National parks, natural beauty and a bit of Disney wonder! DISNEYLAND SECTION COMPLETED - Page 7 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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The lounge looks wonderful! Were the drinks and food complimentary?
everything is complimentary in there - the massage would've been complimentary as well, had I been able to get one, although there were options that you could pay for with those treatments as well.
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Wow! That is quite the lounge. Over here they have started selling day passes to the First Class Lounges in lots of airports, but I don't think they quite rival what you experienced!
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Wow, now that's the way to pre-travel! How long before your scheduled flight did you go to the lounge? Hope it's not too rough on the way over.
I think we dropped the car off about 12:15pm and were in there maybe 20 minutes later. The flight was at 3:00pm and we were called for boarding maybe 45 minutes before, so I guess we had the best part of two hours in there?
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Wow! That is quite the lounge. Over here they have started selling day passes to the First Class Lounges in lots of airports, but I don't think they quite rival what you experienced!
If they're anything like the lounge at Chicago O'Hare, then : they don't. We have sampled the lounge at Newark and that was pretty nice, but it wasn't on the same level as this one.
Friday 26 August – part three: well, they did say it would be turbulent...
We quickly found our seats, immediately on our right as we entered and made ourselves comfortable, which for me, meant getting lots more photos.
I noticed that there was a girl taking a self portrait of herself with her camera, so I offered to do the honours for her and she returned the favour.
We got chatting and it turns out that she was on her way home from three months of backpacking through Europe. Her favourite place? Edinburgh. my friend Wendy, where we’re taking you in June 2012... She was returning home early, as her parents paid for the flight and they bribed her with the promise of a trip to... Walt Disney World. Now she’s my type of girl!
We settled down to get ready for take-off, enjoying our drink beforehand and soon we headed out. We had quite an unusual safety demonstration. We were told that the crew have to do a full manual one twice a month and that this was their lucky day, as they had to do one today. It was like stepping back in time to the good old days when you didn’t have videos to watch for your demonstration.
It was almost impossible to get photos, as it was so wet outside, but I tried my best through taxi and take-off...
There’s a lot of construction going on at Heathrow, as you can see... Kicking back and relaxing once we were in the air!
We had been warned before take-off that there could be some turbulence after we left London. My goodness, they weren’t joking! : We were tossed around for probably a good half hour or so, with the staff told on two occasions to return to their seats. I was reading, but I had to stop at times, as the paper was moving so much, it was making me feel sick. It really wasn’t pleasant and it was some of the worst turbulence that I’ve ever experienced. If I never go through that again, I will be happy.
I was so relieved when the seatbelt sign was finally turned off and decided to hit the restrooms, just in case we hit any further turbulence although in fairness they had said that would be the worst of it.
Eventually, they started to do their rounds for food and I went for the pea and basil risotto with seared king prawns and parmesan cheese, as did Mark. There was some discussion about whether I could have this, as I’d ordered a vegetarian meal, but I lucked out for both appetiser and entree, as they had enough left. Lesson learnt – when flying Upper Class, don’t worry about declaring you’re a vegetarian, as they always have options for you and you might not like the option you’re left with. Anyone who’s read previous trip reports from me won’t be surprised to know what the vegetarian option was today – altogether now... VEGETARIAN CURRY! Seriously... again!
For entree, I had the seared fillet of salmon with a chervil, vermouth and tomato sauce, served on a pillow of crab and Mascarpone and string vegetables and it was divine.
Mark had the Dijon mustard and herb crusted breast of chicken with roasted vegetables and vine ripened tomatoes.
For me, dessert brought the cheese selection of Henry IV (a brie-type cheese with a full flavour and smooth melt in the mouth texture, although I failed to find the full flavour in all honesty... ), Fourme D’Ambert (semi-hard aged blue from the Auvergne region of France, which was very nice) and Butler’s Secret Special Reserve cheddar (award-winning cheddar with a crumbly texture and wonderfully mature flavour and it was lovely).
Mark went for the Sally Lunn bread and butter pudding with roasted peaches.
Once our (very late) lunch was done, I settled down to watch a movie, opting for the Lincoln Lawyer, which was excellent and better than I thought it would be. If you haven’t seen it, I thoroughly recommend it.
About halfway through it, I started to feel a bit congested and I mentioned this to one of the staff, assuming that they wouldn’t be able to do anything to help. Wrong! He provided me with smelling salts, which helped to clear it a lot.
We also decided to get an adapter for our laptop, so that we could run it off the power of the plane and it can also be used in cars, and with a lengthy road trip ahead, it seemed like a good investment. However, you do have to take your battery out (interesting, as we’ve never removed it since we’ve had the laptop – and that’s nearly two years now! ), as if you don’t, it could catch fire...
I cannot fault the staff on this flight. They were so exceptionally helpful and literally nothing was too much trouble for them. They really did everything they could to help you out.
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everything is complimentary in there - the massage would've been complimentary as well, had I been able to get one, although there were options that you could pay for with those treatments as well.
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: they don't. We have sampled the lounge at Newark and that was pretty nice, but it wasn't on the same level as this one.
She was returning home early, as her parents paid for the flight and they bribed her with the promise of a trip to... Walt Disney World. Now she’s my type of girl! 
although in fairness they had said that would be the worst of it. 
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