The Promise of Spring: Flower & Garden Festival 4.0 -- A Cam and Luke TR COMPLETED 8/27 - Page 55 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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.
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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 awesome photo's, you had another great safari. I love the gorilla's its one of my favorite animals, well next to tiger's.
I was a little sad that we didn't see the tigers at all during this trip, but they were backstage for breeding. What excites me now is that there will be a baby tiger very soon!
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Originally Posted by Disney Fan 52
Good pics !
Thanks so much!
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Originally Posted by KMB733
Great pictures from the safari and of the gorillas!
Thank you!
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Originally Posted by Roxie2006
All the pictures are great. I do like the giraffe ones the best. You were lucky to get them in groups. Great ride many animals to photo!
I was a little sad that we didn't see the tigers at all during this trip, but they were backstage for breeding. What excites me now is that there will be a baby tiger very soon!
BABY TIGER??? Oh, wow - I had no idea this was being planned! I hope there is one for our trip next year!
Sorry to harp on about the Caring for Giants tour again, but having read your report of it, I've just booked it for our October trip. We are having a non-park day mostly, just doing a pool/shopping day, but now we will be going to Animal Kingdom for the tour at 4 p.m.
Anyway, lovely photos from the Animal Kingdom, this really is a very close second to my favourite park (which is Epcot, but only by a very small margin!). Thanks for all your work so far, really enjoying the report!
__________________
Silvercat
(Enjoy reading trip reports? Why not try my books, "Tiggerific Travels Parts 1, 2, 3 & the new volume 4" - available now as e-books)
Oh my goodness! That pic of the mom gorilla with her feet up! I love it!
You were able to snag some really great photos, especially of the giraffes.
I totally sympathized with momma gorilla as it was another hot, humid Florida day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Silvercat
BABY TIGER??? Oh, wow - I had no idea this was being planned! I hope there is one for our trip next year!
Sorry to harp on about the Caring for Giants tour again, but having read your report of it, I've just booked it for our October trip. We are having a non-park day mostly, just doing a pool/shopping day, but now we will be going to Animal Kingdom for the tour at 4 p.m.
Anyway, lovely photos from the Animal Kingdom, this really is a very close second to my favourite park (which is Epcot, but only by a very small margin!). Thanks for all your work so far, really enjoying the report!
I think the female Sumatran tiger is expected to deliver in the next month, but that might be too soon for it to be out for your October trip. The baby would be a toddler by next year though.
Congrats on booking the Caring for Giants tour! I'll be interested to hear how the late afternoon tour is since we took the first one in the morning.
Once we’d left the gorillas, we walked through Africa and then headed toward Asia via the trail across from Tusker House. The Tree of Life here was calling out for a photo.
We were on our way to the last of our three original FastPasses, Finding Nemo: The Musical. We entered a nearly empty line and joined the a few other families waiting at this time on the ledge of a wall around the theater. The area gradually filled up with most of us sitting in the shade. At some point a Cast Member came out and asked us all to move forward, which I could understand as I remembered from our previous AK day how congested the area out front can get when a show is loading and another is unloading the theater. But it was another intensely hot day, and now we early birds were standing in the sun, baking. The family in the very front of the line kept nosing around the doors, and eventually one of the kids opened it. Not smart! That brought out an irritated Cast Member who then seemed to get revenge by making all of us wait even longer. Heat does make people act crazy. Finally, another CM came out and allowed the FastPass line to queue inside. We took seats in the front section to the left side of the walkway portion of the stage. Great view from these seats! It took a while before the rest of the theater filled up with those from the standby line, but we were enjoying sitting down in the air conditioning. That definitely had become a theme of this trip, seeking opportunities to rest in the A/C. Because of our seats, I was able to get some pretty good photos of the show. So kick back and enjoy Finding Nemo: The Musical.
See how close we were! The photo above is without any zoom.
When the show was over, we took our time exiting the theater. No need to rush back out into the heat, right? I asked Luke if he’d like me to get FastPasses for Expedition Everest. Of course, he did. So while we walked I worked on my phone using the DME app, getting two FastPasses for EE. Luke would be using both as I no longer ride this one.
Ride One
Ride Two
From Everest we stopped at the Anandapur Bus for some ice cream. I had a chocolate cone while Luke had a swirl cone. We also got a lemonade to share. While we were licking our cones as quickly as possible, we came to the Siamang ape enclosure. They were again out and active, but because of the ice cream cone, I only managed one photo.
It was now going on 4:00 PM, and the heat had again finished us off. We decided to head back to the resort for some downtime, especially as tonight’s dinner would be right in our resort. Nothing to do but walk down to the elevators and down to the first floor.