A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM - Page 34 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 had to hustle through the end of the museum too. Or I'd be a blubbering mess in the gift shop. And yes, it ends in a gift shop.
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The museum is wonderful and I hope to be able to visit someday. My dad was lucky enough to attend the 1964 World's Fair and I know he would love to see that exhibit. Thank you for sharing all the wonderful pictures from your visit there.
I had to hustle through the end of the museum too. Or I'd be a blubbering mess in the gift shop. And yes, it ends in a gift shop.
I was close to being a blubbering mess - and of course you wouldn't expect it to end anywhere else but a gift shop, would you? I mean this is Disney after all...
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The museum is wonderful and I hope to be able to visit someday. My dad was lucky enough to attend the 1964 World's Fair and I know he would love to see that exhibit. Thank you for sharing all the wonderful pictures from your visit there.
Oh wow, I bet it would bring back some wonderful memories for him.
And I'd definitely have expected to see something about it over here, given the proximity of it and the fact there's a UK pavilion. It's such a shame, as the next couple are in places that we'll never get to.
You mean Kazakhstan and Dubai aren't on your bucket list?
What a touching conclusion to the museum! I've always wished that I could have gone to one of the World's Fairs.
I'd never thought about going to a World's Fair, but I have always wished I could travel back in time to see that one in New York. How amazing would that be?
Sunday 30 August – part eleven: they’re “very good seats”
We made someone’s day when we left our prime parking spot, and then we tried to head out of Presidio, which of course was packed with traffic. It is a gorgeous place, and I’m so glad we got to visit it.
We had a little bit of time to kill, so I suggested we make our way over to the California Palace of the League of Honour. It was a bit of a trek to get there…
… but my goodness, it was worth it when we did. This beautiful building was inspired by the Palais de la Legion d’Honneur in Paris and was built by Alma de Brettville Spreckels in the 1920s to commemorate California’s casualties in World War I. It’s home to a museum of European art.
They also had a holocaust memorial here, which I thought was very well done – very thought provoking.
Then there were also the views out across the bay. I kept commenting on how beautiful the water was, as I just don’t remember it being such a lovely colour when we were last here, but maybe that was because it was April.
There was also a golf course here, and Mark said these players had just literally completely and utterly messed up this hole, with every single one of them missing!
Once we were finished with photos, we started to make our way back to the hotel, passing the Golden Gate Park that we’d visited the last time we were here. It has the most stunning Japanese garden in there, but we had an absolute nightmare getting out of there. We were going to catch a taxi back to our hotel, but couldn’t find one anywhere, and ended up getting the bus back. My goodness, it went through some rough neighbourhoods, and later we found out that there’d been a shooting along the bus route not long after we’d gone past, and we’d seen an argument going on that we thought was drug related. Yep, not the best memory…
Anyway, soon we were safely past that and into the city, and were following what appeared to be a funeral procession, only with motorbike out riders, and they were in high vis jackets, and seemed to be trying to keep everyone together, which was quite an undertaking through all the various traffic lights. The bit that made us laugh though was the second they’d got to the freeway, the bikes were nowhere to be seen, and everyone was left to their own devices.
As we got on to the freeway, we were very glad to be leaving, and not coming into the city. Remember how I said how quiet it was earlier, well my goodness, it wasn’t now! :
When we finally came off at our junction, we found this beautiful bay:
We picked up our luggage from the hotel, and then made our way over to the airport. We dropped the car off at the rental car centre and explained about the problem we’d had with the car unlocking itself, but it eventually transpired that it was a new thing Volvo had introduced, so that when the key is near the car, it unlocks. I’m sorry… Nice idea, but I do see some problems with this, like the problems we had earlier for example… Anyway, at least now we knew!
We made our way over to the BART train and headed for the international terminal, although our train was delayed by the bunch of idiots who held the doors open for about three or four more people, ignoring the constant automated warnings about how dangerous that was. Why they couldn’t have waited another couple of minutes for the next train, goodness only knows!
We headed over to the Air Canada desks, having failed to check in online earlier. Their website didn’t want to know and couldn’t find our details. I figured it was a website fault, given that when I went to search for checked luggage weight limits, it fell over and told me the search wasn’t working. Well, basically there were only two seats right at the back of the plane together. The only other two options were single seats, each in the middle of a three seat configuration. Well, I guess I’ll be taking those then. I wasn’t very impressed, and I was even less impressed when the woman at the check-in desk told me they were “very good seats”. In what way exactly?
Checking in was quite frankly a joke. It was all online, and it was pretty tedious, with us having to swipe our passports twice each, then try and pay for our luggage, then try and tag our own bags. Given they had, I would imagine, just as many staff as when they did check-in, why on earth they changed the system is beyond me. The staff were no help at all, watching us struggle with the luggage tags, and offering no help at all. I found them almost verging on rude, which really surprised me, given we’d enjoyed the service from Air Canada three years ago.
There was also a woman there, and we couldn’t quite fathom out what was going on with her. There was some form of argument over one of her bags, and when I heard them telling her that TSA requirements meant she couldn’t fly with whatever she wanted to take, I must admit I was wondering what the heck was going on. We later saw her the other side of security, having a real row with TSA, saying she’d been told she could take whatever it was, and Mark said it looked like she’d been crying. All very odd…
I love that art museum! What fun! You certainly had your share of crazy traffic and people on your way back. Note to self, Air Canada may not be the way to go.
I love that art museum! What fun! You certainly had your share of crazy traffic and people on your way back. Note to self, Air Canada may not be the way to go.
Unfortunately, given we loved our flight with them back in 2011, that was the conclusion we came to as well....
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I mean this is Disney after all...
I've always wished that I could have gone to one of the World's Fairs. 
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We later saw her the other side of security, having a real row with TSA, saying she’d been told she could take whatever it was, and Mark said it looked like she’d been crying. All very odd… 
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