A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 50 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Sounds like you had a lovely day overall. Definitely seems like better weather for touring, you were able to get lots of lovely shots. That is one tall door on the temple! The nighttime tour sounds really nice, sorry you weren't able to find a nicer place to eat dinner, although it sounds like you were still able to make the best of it. Oh, and I am almost positive the "deer excrement" is just a joke. I've seen stuff like that for sale over here that is chocolate-covered peanuts, but it is named something gross like "deer droppings" or "rabbit droppings" or something awful like that. It is just a regular snack, with a gross name to entice more kids into buying it, I assume. Plus, the bags of "deer excrement" in your photo did say peanuts, so I'm sure that's all it was.
The deer are Sika Deer. They shed their antlers in March/April and start to regrow them shortly after. So the "stumps" you saw are the new antlers beginning to grow.
(I'm not that smart, I was curious and looked it up!)
We do - I love the DK travel guides. I've got about 30 or 40 of them...
How cool! My sister has quite a stack as well. For some reason, a local bookstore decided to unload them for something like $2 a copy. So she bought one of each and now they cover a bookshelf 4 feet long. I wish she had let me know about the sale but I don't think that there were many left after her shopping spree.
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Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
What stunning photos! I'm with everyone else in that I love dramatic night time photos.
Very interesting about the food situation. Glad you finally found something to your liking and price expectations. We'll forgive you for not taking pic's.
The next update sounds very intriguing.
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ºOº ~*~
Oct '99: CSR ~ May '02: CR ~ Nov '04: SOG ~ May '06: SOG ~ Dec '07: Solo @ Pop ~ May '08: Pop w/friends ~ Oct '08: SOG ~ Dec '09: Pop w/LeAnn ~ Sept '10: Solo @ Pop ~ Spring '11: AKL ~ Jan '12: Pop for 1/2 Marathon ~ Sept '12: 1st trip for DL 1/2 Marathon? ~ Feb '13: Pop w/pals? ~ Mar '13: Tokyo Disney w/PP's?
Sounds like you had a lovely day overall. Definitely seems like better weather for touring, you were able to get lots of lovely shots. That is one tall door on the temple! The nighttime tour sounds really nice, sorry you weren't able to find a nicer place to eat dinner, although it sounds like you were still able to make the best of it. Oh, and I am almost positive the "deer excrement" is just a joke. I've seen stuff like that for sale over here that is chocolate-covered peanuts, but it is named something gross like "deer droppings" or "rabbit droppings" or something awful like that. It is just a regular snack, with a gross name to entice more kids into buying it, I assume. Plus, the bags of "deer excrement" in your photo did say peanuts, so I'm sure that's all it was.
We sell a lot of "moose droppings" in Canada. Your choice of raisins or peanuts
Sounds like you had a lovely day overall. Definitely seems like better weather for touring, you were able to get lots of lovely shots. That is one tall door on the temple! The nighttime tour sounds really nice, sorry you weren't able to find a nicer place to eat dinner, although it sounds like you were still able to make the best of it. Oh, and I am almost positive the "deer excrement" is just a joke. I've seen stuff like that for sale over here that is chocolate-covered peanuts, but it is named something gross like "deer droppings" or "rabbit droppings" or something awful like that. It is just a regular snack, with a gross name to entice more kids into buying it, I assume. Plus, the bags of "deer excrement" in your photo did say peanuts, so I'm sure that's all it was.
You are 100% right about the deer excrement - it was just chocolate covered peanuts...
Monday 6 April – part one: I’ve never seen so much cherry blossom in my life!
Today started at 8.00 with a knock at the door and the delivery of room service with a perfect breakfast order. The girl took us through what everything was when I said that I understood in Japanese, she looked so shocked. I had to tell her that I only spoke a little though, as then she did want to have a full conversation with me. It didn’t quite work, but I think I got a few extra bows when she left for knowing some Japanese. The bowing certainly seemed to go on longer than I’m used to anyway!
We finished breakfast and packed away our stuff again and took it down to bell services and checked out. We headed for the subway and took it out to the east of the city. After some doubt about what we should do this morning, we had settled on the Philosopher’s Walk, as I had said that I wanted to do that to Mark, so he insisted that we stuck with that plan. When we came out of the station, I was glad that he has. We saw a cherry blossom lined street almost immediately and it tuned out that they actually lined a disused railway track, so we walked a little way along it, before heading back to the main road.
Our first stop today was to be the Nanzen-ji Temple, a Zen temple that dates from 1386. It’s a massive, sprawling complex and it’s clear why they see this as Kyoto’s greatest Zen temple. We walked slowly up to it, taking lots of photos as we went.
When we got to the two storey Sanmon Gate and I saw that you could pay to go up it, I knew that I had to do that, as I guessed the views from there would be superb and I was right. Mark opted to stay down below, which made for some fun photos when we found each other.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much cherry blossom in my life. It just seemed to be everywhere you looked.
Very kindly taken by a Japanese lady up there at the same time as me
You also got some neat views of the city, although it was hard to see over the trees, which was a pleasant change.
Oh wow Cheryl, those pictures are beautiful! I love the view you had from the top, and how kind of the woman to take one of you from up above! The picture of Mark from below with both of your bags is funny
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Mark opted to stay down below, which made for some fun photos when we found each other.
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