Dreams do come true – our Med cruise! **Updated 6/30** THREAD 1 *COMPLETE* - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Friday 26 May – part six: more than a lifetime’s work
We walked further up and saw another of Gaudi’s works, Casa Mila, but I had seen the one I wanted to see, so we didn’t go inside.
A little further up the road, we headed for the Metro to catch the train over to La Sagrada Famiglia. Again, we found it very easy to get around on the Metro. The ticket machines were clearly marked and you can get all the instructions for how to use them in English and buying single tickets was really straightforward. We decided to do that and not buy a book of 10 each, as we simply weren’t going to make that many trips on the Metro. I think in the end we took about two trips on it and it’s not worth getting the book of ten, unless you’ll be taking more than about six journeys on it. Single tickets are €1.25 (about $1.75), which I didn’t think was too bad. The trains are also very modern and they all seem to be equipped with air conditioning, which was a pleasant surprise.
Two stops later and we got off at La Sagrada Famiglia. The Metro stop is right by the church and what a church it is! Started in 1883, a year later, they brought in Gaudi to work on it, who changed the plans and made it his life’s work, living there like a recluse for 16 years. His life wasn’t enough to get the work done and today work is stll ongoing. Although I knew that the church wasn’t finished, I didn’t realise how far off being finished it is. It’s like a building site in there and I guess that it’ll be a couple of hundred more years before it’s completed, so grand are the plans.
As a result, there was less to see inside than I imagined there would be, but what is complete really is breathtaking.
You can see one façade as you enter and another as you leave. The one at the front is the Passion Façade and each side is meant to eventually represent a Biblical event or an aspect of Christian faith. This side shows the suffering and crucifixation of Jesus and it’s certainly obvious that it’s a sombre side to the church, with everything shown in stone.
I love you are hours ahead of the East Coast...I can always count on an early morning update!
More beautiful pictures, the detail is breathtaking. Wouldn't mind some of those stained glass windows in my house, either.
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~Shoot for the moon, if you miss, you will land among the stars~
Thanks for this TR. I love your writing style and all the pictures. That church is FANTASTIC. I love visting churches/cathedrals when on vacation. They are all so different. Maybe someday.............................
Friday 26 May – part seven: saving the best until last
As you complete your tour, like all the good attractions, they leave the best until last, the Nativity Façade, unsurprisingly telling the story of Christmas. It’s heard to take it all in, as you can’t get far enough away from the building to see it all. You really could stand there for hours and still not see all the detail that went into this. In short, this is a must do for any visit to Barcelona.
A word of warning however. They don’t take credit cards here. We were hoping to pay for a fair bit on our cards to save taking lots of cash around with us, but that plan didn’t work out too well. Admission here was €8 (about $11.20) each.
We walked back around to the front of La Sagrada Famiglia and I’m glad that we did, as there’s a lot of detail to see between the Nativity Façade and the Passion Façade.
Back at the front of the church, we got back on the Metro and headed off to Espanya to visit Montjuic to get there. We had to change once, but that wasn’t a problem, as it’s all pretty well signposted. One other thing you may find is that you may find you have to walk all the way along one platform to reach another line, something I’ve never seen anywhere else. It was an odd feeling to have to do that.
We got off at Espanya and discovered that the whole place was obviously either being got ready for something or something was being dismantled – there were workmen everywhere.
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