A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - Page 6 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Glad you were able to catch the earlier ferry. Great pictures leaving Portsmouth and approaching the Isle of Wight. Ryde is a cute little town. I love the window display in that Doctor Who shop!
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Glad you were able to catch the earlier ferry. Great pictures leaving Portsmouth and approaching the Isle of Wight. Ryde is a cute little town. I love the window display in that Doctor Who shop!
Saturday 4 June – part four: like stepping back in time inside it.
We made our way back along Ryde pier…
As we did, Mark said how much his ear was hurting. It had started last night on the drive down (we are having a good start to this trip aren’t we…. Not! ) and he said he hadn’t seen a chemist. I figured in a town of this size, there had to be one, and Google Maps found me one, and it was just like stepping back in time inside it.
We headed up to the Doctor Who shop, which was now open, but sadly it didn’t have the things I wanted, and let’s just say the guy in there wasn’t exactly helpful. After I asked one question, you thought he might’ve said something like “if there’s anything else you want, just let me know” but he didn’t, and that put me off a bit, so after a few minutes, we headed out with me empty handed and disappointed.
We made our way over to Osborne House…
We made it there just before opening at 10:00am. When we arrived, we were wondering why there were so many cars parked at the end of the car park, but we guessed maybe they staff, as there were plenty of bays at the front of the car park, so we just took one of those instead.
I had tried to call our valet parking company on the way over, but we’d lost the mobile phone signal, so I tried them again, as we needed to let them know that we would now be arriving at 3:00pm tomorrow, rather than 11:00am. I kept holding on and holding on, but no-one answered, so instead I called the B&B to let them know we wouldn’t be coming tonight. I wouldn’t normally bother if it was a hotel, as bigger hotels really don’t care if you turn up or not, but it’s different with a B&B, as they only have a few rooms, and I didn’t want them waiting for us.
That done, we headed inside, and I showed my Civil Service Sports Club card that cost me £43 ($60). Each of us would’ve had to pay £16.90 ($24), so it had almost paid for itself in one go.
We headed down towards the house itself, and it was really not what I expected at all. It was a much lighter colour than I thought it would be.
As a result of the look of the exterior of the property, I walked in, expecting to find a Mediterranean style house, but nothing could be further from the truth.
We started off by learning a bit about the property and Queen Victoria and her family who lived here. When they bought it, it was a much smaller place, and they knocked it down, and built a new property, much more suited to their needs. It took six years to build it, with work starting in 1851 and concluding in 1851. It was their “country retreat”. Well, most people’s country retreats aren’t this big!
Victoria died here in 1901, and her body lay here for 10 days, before it was then transported to Windsor for her funeral.
As I read all this information, I got the impression, reading between the lines, that somehow this wasn’t the happy family home that you might immediately imagine. I think it was the fact that none of her children wanted to take it on after she died, and surely if they’d had so much fun here, they’d have wanted to? I was to find out later on that those initial thoughts probably were spot on.
After the house passed to the nation, it went through various lives. Firstly, it was a convalescent home for naval officers (and interestingly, a friend of mine on Facebook that I used to work with said he’d once visited his uncle there who was in the home ). The house opened to the public in 1904, but Victoria and Albert’s private rooms remained exactly that – private for another half century, at which point Queen Elizabeth II gave her approval to open them up. English Heritage has been working for the last couple of decades to restore the house to how it would’ve been in Victoria’s day.
As you can see from the photos, this is a very ostentatious house. It was more like a palace than a home to me. We toured the ground floor first…
I thought the statues here were beautifully expressive, and it’s not often I notice that about statues, so that’s high praise indeed.
I loved all the touches in here that related to both Victoria as the Queen (VR) and Victoria and Albert (VA). These days, I tend to think of V&A as either in a Disney context as a high quality restaurant, or the museum in London. I do forget how this started, with this couple who obviously loved each other very much, given the grieving Victoria went through when her beloved husband died.
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Hopefully the cute chemist's shop could help Mark's ear issue. (and I love using the word chemist ) That's a shame you didn't get anything Dr. Who either. Sounds like that employee isn't interested in any business!
That is one heck of a "house." But I love the dog statue!!
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) and he said he hadn’t seen a chemist. I figured in a town of this size, there had to be one, and Google Maps found me one, and it was just like stepping back in time inside it. 
he didn’t, and that put me off a bit, so after a few minutes, we headed out with me empty handed and disappointed. 
It took six years to build it, with work starting in 1851 and concluding in 1851. It was their “country retreat”. Well, most people’s country retreats aren’t this big! 
What a beautiful property!
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