National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! DISNEYLAND SECTION COMPLETED - Page 4 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Loving the updates. I am glad you are having a fabulous time.
I didn't know you were on face book. I'm gonna Pm you my name and you can add me if you want or have time.
Hi, I just wanted to jump in to say what a great time I had with Cheryl and Mark this afternoon. It was so wonderful to finally meet them in person after so many years reading their posts and seeing their pictures!
We spent some time at the Grand Californian lobby just chatting and resting from the incredibly hot day (it was probably high 90's at least at DLR). We then walked around some of Downtown Disney heading toward the Disneyland Hotel. Unfortunately, there were still lots of construction walls up around the hotel, so there wasn't much to see. However, we did go check out the new pool area with the monorail slide.
Here are some pictures from my afternoon with them (Cheryl will have much better photos...I took these with my phone):
The monorail slide area
Me and Cheryl (with some chocolates from England...thanks, Cheryl and Mark!)
Cheryl and Mark getting ready to take the Disneyland shuttle to LAX...I did my best to see them off safely to their next destination!
Mark and Cheryl, it was great to spend the afternoon with you! I hope you had a safe journey to Vancouver, and I can't wait to hear more about the next parts of your trip!
Those are great photos you took! It was so good to meet you as well - we loved our afternoon with you.
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Finally caught up with all the updates. I've been following you on FB from my phone since our power was out due to the hurricane. Looks like you guys had a great visit to Disneyland.
Sorry to hear about the power. Hope it's back on soon.
Loving the updates. I am glad you are having a fabulous time.
I didn't know you were on face book. I'm gonna Pm you my name and you can add me if you want or have time.
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Glad you had a good time at Disneyland. It's been crazy hot this last week here in SoCal. Have a great rest of the trip, looking forward to reading more of your adventures.
Can't wait to hear all the details of the DL leg when you return. We actually like DL more than the Magic Kingdom at WDW - I think it feels more manageable, and I just love knowing it was Walt's design!
I am so glad that the Aladdin show is still there! When we went in 2008 we were told that it was in its final days. We loved the show so much and I was sad that it was going! I am so glad it is there!
Friday 26 August – part one: this is not a good start to things! :
Considering that we had no work to go to today, it was a stupidly early start for us. I believe it was 5:00 am when I first heard the dull sound of the TV. Great! Soon, we were both up and about and I headed downstairs to catch up on the boards and e-mails, which took some time...
We had a leisurely breakfast and then we sat and watched some things that we’d recorded, before setting off into town for a few last minute bits and pieces. That’s where the problems started... We got in easily enough and popped into the one shop we wanted and got what we needed. Then Mark went to get some money out of an ATM machine. Oh boy...!
Now, even though he took his bank card and put it back in his wallet and I watched him do that, it obviously didn’t register with either of us. : He got no money, having asked for some and then thought that he hadn’t got his card back. We couldn’t believe it! We tried banging on the door, only to be told “you’ll have to wait until we open at 9:00 am”. Great! As we had another 15 minutes or so, we walked through town to Mark’s actual bank to check the time they opened, in case it was a problem with his account. They opened at the same time.
We had some nervy times waiting until the doors opened, and of course they were late opening as well only to be told “we can’t open up the machine. If it’s swallowed your card, there’s a good reason why and you’ll have to go and see your bank.” Mark headed off there, not in the best of moods, it has to be said, while I made for the Post Office to put a couple of things in the post.
On the way down to meet him, the day went from bad to worse as I nearly got knocked over by a truck that sped through a red light, just as I was crossing, complete with green man. Thank goodness I heard it hurtling along and realised what was happening. If I hadn’t, I dread to think of the consequences.
I found Mark coming out of his bank, and he’d been able to get some cash and had found the bank card in his wallet where he’d put it. Crisis over! As to what the heck had happened with the ATM and why it hadn’t given out cash, goodness knows...
Finally, we headed home, much later than we’d anticipated. Once there, we finished getting the final chores out of the way, including drowning all the tomato and strawberry plans in the greenhouse and phoning my parents, who bless them, thought we’d escaped the country without speaking to them first. :
We headed out around 10:30 am and I have to say that the weather was just foul. They had been forecasting heavy rain all week for today and, sadly, they were right. We hit slow traffic as we joined the M25, otherwise known as Europe’s biggest car park. When we saw signs for more queues a bit further round, I suggested getting off the motorway. I’m not sure that was a great idea... :
We got held up behind various slow drivers and trucks and Mark got increasingly exasperated with everyone else on the road. It wasn’t good. There were some nice houses on the way...
Finally we were moving again and heading towards Heathrow. I rang the valet company to tell them that we’d be about 10 minutes or so late. By the looks of the map, that’s how far out we were from the airport. Well, all I can say is that I reckoned without the sheer size of Heathrow! We must’ve entered from the south side and driven round the entire perimeter of the airport. It took about 20 minutes to circle the place, all the time with us getting more fraught. I rang the valet people and, after snapping at me at first to ask if we’d told them that we were going to be late, she was very sympathetic.
We saw some nice sights on the way round....
... but I think I can honestly say that we were both delighted when we finally saw the signs for Terminal 3. It felt like we’d been going round in circles forever!
We dropped off the car and the guy wasn’t in the slightest bit worried about us being late and gave us all the paperwork and then we headed into the terminal to check in. We were quickly seen and dropped off our bags, with instructions of how to get to Fast Track security. We headed upstairs in the elevator and saw a sign for Virgin Atlantic Upper Class, but we weren’t sure. We looked around and that seemed to be the right place.
We had to swipe our boarding passes for entry, and try as I might, there was just no way, I could get it to read it. Fortunately a Virgin Atlantic employee arrived at that moment to help me out. It doesn’t help when you’re trying to scan the wrong barcode... although in fairness to me, she did say that sometimes the home printed boarding passes are a nightmare to get working.
We headed into our own private area and passed through security, literally having no wait when we emerged into the main security area. Straight through, with neither of us subjected to an extra search, which must be a first for us it was into the shopping area. Now, here they’ve got it right. They bring you straight through the duty free shop. You have no way of missing it.
We had a look in a couple of shops and stocked up on some chocolate in one, before heading into an electrical store to look at cameras. Mark had told me that he was happy to buy me one, as my good old Sony is now six years old and about 130,000 photos old. I did like the look of a Nikon and we got very close to buying one, but when I asked about the situation with duty, I was told that if we were caught with it without declaring it or if we declared it when we returned, we’d have a stiff penalty to pay – about 20% of the price we were paying. I asked him to check how much the same camera was in the shops in the UK and he told me about £40 more. Well, I’m sorry, but if there was a chance that we might have to pay £200 to bring it back into the country, I’d rather wait and pay the high street price.
That done, we wandered through a couple more shops, getting a Harrods duck for Heather on the way
Glad you started your TR! Sorry your trip started out so yucky!! I am very happy thought that you were able to avoid getting hit by that truck running the light, glad that sixth sense was working. Hope things improved as your day went on. Not surprised at all by the picture total. Looking forward to more.
Sounds like the two of you had a bit of a rocky start. Why is it that the start of a vacation can leave one soo frazzled feeling? Glad things are smoothing out for you two!
OH MY GOSH, what a stressful morning trying to get to the airport! Glad you didn't get mown down by the truck, and that the money thing was straightened out! Lucky to have been able to go through upper class check in at the airport after the late arrival!
Can't imagine trying to sort through all those pictures, but not surprised at all with the count! You may need to do separate scrapbooks for each part of your journey!!
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It was so good to meet you as well - we loved our afternoon with you. 
: 
Soon, we were both up and about and I headed downstairs to catch up on the boards and e-mails, which took some time... 
only to be told “we can’t open up the machine. If it’s swallowed your card, there’s a good reason why and you’ll have to go and see your bank.” Mark headed off there, not in the best of moods, it has to be said, while I made for the Post Office to put a couple of things in the post. 
There were some nice houses on the way... 
We must’ve entered from the south side and driven round the entire perimeter of the airport. It took about 20 minutes to circle the place, all the time with us getting more fraught. I rang the valet people and, after snapping at me at first to ask if we’d told them that we were going to be late, she was very sympathetic. 
that seemed to be the right place. 
although in fairness to me, she did say that sometimes the home printed boarding passes are a nightmare to get working. 
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