A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM 12/2 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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A little too close for comfort, but still what an incredible life experience. A mom and her cubs. When you mentioned Mark and the guide pulling up the rear, I thought of the poor dude is lowest on the tree in jungle cruise and most like to be poked by the rhino horn. Thank goodness, everyone made it safely beyond the momma bear and her kids. the photos!
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What an amazing, albeit a bit unnerving, experience. Your comment about Mark and the guide being behind you was classic, but I also got a chuckle when the other guide told you that you were fine as long as you were past the signs. It made me think of the bears reaching the signs and turning around because the sign said "No Bears" or something like that.
A little too close for comfort, but still what an incredible life experience. A mom and her cubs. When you mentioned Mark and the guide pulling up the rear, I thought of the poor dude is lowest on the tree in jungle cruise and most like to be poked by the rhino horn. Thank goodness, everyone made it safely beyond the momma bear and her kids. the photos!
Well, that would've been our guide and I figured he had the most experience with bears and how to handle them and had the bear spray too...
What an amazing, albeit a bit unnerving, experience. Your comment about Mark and the guide being behind you was classic, but I also got a chuckle when the other guide told you that you were fine as long as you were past the signs. It made me think of the bears reaching the signs and turning around because the sign said "No Bears" or something like that.
Oh I know! I suspect it might be something to do with the fact that where we assembled was close to the road - that's the only thing I could think of.
Thursday 3 September – part seven: sampling a Frozen dinner
With that, we headed off the bus and were given out packed lunch for dinner. I had forgotten to say I was vegetarian, so of course, it was no good for me, as the sandwich was chicken Caesar. Mark told me I hadn’t missed much, which was something. I was at least able to have the grapes and the chips, so that was something. Anyway, I doubt I’ll starve as there will be plenty of food when we get back on the Wonder.
Oh by the way, if you’re wondering why we were taking the boat between Skagway and Haines, that’s because it only takes 45 minutes. If we had driven it, it would’ve been a 300 plus mile trip and would’ve taken a lot longer. Ok, going by ferry works for me. In fairness, it’s a very smooth ride and with the commentary, we had from the staff all the way back made the time go very quickly.
They paint on this cliff details of every ship that docks in Skagway – I was very pleased we were able to spot this one!
Our ferry was a bit later back than it was expected, as it was due in at 7:00pm, but I don’t think we got back until 7:10pm. Thank goodness we were on a Disney shore excursion, as the all aboard time was in half an hour’s time. We were driven back to the ship through Skagway, which gave us a chance to see a few familiar places from our last visit here:
We were the first off the bus, and headed straight on board…
…. and made our way over to Triton’s, given Parcha and Allwyn had told us that we could turn up there when we got back, and they would serve us something. They were as good as their word.
We had a very quick look at the menu, and decided what we wanted. I went for two appetisers, the first of which was the Jarlsberg tart with onion and thyme, and this was just wonderful, full of flavours and not too heavy.
I also had the Portobello mushroom consommé with vegetables and fresh herbs, and again the flavouring of this dish was wonderful.
Mark went for Elsa’s Coronation scallops, princess scallops baked in a shrimp cognac tarragon cream sauce, topped with flaky pastry, which he loved. I would’ve had this, but I cannot stand the taste of tarragon, and of course it’s a herb that can easily overwhelm everything else in the dish.
He also had the slow roasted chicken breast from the lighter offerings selection, and that didn’t turn out to be such a light offering, as Parcha and Allwyn insisted on it coming with a baked potato, as he’d had one the other night.
For dessert, Mark went for the oaken warm apple pudding cake, served with butterscotch cinnamon sauce, and vanilla bean ice cream:
I went for two different desserts, the first of which was the pannekaken, Norwegian pancake (and I thought that was Dutch from Da Dutch… :whistle), pancakes rolled in with a sweetened lingonberry cream cheese. I did find it a bit weird that it was cream cheese, but managed to get over that, as I love lingonberries, and very rarely get to sample them.
The winner for me though was the frozen yoghurt Romanoff sundae, made up of fresh strawberries marinated in Cointreau, vanilla frozen yoghurt and chopped pistachio nuts. Oh my goodness, this was just amazing! I loved the vanilla frozen yoghurt, as it wasn’t too sweet, and as for the Cointreau, my goodness, you could really taste that at the bottom of the sundae! The only thing that didn’t work for me and stopped it getting a straight 10 (that’s how good it was!) was the fact they put cream on the top of it, which I just took off, as it didn’t go with the yoghurt, as it was far too sweet, and the two didn’t complement each other at all.
As Mark pointed out, we can’t really judge the atmosphere, as there wasn’t much of one. We were the only ones there, and the servers were all frantically preparing for the next seating around us, which is fair comment.
Once we were done with eating, we headed back to the room to eagerly check through all our bear photos, and we were both really pleased with what we’d got. This was what awaited us tonight:
We managed to stay up a bit later than we’d managed so far this trip, and made it to 9:30pm, which I thought was a minor miracle in itself. I figured there was no way we’d be doing the Frozen deck party, and heck, it didn’t really matter at all, given the most magical day we’d already had.
The weather today was warm and sunny with temperatures in the low 60s. The best thing today was our amazing shore excursion. The worst thing today was our close encounter with the bears! The funniest thing today was “bear”… “where?”… “there”… well, at least I can laugh about it now Today we tried taking the ferry over to Haines And the result was the scenery on the way was just stunning. The most magical moment today was seeing the bears.
How nice that, even with your late arrival, they were able to serve you such a wonderful dinner! Everything looked delicious! You really had a great day!
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Sounded like a wonderful ending to a wonderful afternoon! Glad they could get dinner for you, even if they were a bit rushed. Dessert......
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When you mentioned Mark and the guide pulling up the rear, I thought of the poor dude is lowest on the tree in jungle cruise and most like to be poked by the rhino horn. Thank goodness, everyone made it safely beyond the momma bear and her kids. 
the photos!
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Pixie Dust
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Scary, but what an experience!
I suspect it might be something to do with the fact that where we assembled was close to the road - that's the only thing I could think of.
In fairness, it’s a very smooth ride and with the commentary, we had from the staff all the way back made the time go very quickly. 
We were driven back to the ship through Skagway, which gave us a chance to see a few familiar places from our last visit here: 
I loved the vanilla frozen yoghurt, as it wasn’t too sweet, and as for the Cointreau, my goodness, you could really taste that at the bottom of the sundae! 
The only thing that didn’t work for me and stopped it getting a straight 10 (that’s how good it was!) was the fact they put cream on the top of it, which I just took off, as it didn’t go with the yoghurt, as it was far too sweet, and the two didn’t complement each other at all. 
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