National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! COMPLETED - Page 52 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Tuesday 13 September – part five: are we ever going to find anywhere to park?
We were heading for the park’s visitor centre, as from the start of April to the end of October, there’s no vehicle access into the main area of the park. You have to park up and then catch the shuttle bus, which runs about every 7-10 minutes during the peak parts of the day. The first challenge however was parking up.
We headed for the visitor centre, along with everyone else in the world, or so it seemed. I knew that we stood little chance at the number of cars coming out, as surely they couldn’t all be leaving. They weren’t. They were all leaving because they couldn’t find a space, either in the main car park or the overflow car park nearby. We drove round for about 15 minutes, failing to find anything and resigning ourselves to driving over to Springdale, which is served by a separate shuttle bus to the visitor centre.
As we came out of the park entrance, Mark spotted a parking lot and there were spaces, so we parked up there and walked back to the visitor centre. It was maybe a five minute walk and probably no worse than the far ends of the overflow car park.
We headed inside, so that I could get my passport stamped and, that done, we left any shopping for later, so that we didn’t have to carry it around with us. After a quick restroom break, we boarded the shuttle and headed up to Zion Lodge. It was pretty busy on board, but there was no standing on this coach as we went up, so it wasn’t that busy.
I had suggested the Lodge, as I was starving and figured I needed some food before doing anything else. My first plan was to go to the cafeteria, so as to maximise our time in the park, but when Mark pointed out the line, which was out of the door so I opted for my second option, which was the Red Rock Grill, their restaurant.
We headed upstairs and were immediately seated, despite first walking into a large line of people being seated. The menu was very reasonable, with the burgers only priced at around $10 each, which I thought was very good for the location.
I opted for the Sinawawa salmon burger, with sweet potato fries and that was very nice, although it certainly had a bit of a kick to it, which I knew about! I loved the fries, but Mark wasn’t at all keen, after trying one, which meant all the more for me!
Mark went for the bison burger (my poor Billy ) and French fries and he told me that, for all he knew, it could’ve easily been beef, as he couldn’t tell much difference in taste.
Our meal, including tip for our server, came to $26, which I thought was pretty good going.
Red Rock Grill:
Entree 7½ 7½
Service 7½ 8
Atmosphere 8½ 8
Value for money 8 7½
Average score: 7.81
As soon as we were done eating, we headed outside to walk down the “easy” 1.2 mile roundtrip to the Lower Emerald Pool. You’ll see shortly why I put easy in quotation marks.
We set off, going over a lovely little bridge...
Then what I would describe more as a hike began. If this was honestly 0.6 miles, I’d be really surprised. When we set off, they warned us that it would take about an hour to walk the trail. I couldn’t fathom that out, as I’ve always understood that most people walk at about three miles an hour, so surely it should be more like half an hour? As we progressed, I could see why they said it, as there were some serious hills as we went. I felt decidedly unfit and I’ve been walking regularly for the last six months or so...
We got lots of photos on the way and I will say that this trek gave us a better appreciation of the park, as I don’t think you get that from the Lodge.
I'm also surprised at how busy it was, wow! Lunch did sound good, especially sweet potato fries. From your description, I can't believe they would call this an "easy" hike! : Sounds like it should be classified as moderate!! Glad to see a photo of my favorite cactus:
They're so cute! Well, for a cactus anyway....
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I'm also surprised at how busy it was, wow! Lunch did sound good, especially sweet potato fries. From your description, I can't believe they would call this an "easy" hike! : Sounds like it should be classified as moderate!! Glad to see a photo of my favorite cactus:
Chez, you are a bad influence! I have already begun mapping out some trips to take with the family. Since we are in driving distance, I've already broken it into two trips: Jackson Hole/Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. Hoping to do the Yellowstone trip in August. Your pictures got me moving!
Chez, you are a bad influence! I have already begun mapping out some trips to take with the family. Since we are in driving distance, I've already broken it into two trips: Jackson Hole/Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. Hoping to do the Yellowstone trip in August. Your pictures got me moving!
I think that's me being a good influence, getting you to see more of the States! Glad to hear I was able to help get you moving!
Tuesday 13 September – part six: this really isn’t worth the hike
Finally, we made it to the Lower Emerald Pool and waterfall and I think it would be fair to say that it was a real disappointment. As Mark said, it’s probably much more impressive in the spring, when the waterfall is in full effect, but today it was a pretty poor show. The emerald pools weren’t bad, but they were nothing overly spectacular either. After the build-up my guidebook had given this, I have to confess that I was disappointed.
As we walked back, I couldn’t help but think about what would happen if today’s forecast storms were to hit. All along, you could see signs of what had happened in the past when the floods had hit, with storm drains everywhere underneath the path to take the water away, and tree roots sticking out of the ground, with the soil that was holding them in no doubt washed away. I immediately figured if it started to rain, I would move a lot quicker. We had also heard on the narration on the bus on the way here that they do get really bad flash floods, when the road can get completely blocked, and the most recent of those was in winter 2010! It’s good that they update the narration so often, but it didn’t give me much comfort, especially when they talked about closing the park and evacuating people...
Fortunately, I was worrying for nothing and we made it back to the Lodge fine, although it was starting to cloud over.
We just missed one shuttle bus, so we waited for the next one and, to be honest, it’s not a bad service, as we only had a few minutes to wait for it. What I didn’t like though was that it takes away your freedom to explore the park on your own terms, stopping at every viewpoint you want to enjoy. To do that with the shuttle bus, you have to get off and then get back on the next one and, at the back of our minds, was the question “will we be able to get a seat on the next bus?” As a result, we opted to stay on until the final stop on the loop, which is the Temple of Sinawava.
Next: lots of cute posing animals... and one not-so-cute one!
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They were all leaving because they couldn’t find a space, either in the main car park or the overflow car park nearby. We drove round for about 15 minutes, failing to find anything and resigning ourselves to driving over to Springdale, which is served by a separate shuttle bus to the visitor centre. 
so I opted for my second option, which was the Red Rock Grill, their restaurant. 
I loved the fries, but Mark wasn’t at all keen, after trying one, which meant all the more for me! 
sweet potato fries. More great pictures!!!
From your description, I can't believe they would call this an "easy" hike! 
: Sounds like it should be classified as moderate!! Glad to see a photo of my favorite cactus:
Tricia
We had also heard on the narration on the bus on the way here that they do get really bad flash floods, when the road can get completely blocked, and the most recent of those was in winter 2010! 
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