National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 47 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Monday 12 September – part eight: what’s that in my dish?
As we heard the coaches arrive, we decided now was the time to leave and we headed off to Bryce Canyon Lodge, where we were hoping to get dinner. It’s a beautiful place.
It was chaos when we walked in, with a lot of people waiting in line for the dining room, which didn’t bode well, but the manager Luther soon came out and told us that, if we weren’t in a group, to move to one side and that got rid of a lot of people. He warned us that they were busy and that there would be a wait, but when we saw that there was only one other couple in front of us and they told us that the wait would be around 15 minutes, we decided that was fine.
We picked up our buzzer and, as it worked all over the Lodge, we headed over to the gift shop, where we got a book, fridge magnet, Christmas ornament and a couple of postcards. Mark also found a mug he liked, so got that as well. When we went to pay, we were told that they couldn’t take international credit cards, as their system was down. Fortunately, it only came to $32, so that was OK, but it was a good thing we knew that, as we’d be sure to check in the restaurant if they were having similar issues before we ordered.
Just as we were paying, the buzzer went off, so Mark went to check in, while I finished up. We were seated next to a window....
.... and quickly met our server, whose name I don’t remember, but he reminded Mark of Lurch from the Addams Family (is that right? ) and he ran through the specials with us. The menu was very extensive, with the entrees running to two full pages, so it took us a while to decide what we wanted, but motivated by the fact that a group had just sat down near us, we hurried up our choices.
Before I say what we decided on, I’ll say that as soon as we ordered was where the problems started. We both went for appetisers and if I say that we got exceptionally bored waiting for them to come out, you get an idea of how bad things were. I would say that we waited perhaps 35 minutes for them and, during that time, I went out and bought some stamps for postcards, posted a couple I’d already written and wrote another two at the table.
At least we had bread to keep us going...
Our server came by, thinking we’d already had our appetisers delivered to us and we had to explain that : we hadn’t. He disappeared and then we didn’t see him again for a few minutes, so we asked Cheyenne, who wasn’t our server, but who we’d got to chatting to earlier, as she’d made a joke about the fact that she’d be getting past our table on a regular basis. She went to check for us as well and told us that they’d been taken out to the wrong table. Within a few minutes, both our appetisers had arrived, but it was a painful start to our dinner and sadly it was not going to get any better....
I went for the Natural Bridge mini crabcakes, jumbo lump blue crabmeat folded with panko and herbs then oven broiled with pesto aioli. I have to say that they were excellent and I couldn’t fault them, although I’d have personally preferred them without the salad they came with.
Mark had the Bryce wings, flash fried, then tossed in spicy chipotle sauce, with blue cheese, celery and carrot sticks, although he asked for the blue cheese to be left off and went for the milder sauce, as apparently there were two versions, one milder than the other. He seemed to enjoy it and it took him a long time to eat it, as there was so much of it.
That’s where the next problem started. Because the appetisers were so late coming out, the entrees turned up about two minutes later. For me, it wasn’t such a problem, as mine was quite small, so I could easily move on to mine, but Mark was left struggling through his appetiser as his entree slowly started to go cold.
But that was nothing to what was to come next... I had opted for one of the specials they had, which I was told was sea scallops on a bed of red pepper risotto. It sounded perfect, as I love it when they use red pepper in cooking and that’s something they seem to do a lot around here.
I dug in happily and a couple of minutes later, I had a horrible feeling that I’d just tasted something that could be meat, but they hadn’t mentioned that at all when I ordered it. I inspected the contents of my dish a lot more carefully and found a few more offending items. I asked Mark for his opinion and we both came to the same conclusion – it had to be bacon!
I was horrified and I’d had enough, after the fiasco with the appetisers. I immediately got up and asked for a manager. Jimmy came over, who we later found out was the Vice President of the resort (apparently they were desperately short handed tonight and it was hands on deck for everyone!) and he apologised profusely and said that he’d get something else for me. I told him that, actually apart from the bacon, I liked the dish and I’d prefer it without the bacon, so he got on the case with sorting that out for me and Mark’s rapidly cooling dish was taken away as well.
We got a visit from Luther, the restaurant manager, shortly afterwards, and we were very nice about it, which surprised him, but I couldn’t see the point in yelling at him or anyone else. He told us that they’d all been walked through the dish earlier and no-one had mentioned bacon, so I’m guessing that chef got lynched later!
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Well, the lodge LOOKS beautiful, but what a difficult meal! Big error on the chef's part, not mentioning the bacon in the dish! And where was "Lurch" during all of this? And it gets worse??
Oh boy, that meal sounds like a total train wreck! I guess their only excuse might be that they were swamped - but still. I hate when that happens, especially on vacation!
I can't believe they didn't list bacon as an ingredient! That's a pretty big mistake. But at least the quality of the food seems to be up to par.
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What do you mean it gets worse?! Your lead up to this meal made it sound like it was going to be so good! I'm so sorry it was such an ordeal. I am glad that Jimmy and Luther were on hand to take care of it, but wow!
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Well, the lodge LOOKS beautiful, but what a difficult meal! Big error on the chef's part, not mentioning the bacon in the dish! And where was "Lurch" during all of this? And it gets worse??
Oh heck - you wait until tomorrow's installment...
What do you mean it gets worse?! Your lead up to this meal made it sound like it was going to be so good! I'm so sorry it was such an ordeal. I am glad that Jimmy and Luther were on hand to take care of it, but wow!
It does get worse - it was just a complete nightmare...
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Oh no...I'm not fond of bacon in or om many things, but I do like it plain, but when you are not told it's in there...thats not good. I have to ask, do you not eat meat by choice or health reasons...I am just nosey..
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and we headed off to Bryce Canyon Lodge, where we were hoping to get dinner. It’s a beautiful place. 
) and he ran through the specials with us. The menu was very extensive, with the entrees running to two full pages, so it took us a while to decide what we wanted, but motivated by the fact that a group had just sat down near us, we hurried up our choices. 
: we hadn’t. He disappeared and then we didn’t see him again for a few minutes, so we asked Cheyenne, who wasn’t our server, but who we’d got to chatting to earlier, as she’d made a joke about the fact that she’d be getting past our table on a regular basis. She went to check for us as well and told us that they’d been taken out to the wrong table. 
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I guess their only excuse might be that they were swamped - but still. I hate when that happens, especially on vacation!
Sorry dinner has been a bit of a disaster! 
Tricia
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