The trip of many changes... TRIP REPORT UPDATED 4/25 - Page 48 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What a nice meal and I'd love every bit of that from the tiger shrimp, the lobster (which looks amazing) and of course the desserts. Probably a good idea to go to Cabana's on your final night. I did the drawing part at AP and managed, but just deal with it. I remember the meal being good as all were on my Magic cruise. Too bad you can't get another ADR for Palo!
Friday 19 January – part eight: a late night and a film viewing!
When we came to leave, we discovered the main doors to the atrium were closed, so we left the other way. We were just getting in the elevator, when I thought I heard someone say something about the world famous Disney characters. Ok… that might be worth waiting for. We ducked off at deck five and had a front row view over the dance party taking place below us. First the characters came out…
… then each of them did a different high energy dance routine to different bits of music, while the others were all out dancing with people. It was only 20 minutes long, but my goodness, they worked it the whole time they were out there. How they do it, I do not know.
We also enjoyed watching Ashlie, our cruise director, getting down to the music. She knew every dance step! Mind you, I guess you work your way up and probably have to do all of those jobs and know the dance moves that way…
We headed back to the room and then a little while later, went up to the beverage station to grab a cup of tea each. We were heading to see Coco and having found out how cold it is in the Buena Vista Theatre from earlier on, we decided that we’d layer up, so grabbed jeans and sweatshirts and we figured a hot drink would help too. There is such a thing as too much air conditioning…
There were a lot more people in the theatre for this showing, which surprised me, given it was shown twice in the Walt Disney Theatre yesterday, but even so, I reckon there were still maybe only two dozen or so of us. We had a couple of officers join us and the most annoying guy, who left early and walked across the row right in front of us, then came back a minute later, as he’d obviously lost something and proceeded to look for it using the torch on his cell phone.
As for the film itself, it wasn’t Mark’s thing at all, but I absolutely loved it. I couldn’t believe how uplifting a story Disney had managed to make of a story essentially about death. I was just overwhelmed by the detail and the imagination in this movie and I really liked the characters as well. I had heard it was good, but wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. I came out of there, absolutely delighted we’d gone to see it. It was the perfect way to end the day.
We headed out on to the veranda to have a look at the view after dark, as the all aboard time was now 1:45am. We knew a lot of the crew were planning on heading off the ship as soon as they finished their shifts and there was certainly a steady stream of people going off. We saw a few coming back and even spotted Julia and Mark returning. They’d gone into Aruba straight after dinner for an hour or two.
Eventually, it was time to head to bed and wow, what a late night – we made it past 10:30pm!
The weather today was hot and mainly cloudy with temperatures in the mid 80s. The best thing today was watching Coco. The worst thing today was our lousy tour guide Ryan. The funniest thing today was watching Ashlie our cruise director getting down to the show and doing all the dance moves! Today we tried visiting Aruba And the result was it’s a nice enough place and I get the attraction of it, but it was the least appealing of the four ports of call we’ve visited this cruise. The most magical moment today was watching the Disney character show in the atrium.
That looked like quite the dance party! And I think you guys had the best view for it too.
Still haven't seen Coco. I don't know why, it looks pretty good and I hear good things. I still think it's really cool that you can watch movies on a cruise ship. - properly in a (cold) theatre.
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That looked like quite the dance party! And I think you guys had the best view for it too.
I thought it probably was as well!
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Still haven't seen Coco. I don't know why, it looks pretty good and I hear good things.
Give it a go - I think you'll really like it.
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I still think it's really cool that you can watch movies on a cruise ship. - properly in a (cold) theatre.
It's one of the great things about being on a Disney cruise. I cannot wait for our next couple of cruises, as hopefully Christopher Robin will be showing, given it's being released in early (USA) to mid August (UK) and we're cruising from mid September.
I can't believe how cold the theatre was! I agree that there can be to much A/C at times as I've experienced and not prepared for it without warning! Glad you got to see the character show and you enjoyed it so much. Definitely, being in the right place at the right time!
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I know, they just seem to constantly overdo the air conditioning in there. Oh well, at least now we know to take extra layers for a movie there.
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I agree that there can be to much A/C at times as I've experienced and not prepared for it without warning! Glad you got to see the character show and you enjoyed it so much. Definitely, being in the right place at the right time!
Saturday 20 January – part one: this is really tough work!
I woke up at 7:20am this morning, so a real lay in and nine hours of sleep! The ship was pitching a bit when I eventually got up and I decided I’d head to the adult pool for a quick swim when it opened at 8:00am. I was expecting to be about the only fool up there so early – how wrong can you be? There must’ve been about 10 or 12 people there already, mainly grabbing loungers. I’m glad I didn’t come any later.
I headed into the pool and noticed the water was moving with the motion of the ship, but didn’t think anymore of it until I was swimming in it. Oh my goodness, it was like swimming in a really tough wave pool. There were points where I was swimming and I knew I wasn’t moving at all as the wave was just coming towards me and I was staying still. It was really tough work. Now I will confess I haven’t been swimming in about a month now, so I knew it would be hard, but not this hard. I only did 10 lengths and gave up. I did some exercises in the pool and then headed out.
I went for the hot tub and, as I did, a woman was heading into the pool, looking like a serious swimmer as well with goggles and hat on. I warned her it would be tough going and I don’t think she believed me, but my goodness, I watched her completely still at points, as she encountered the same issue as me.
After a session in the hot tub, I decided to head back to the room, as it was quite windy. It was one of those days when the wind was deceptive and I’m sure quite a few people will end up getting burnt today, as they’ll think there’s no need for suntan lotion and there definitely is in the wind.
I showered and washed my hair and managing to snag some photos of the rainbow outside, as we headed through a squall.
We then headed off to breakfast at Cabana’s and I think I ate more today for breakfast than I have any other day. They had some very good choices.
By the time we were done, it was almost 9:30am and there was an activity we wanted to do in the Crown and Fin pub at 9:45am, so we made our way down there.
It was an adults only activity – 3D Star Wars paper craft. I thought Mark would enjoy the Star Wars element and I liked the craft side of it, so I thought we’d both get something out of it. We played a couple of games of cards while we waited for it to start and then we picked up our pieces of paper and scissors.
I quickly got to work and found I could cut everything out very quickly, as I’ve done similar things for scrapbooking. I went up to get the glue and the Crew Member was still there cutting! I glued R2-D2 together, which was the easy one, as he’s made from one piece of paper.
Having done him, I started work on Yoda. He was a lot more complicated, as it was about five different pieces of paper, but I was determined to do him and I did!
Mark had long since given up, as he hadn’t brought his glasses with him and couldn’t see where to cut. In the end, I managed both quicker than the Crew Member and honestly this was one of the highlights of our cruise. I loved doing this so much and having something to show for it, even though they’ll no doubt get crushed on the flights back to Orlando and home. I really felt like I’d accomplished something and for anyone who’s vaguely crafty, if you see something like this on your cruise, definitely give it a go.
What a nice way to start the day!! Those crafts are so cute but I'm afraid I would have found Yoda a bit of a challenge!! Let's just say that my scrapbooks are very homey!!
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Probably a good idea to go to Cabana's on your final night. I did the drawing part at AP and managed, but just deal with it. I remember the meal being good as all were on my Magic cruise. Too bad you can't get another ADR for Palo! 
I still think it's really cool that you can watch movies on a cruise ship. - properly in a (cold) theatre.
I agree that there can be to much A/C at times as I've experienced and not prepared for it without warning! 
Definitely, being in the right place at the right time! 
The ship was pitching a bit when I eventually got up and I decided I’d head to the adult pool for a quick swim when it opened at 8:00am. I was expecting to be about the only fool up there so early – how wrong can you be? There must’ve been about 10 or 12 people there already, mainly grabbing loungers. I’m glad I didn’t come any later. 
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