Cruising the Norwegian fjords without Disney! COMPLETED - Page 43 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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 May – part six: a moose and some pretty amazing fish!
After a quick look at the park area, and learning a bit about the castle...
... we started to walk back down the Bryggen, getting lots more photos:
I kept stopping in various shops, finally finding a Norwegian moose to go with the Canadian one I’d got in Vancouver and a book about Bergen.
Norwegian moose, with the Norwegian cow key ring I’d got a couple of days earlier!
As we walked back, we both mentioned how much we could do with a restroom break, so I suggested going into McDonald’s. We’d already seen there was a charge for the toilets at the Floibanen, so we figured it would probably be the same here, so we bought a hot chocolate to share, thinking if there was a code for the toilets, we’d get it. Well, we didn’t, and sure enough there was one.
After finishing our hot chocolate, we headed back and over to have a wander through the fish market, which had some amazing items.
Then we walked up the main pedestrianised shopping street. By now, it was starting to cloud over and get a lot colder. We figured we were heading back at exactly the right time.
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It really does look like your typical small fishing town. Did you ever get to use the bathroom at McDonald's? I mean, you did buy a hot chocolate in there so they should have let you use the bathroom.
It really does look like your typical small fishing town. Did you ever get to use the bathroom at McDonald's? I mean, you did buy a hot chocolate in there so they should have let you use the bathroom.
Do you know what? I really don't remember now.... I'm thinking but genuinely that bit of the trip completely escapes me now.
I was also going to ask if you ever ended up getting a code at McDonald's! What I really love about your pictures - they remind me of Door County in Wisconsin (heavy Norwegian influence there), which is one of my favorite places on the planet!
Friday 4 May – part seven: off to see the galley...
We headed back through the Festplassen that we’d walked through this morning, getting some shots of the beautiful buildings around the lake here.
Then it was back to get a bus back to the ship. Surprisingly, we didn’t have a wait, literally walking straight on to one, which left a couple of minutes later. The driver was quite a wind-up merchant, telling people to hurry up, as the ship’s departure time had been brought forward a bit.... to 1:30 pm and it was now 1:20 pm!
On the way back, we got some nice views of the city’s art museum and some other historic buildings, before we were back at the port again.
Fortunately, as people were only coming back one bus at a time, at least there was no wait to get back on board for once. We headed back to the cabin to dump our stuff and then it was up to Venezia to get a late lunch. Despite the amount we’d piled away for breakfast, we were still hungry. It wasn’t as nice a spread as earlier in the week, but I still managed to find plenty to fill up on:
We sat with a really nice couple, chatting away about the cruise, Bergen, and the cruise ship that was manoeuvring outside, which was interesting to watch. You really do either find lovely people or just downright rude people, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the middle.
We headed back to the room for a while, hearing on the tannoy that there were various passengers missing and that the final shuttle bus back had been held up by traffic, so I think we were about 20 or 30 minutes late leaving Bergen in the end.
I don’t know what time we left, as we headed down to do the galley tour that started at 3:30 pm. Well, the entire ship must’ve had the same idea, as the line snaked its way round and I think it took us about 20 minutes to get in, during which time I managed to embarrass myself, tapping someone on the shoulder we both thought was Cheryl and it wasn’t.
It was a self-tour of the galley, which I know Mark was a bit disappointed with, but personally I was just pleased to be able to get near the galley, after this tour was conspicuously absent from our last couple of Disney cruises, which was a disappointment. At least they had various signs up, explaining how things worked and a few people around to demonstrate what they do day in, day out.
Mark couldn’t resist a silly photo of him “stirring it”!
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Pixie Dust
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DH would have been in heaven with that fish market! 
Melanie
At least they had various signs up, explaining how things worked and a few people around to demonstrate what they do day in, day out. 
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