A very personal Decade of Dreams tour! UPDATED 6/5 - Page 60 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Very weird about the tour guides. Reading all the memorial stuff gave me chills. It reminded me of visiting the Holocaust muesum in Washington DC.
Kathy it reminded me of the Holocaust Museum and the National one (Yad V'shem) in Israel which I went to 9 years ago. You get chills and the tears defanitely start to form.
Tuesday 7 April – part five: “this is our fourth time on the Shinkansen...”
We walked to the bottom end of the Peace Memorial Park that is home to beautiful fountains and flowerbeds. It’s a very peaceful place.
By now, it was 3.00 and we would be heading to the station soon, so we wandered back through the Peace Memorial Park and, on the way, we found a tree that had amazingly survived the bombing:
We sat in the sun by the A Bomb Dome for a while, as it was such a lovely day. This would later come back to haunt us, as we were both feeling pretty foolish when we boarded the Shinkansen with a bit of sunburn!
We caught the streetcar back to the station and walked over to the 7/11 store to get some cakes for our breakfast tomorrow and then it was back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and walk back to the station. Somehow it’s never as painful when you know how long it’s going to take and where you’re going. Once again, we were really early and our train wasn’t showing up on the signs, so we browsed the shops and got another bento box to share.
Finally, our train platform showed up, so up we went. About 15 minutes before we were due to leave, a train pulled in and it was our number, so we boarded it. We were the first ones on there and I thought at first that we had done the wrong thing in getting on board, but then I saw others joining us. How nice not to have to rush to catch a Shinkansen for once and to have lots of time before we departed.
What did I do? Found the wrong seats of course! It was only while Mark was taking photos of me that I realised with horror that we were in seats 12 D & E and we should be in seats 10 D & E. I don’t know how it happened, but we quickly rectified it.
In the wrong seat... ...”well, how was I meant to know?!”
Not long after that, a group of Americans boarded and were messing around with their luggage, so Mark suggested that they put it at the back, where we put ours, but they told us quite snootily that they couldn’t do that, as it was too hard to get it off the train when they got there. Not something we’ve had a problem with so far this trip… They told us that it was their fourth time on the Shinkansen and one of them was going home. Bear this in mind, as this story then unfolds…
One woman couldn’t find her ticket, so someone else phoned their travel agent to ask what to do next. However she had to keep calling as we kept going into tunnels. Now remember my commenting on that on the way here, so if you’ve done this trip before, surely you would know that? Apparently not. This went on for some time and Mark was getting so annoyed that he wanted to go and say something, but I walked him out of it. For the next hour and a half, this was all you heard, as they were none too quiet about it and I don’t think it helped when the travel agent told them that if they couldn’t find it, they would have to pay the full fare, a whopping $182. Oddly not long after that, they managed to find the missing ticket. I guess that focused their minds…
For our part, we spent a lot of the four hour trip looking at the photos we had taken today, as there were power points for laptops, which was very handy. I tell you, they really have thought of just about everything on these trains.
We did get a few photos on the way, but not many:
Serving up drinks and refreshments More bento boxes for dinner!
Next: nightmare and magic on our first night at Tokyo Disney!
By the way, it's my intention to end this trip report here - and start a new one for the Tokyo Disney section, as there may be people who just want to join us and read that one, so expect a new thread for the last part of this journey...
Cheryl, thank you for taking us along and reliving your's and Mark's Japan trip with us! Your last installment is wonderful. Your pictures are fantastic as usual. Uh oh about sitting in the wrong row of seats. It happens. I'm sorry you had to listen to those rude Americans on their cell phones and being a pain on the train ride. Looking foward to your next part about Tokyo Disney in your next TR!
I can completely understand how you could sit in the wrong seats... after all, they're numbered in Japanese!
Now, in defense of those Americans... hmmm... well, there is no defense!
I can completely understand how you could sit in the wrong seats... after all, they're numbered in Japanese!
Now, in defense of those Americans... hmmm... well, there is no defense!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m83/kazzamcgazza/dlp-1.jpg
Can't wait for the Tokyo Disneyland portion! 
Disney Magic - Oct 2015
Linear Mode
