then we were coming into land…
We both looked at each other, and said that the airport had grown a lot since we were last here in 2008. We remembered a tiny thing, with a baggage carousel that went out into the car park, and only a couple of gates. We saw three planes land, and one taxi out to take off, as we made our way over to the terminal. There is a good reason it had changed so much, which we’ll come to in due course.
When we got off the plane, the heat was the first thing that hit us. Ugh, it was awful. We were so glad to get into the air conditioned terminal building, which was lovely:
After a quick bathroom break, we headed down to get our luggage, and this has to be the coolest luggage carousel in the world… ever!
It made it a lot easier to see when your bags were coming.
We quickly got all four, secured them up and headed over to Hertz to get our rental car. The woman at the counter was very chatty and seemed to like our sense of humour, saying if I wrote a book, she’d read it. I did mention I had two books already published.
Anyway, we then found out why the airport had changed so much. It’s because we were thinking of another one – perhaps Long Beach but this one has apparently been like this for more than 20 years. I have to say it doesn’t look that old, it’s very impressive.
Here’s the statue of the great man himself that was just by the rental car counter…
We had to take photos of this, as we have friends at home who did not believe that we were flying into John Wayne Airport.
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You were on the correct side of the plane AGAIN!!! How lucky are you?! Awesome. I love when you get to see such things from the plane!
I flew into that airport for the first time ever and thought it was great. I espeically got a kick out of the fact that big jets fly in/out there as well as little Cessna's. So cute! And I suppose for folks who aren't familiar with it.... yes the fact that it's named John Wayne airport is a little odd.
__________________
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
You were on the correct side of the plane AGAIN!!! How lucky are you?! Awesome. I love when you get to see such things from the plane!
We were very lucky, although in fairness, we've had our fair share over the years of "on the left, you'll see...." and we're on the right.
Quote:
I flew into that airport for the first time ever and thought it was great. I espeically got a kick out of the fact that big jets fly in/out there as well as little Cessna's. So cute! And I suppose for folks who aren't familiar with it.... yes the fact that it's named John Wayne airport is a little odd.
I have to say though, I loved the fact they've got that statue - so neat!
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Pixie Dust
I don't know and I don't care what they think! Photos of the earth from an airplane are always fun to look at!
PassPorter Guide Author
I gave up caring what people think of me photographing everything a long time ago. 
We were so glad to get into the air conditioned terminal building, which was lovely: 
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