Florida flowers and Caribbean cruising THIS SECTION COMPLETED 5/7 - Page 44 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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It took me forever to get to sleep last night, which is just typical, given that I’d set the wake-up call for 6:00am this morning. We were still moving quite a bit in the water, and as a result, the now empty clothes hangers were thudding around from side to side in the wardrobe, so much so that Mark had to get up, and sort those out.
In the end, I did get off to sleep, and just as I woke up, and was groggily wondering what time it was, I got my answer, as the phone, which we’d set for a wake-up call, went off. Ok, it’ll be 6:00am then…
We got up and had showers, and headed up to Cabana’s, getting there just after it opened at 6:30am. We thought there was a continental breakfast there, but there were hot items too, and it was a pretty good selection.
We ate up, and then headed up to deck 12 to take a couple of quick photos of the view outside, as from below, it was hard to photograph through the windows. My goodness, it was windy up there, so we didn’t last long.
We headed back to the aft elevators, and went down, heading for level 3, so we could say goodbye to Jennifer, as we knew they’d be eating at Animator’s Palate. Wouldn’t you know it, the elevator stops at level 5, and there’s Jennifer, so we were able to say our goodbyes in the lift. We did say we’d come in to see the rest of the family, but she wasn’t sure they’d be there, so we told her to be sure to pass along our best wishes, and with that, we headed back to the room.
There, we found our charges, which came out to roughly about what I’d figured, which was good. And heck, at least we’d got a list of charges this time. There hadn’t been one when we left the room, but there was now, so maybe on the Med cruise in the summer, when we didn’t get one, we just left the room a bit too soon.
I have to say it was so nice to be able to get back into the room and to brush our teeth, and it was also so nice not to have to take our hand luggage with us to breakfast. I would certainly consider doing this again in the future, as it felt a lot more relaxed this way.
We wandered down to the atrium just before 7:30am, with Mark putting his foot in it with a woman at the elevators. He assumed she was with a guy in front with all the luggage and made a comment about letting him carry it all, and you should’ve seen the look he got!
I deposited my survey by the Royal Palace, and I thought we were still waiting to get off, but someone moved forward, and it turned out we were already allowed off, so off we went.
We found a porter at the bottom of the escalator, and grabbed him, and wow, he was so helpful. I never thought there was any rhyme or reason to the way Disney put your bags out into each colour coded area, but there is. He asked our room number, stood there and counted from 4 upwards, then pointed at a row, and said “your bags should be here”. So that’s how they do it! He found two straightaway, although a third had gone rogue and was in another row.
Once we had those all gathered up, we walked up to customs with no wait at all (score again for getting off the boat early) and the guy asked if that was all our luggage, and we pointed at the porter, who’d walked on ahead and said he’s got it all! He asked if we had any alcohol with us, and Mark told him no, and I had to quickly remind him about the two bottles that came off with us last night.
We headed towards the parking garage, and there was certainly a nip in the air this morning. I was glad I had my new DVC sweatshirt on, let’s just put it that way. We headed up to the car, and after a couple of attempts, our porter managed to squeeze everything into the boot (trunk) and we were off. Mark drove up to the next level, so I could get a couple of views of the Dream from here. It’s a nice vantage spot.
We headed out of the car parking lot…
… and caught one final glimpse of the Dream as we left the port…
Over in the water, it was looking a bit more choppy, and I was glad we were just getting off a cruise, and not boarding one.
We headed over to the local Wal-Mart, as Target didn’t open until 8:00am, and we were making such good time, we’d be there well before then…. Well, that’s what we thought until we hit the morning rush hour, and crawled along. Honestly, it was the weirdest experience – we drove through what seemed to be this residential area that felt like it would never in a million years have a Wal-Mart anywhere near it, then you turn on to a main road, and wow, there’s all the shopping!
We headed in, picked up my supplies of Secret deodorant and supplies of deodorant for my dad (not Secret, I hasten to add… ) and got some grape jam for a friend at work, who stocked me up on a few things last time she came over.
Next: things have changed since we were last here!
I do like the idea of breakfast at Cabanas. Normally I'd say I'd miss the chance to say goodbye to our servers, but in your case, I don't think that was true! The food options looked better in Cabanas - I'm not a fan of the final menu in main dining. But the biggest perk would be not hauling luggage to the dining room!
Wow, the weather doesn't look pleasant at all. Indeed it was a good think you were getting off the water today!
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Wow, the weather didn't look so nice, but I'm thinking that Cabana's is the way to go for last day. We usually go to the main dining room even though I'm not a breakfast eater, I do have a light something.
I will have to remember this!
If we are picking up our bags at the port, we ALWAYS have ONE bag gone rogue. I think it must be someone thinking it looks like theirs, grabbing it, realizing it's not and just sticking it anywhere.
I do like the idea of breakfast at Cabanas. Normally I'd say I'd miss the chance to say goodbye to our servers, but in your case, I don't think that was true!
I can safely say we didn't lose any sleep over that!
Quote:
The food options looked better in Cabanas - I'm not a fan of the final menu in main dining. But the biggest perk would be not hauling luggage to the dining room!
That was a huge perk and a definite score for doing that in the future...
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Wow, the weather didn't look so nice, but I'm thinking that Cabana's is the way to go for last day. We usually go to the main dining room even though I'm not a breakfast eater, I do have a light something.
I will have to remember this!
If we are picking up our bags at the port, we ALWAYS have ONE bag gone rogue. I think it must be someone thinking it looks like theirs, grabbing it, realizing it's not and just sticking it anywhere.
Brunch at Palo looked delicious - we are toying with a cruise next summer and Palo is on the top of my list.
A very busy afternoon, the wine tasting, the spa, a meet with Jennifer, the DVC reception. Sorry that mark was not feeling that well hope some time resting in the cabin helped.
Sorry about your last night's dinner, it is really sad that the service can destroy a meal so terribly. Really a shame.
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Brunch at Palo looked delicious - we are toying with a cruise next summer and Palo is on the top of my list.
I hope it all works out and that you get to go to Palo.
Quote:
A very busy afternoon, the wine tasting, the spa, a meet with Jennifer, the DVC reception. Sorry that mark was not feeling that well hope some time resting in the cabin helped.
Sorry about your last night's dinner, it is really sad that the service can destroy a meal so terribly. Really a shame.
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there were hot items too, and it was a pretty good selection. 
Sorry it's such a blustery day!
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