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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Vienna is absolutely beautiful! Sorry about the cold. The palace, the church, and all the other buildings are just breathtaking. Your room looks very nice as well as its view. Sad that the outside of the Hilton is so drab.
Saturday 19 March – part six: what are those women doing?
We headed next for Stephansdom. I have to say here that I was disappointed in the subway station. Having read that they only started work on it in 1969 and that work continues to this day, I was expecting much more. I thought it would be a wonderfully modern system, like those we’ve seen in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Washington DC, but honestly, it felt just like any old subway system. It reminded me of the Metro in Paris and that’s not one of the greatest systems in the world. It just really felt as if this system was put together on the cheap. The lighting, while OK, was nothing special, and ironically the stations on the outskirts of Vienna seemed to have a lot more heart and soul to them than the city centre stations.
We emerged into Stephansplatz and the second we got above ground, my face fell. The Stephansdom was there, right in front of us, but not exactly in all its splendour. It was undergoing a massive restoration programme and, in fact, there was very little that could be seen of the front of it.
However, when we headed around the side, I could see why they were doing the work. My goodness, this poor thing is just absolutely blackened from years of pollution. I remember the days when Westminster Cathedral looked like this and, now that work has finished to clean it up, it looks so much better. I’m sure that will be the case here, but it was just disappointing that they were doing this work while we were here.
As we stood there, a group of women started a dance routine to some music, which was exceptionally surreal. We couldn’t quite make out what was going on and, to be honest, I don’t think anyone else watching could either.
This place is quite a tourist trap, with lots of performers around and I was quite glad to start moving away from it.
We first got some photos of Haas Haus, built by one of Austria’s leading architects Hans Hollein, in 1990. It was controversial, as it’s opposite the Stephansdom and I think it’s fair to say that neither of us were convinced by it.
We headed down the pedestrian Graban, looking for somewhere to buy some of the cakes that Vienna has such an enviable reputation for.
On the way, we found the Pestsaule, built after the plague of 1679. Anyone getting the feeling that they’ve had issues with the plague in the past?
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Oh man what a disappointment about the cathedral. I cannot get over how blackened it is! I'm glad they're fixing it, but sorry it was going on while you were there. As for the house across the street... it's so out of place there! I bet the views / inside are stunning, but it's just so darn incongruent on the outside.
Very beautiful updates! The church is amazing! I'm assuming the women heard a song that a line dance can be done to, and they decided to just do the dance right there in the streets...not something I would do, but hey, vacation makes people crazy sometimes.
__________________
Melissa
Last edited by honeybee723; 03-28-2011 at 09:03 AM..
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Yeah, I was noticing the amount of plagues that they had.
Cakes, yummmmm, I was just thinking about cake yesterday. We don't have it alot at my house, the kids tend to not eat but one slice. Hope you can find some.
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Beautiful - I LOVE that it is yellow - it looks "happy"
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
In particular, it’s about two women – Elisabeth and Maria Theresa, who was a powerful ruler in her own right. We heard repeatedly that she had 16 children, 11 of them girls and, of those, she had a favourite, as there was only one that she allowed to marry for love. The rest were told who to marry. This was the Habsburg’s way. They didn’t wage war on other countries, they ensured that marriages helped to unite them with other dynasties, giving them power over other countries. There were some very bitter extracts from memos and letters from the women who were forced to marry for power, rather than love, which made you think.
With Elisabeth, she was married to Franz Joseph and he adored her, but she didn’t exactly return the feelings. She spent much of her time travelling and away from Vienna. Even when she was at the palace, she often wouldn’t eat at the family dinner table, as she was obsessed with her weight. She wrote about the trials of marriage and how it’s something you’re forced into at the age of 15 and then regret for the next 30 years. It was all very sad and not something you usually hear, so the honesty was refreshing at least.
It makes me so glad I live in THIS time period as women have the most freedoms of any other time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
The next problem was the wind, which was absolutely freezing and completely cut you to the bone. I was very relieved when we finally turned the corner and moved out of it.
Sorry it wa so cold. I agree that place must be amazing with all the colors of Spring, and summer, and well fall too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
We wandered back to the subway and, on the way back, we saw the wonderfully bizarre Secession Building:
bizarre is right and what did they seceed from?
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
We emerged into Stephansplatz and the second we got above ground, my face fell. The Stephansdom was there, right in front of us, but not exactly in all its splendour. It was undergoing a massive restoration programme and, in fact, there was very little that could be seen of the front of it.
However, when we headed around the side, I could see why they were doing the work. My goodness, this poor thing is just absolutely blackened from years of pollution. I remember the days when Westminster Cathedral looked like this and, now that work has finished to clean it up, it looks so much better. I’m sure that will be the case here, but it was just disappointing that they were doing this work while we were here.
Sory they were doing the restroration work while you were there but what fantastic results - WOW!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
As we stood there, a group of women started a dance routine to some music, which was exceptionally surreal. We couldn’t quite make out what was going on and, to be honest, I don’t think anyone else watching could either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cubfancolleen
Wonder if they were doing a flash mob dance?!
I was thinking that too - seems to be the lastest trend.
Saturday 19 March – part seven: can we find some famous Viennese cakes?
Then we wandered down some of the side streets, thinking that perhaps we might get some more luck down there. We seemed to head into the jewellery and antiquities section and were just giving up hope, when we spotted a place with cakes in the window.
In we went and we found ourselves in a three storey food supermarket that was just heavenly. Not only did they have an amazing array of cakes, but they had salads, sushi, freshly pressed juices, and I can’t begin to tell you the range of fish and cheese they had.
They also had some huge Lindt bunnies – I tell you, if those guys could come home with me, they would’ve done!
We wandered around for ages in there, finding more and more things to buy. We ended up with sushi, some cheese, fresh fruit, a tiramisu cupcake for me and a lemon tart for Mark, along with juice for each of us, some 7UP and a cheap bottle of Austrian Riesling wine (you have to buy local, right? ), which we thought we’d try.
With Mark loaded up to the nines, it was back out and we headed towards the Stephansdom. I warned Mark that, despite the weight of the bag he was now carrying, there was no way I was leaving without going inside the cathedral. When we did, once again, sadly I was disappointed by it. It was very dark in there, darker than I think any other church or cathedral we’ve ever been in. It was such a shame.
Once again, like the Karlskirche, to get close-up to the church, you had to pay, but there was an area that everyone could enter without paying and, like many others, we got some shots from there, before heading back out again.
We headed for the subway, finding the remains of a church in the station, which was pretty neat...
... and seeing the control room on the way.
Then it was back on the train and over to the Stadtpark and back to the room for a well-earned break. Someone took the opportunity to have a well-earned sleep (can’t think who? ) while I worked on the trip report.
Gradually, the sun set and we lost the light, giving us a very different view outside our window...
Eventually, we broke into our dinner supplies, enjoying the sushi, cheese and fresh fruit, along with a bit of wine.
We were getting ready to go out, when we had a call for turndown, so we took that as our sign to get going and headed out to see the sights of Vienna after dark just a little after 7pm.
We headed for the station, getting on the wrong side of the tracks, or so we thought, at first. We headed back and crossed over to the other side, realising eventually that we were on the right side to start with. All that running around didn’t do me any good. We hadn’t done that exercise and suddenly I couldn’t breathe very well, but fortunately that quickly passed.
We got off again at Stephansdom and, as seems to be the way with this place, we were disappointed again. The lighting wasn’t exactly great.
The rest of the area was fairly quiet now, with all the shops closed and just a few restaurants open. It still had an interesting feel to it, and not too loud, which was a pleasant change for the centre of a city. In a way, I found Vienna a bit like Bern in Switzerland, in that neither really feels like a capital city. They just don’t have the buzz of people rushing around and the feeling of so many people, as you usually do in capital cities around the world. It’s very refined and fairly quiet, which is unusual, as it’s a Saturday and I thought the place would be packed. Not a bit of it! :
We carried on walking around Imperial Vienna, enjoying all the beautiful buildings lit up at night.
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Sorry about the cold. The palace, the church, and all the other buildings are just breathtaking. Your room looks very nice as well as its view. Sad that the outside of the Hilton is so drab.
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Holly: 
Not only did they have an amazing array of cakes, but they had salads, sushi, freshly pressed juices, and I can’t begin to tell you the range of fish and cheese they had. 
), which we thought we’d try. 
All that running around didn’t do me any good. We hadn’t done that exercise and suddenly I couldn’t breathe very well, but fortunately that quickly passed. 
: 
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