A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM 12/2 - Page 41 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Friday 4 September – part six: heading back to the Wonder and out of Juneau
We then made our way over to this buoy, where last time there had been loads of sea lions lying on it, but this time, there was just one, and my goodness, he looked like he was really chilling!
With that, we made our way back to the harbour. We all commented that we really didn’t know where the time had gone. We’d been out something like two and a half hours, and it just didn’t feel like it at all. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.
It was a nice sized group as well. There were four adult couples, three adults on their own, and Caleb and his grandparents, so 14 in total. As for Caleb, although he became our official whale spotter for a while (he had to be told though not to shout it, as it would scare them off…), well about an hour and a half in, he was done, and completely flaked out.
We made our way back through the centre of Juneau…
… and David spoke more about photography, and the software he uses to digitally manipulate this photos. I have to be honest, the effects he achieves are absolutely stunning, but to me, it’s just too much work if I have to do more than just zoom in and crop something. He was very good though, and handed out a DVD which was essentially was a photography tutorial, a very nice touch and at least it sets out what he took us through.
David did ask if we wanted to be let off in town, but given it was now 3:30pm, and all aboard time was only an hour and a quarter away, no-one took up the offer, and instead we headed back to the dock. It had been a truly wonderful tour and we’d both really enjoyed it, and David got a very good tip for his time, effort, enthusiasm and knowledge, especially given he’d told us early on he was on the tail end of a cold, and not “with it” – you certainly wouldn’t have known.
We made our way back on board…
.. and were greeted with complimentary hot chocolate and cookies, which was a nice touch.
We headed back to our room, and waited for the Wonder to move out of the port, which she eventually did, giving us some wonderful sweeping views of Juneau and the area surrounding it:
We both thought this guy was a bit close for such a small boat versus such a huge ship!
Soon we were back out into fjord country, and passing beautiful scenery and waterfalls…
2 1/2 hours? wow, you guys got your money's worth. What a great tour! I love the hot chocolate and cookies too. I bet that was really nice. ( a little amaretto included would have been better.... )
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Friday 4 September – part seven: chilling in the Cadillac Lounge
Just after 5:15pm, we made our way down to the lobby atrium to get some more professional photos done, as I wanted to make the most of the package we were about to purchase, given it’s now $349 for all the photos on your Alaskan cruise.
With this one, we couldn’t resist getting some shots with Mark on his own, given how desperate he is to see an orca one day….
Once we were done with all our photos, we headed upstairs to the future cruise sales desk. Now that Mark knew what his birthday present was, we could talk about next year’s plans, as he knew we had two weeks booked, but now he knows we actually need three weeks off next year, plus whatever we do in the fall. For me, it’s not an issue, as if I accrue time, I can claim that back. As a result, even though I get the same time off each year as Mark (five weeks, although he gets a sixth week with a mandatory shutdown for a week over Christmas and new year), I have more time left, as I’ve used about five or six flexi days so far this year, and in fact out of my nine days holiday needed for this vacation, two are flexi.
Anyway, he could at least make some decisions about whether to take unpaid leave for example if we do three weeks next October/November. He seemed quite happy to do so, so we went ahead and booked a four night cruise on the Dream for November 2016. The plan is to do a week or maybe eight days in Canada, seeing Niagara Falls, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City, then a week or again maybe eight or nine days in Disney World and finally use the Universal Studios tickets we never seem to get around to using and then finish off with a cruise.
I have to say I was shocked by the price of the cruise, and in a good way. We’re paying $1,900 for a category 4A stateroom. In fact, I was so impressed, I asked about the concierge staterooms, but unfortunately it was $3,300. I don’t think so. A couple of hundred dollars more, then maybe…
And just to update, we’ve since changed the date of this cruise, so that we can be with other friends to commemorate the first anniversary of Bill’s death at Walt Disney World We’re now on the 26 September sailing of the Dream. Thank goodness you can at least make one change to any on board bookings, as this time, we needed it!
That done, we headed next into Shutters to order our package. We went for the digital package, although if you wanted the digital package, and prints, it was another $100. I think I can print anything I need a lot cheaper than that. While we were in there, they told us that the Northern Lights had been sighted last night, and the photo that one of the photographers got of it was just amazing. It did make us feel a bit better when Alex, our server in Palo, told us he’d seen them, but it hadn’t looked anything like it did in her shot – that was 100 times better than what you could see with the naked eye. Ok, that’s good then.
As we still had about an hour or so until our dinner at Palo, we made our way over to the entertainment district on deck 3…
… and headed into the Cadillac Lounge:
We were greeted by Jade from South Africa, who was just wonderful, and chatted away to us the whole time we were there. We learnt so much from her, and she did have a bit of a “devil may care” attitude, as when the Wonder gets to Honolulu, she’s leaving, as she’s done two years with Disney, and now wants to move on. She’s hoping to get a job on Emirates Air Lines and to her with that.
She told us she was the only member of staff in the Cadillac Lounge when the by-now infamous fire incident took place, as the colleague she was working with is a fire marshal. She was left with around 20 people who she had to stop panicking at the sight of fire crews going through, I bet that was no mean feat.
We both had two cocktails each – I went for the pomegranate passion, made of pomegranate liqueur, passion fruit puree, and Tattinger champagne, and very nice it was too!
Mark had the fun sounding elderbubble, a combination of Absolut Raspberri, St-Germain elderflower liqueur, raspberry puree and Tattinger champagne. It tasted very good from the sip I had of it, but apparently it was pretty deadly as well, as by the end of the second one, Mark was practically rolling around the shop, and no we were not into rough seas.
I tried a bit of his drink, and he tried a bit of mine. Now I ate the raspberries before passing mine over. He didn’t. I’m sure you can see what’s coming next… the raspberries dropped into the drink, shooting it all over me and my dress. Thankfully it didn’t stain, and I was able to quickly dry it off.
We also had more drama when Jade when to make us a second cocktail, and was shaking everything so hard, it flew off in her hand, and the glass shattered all over the floor, thankfully behind the bar. She was calm as anything, and just turned round to us and said “well, that’s never happened before to me”. I guess it must be us then…
We were there for probably about 50 minutes, and the whole time we had the place to ourselves, which was just lovely. I hate it when places get busy and loud, and it’s so nice to just sit there and be able to chat to the staff.
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You finally did it Cheryl! 
Well worth the price on this excursion I'm sure for you! 
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Pixie Dust
(he had to be told though not to shout it, as it would scare them off…), well about an hour and a half in, he was done, and completely flaked out. 
)
and then finish off with a cruise. 
We’re now on the 26 September sailing of the Dream. Thank goodness you can at least make one change to any on board bookings, as this time, we needed it! 
to her with that. 
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