A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM - Page 9 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Oh wow. The gardens are gorgeous! Since I have such a bad black thumb, any flourishing garden is amazing to me. But this one is on such a huge scale - amazing!
We've seen a lot of gardens and these are amongst the best.
I love it all, the sunken garden, the pond, the fountain, all of it. So stunningly beautiful and peaceful.
It was very quiet, given the time of year we visited and the fact we'd been told that it was a holiday in Canada that day. I think the fact we went late in the day helped.
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Wow it is beautiful. I'm sure in person it is even more impressive. Too bad that this is not walkable. I guess if we make it to Vancouver at some point we will have to pay for an excursion there as we don't really like driving in new areas. Our sense of direction is not the greatest
Just so you know, an excursion would be pricey. I don't remember the exact details, but the bus version (much cheaper than flying) from Vancouver came in around £100/person (about $150).
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Your photos were breathtaking, and just as vibrant as I remember it. That fountain amazed me too.
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The next installment is one of my favorite parts of the garden. They are all amazing, but this was.... Well I don't want to give too much away.
Interesting... to me, my favourite part was the sunken garden. Don't get me wrong, I loved the rest of it and I found the Japanese garden very peaceful, but I have just never seen a sunken garden like that in my life....
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Monday 7 September – part eleven: taking a trip to Japan…
From the Ross Fountain, we took the path above the sunken garden, giving us some lovely views of it again, and also giving us the added benefit of not having to go out via all the steps we’d climbed down.
We saw the bog garden on the way too, to the other side of the walkway, but as the name suggests, there wasn’t much to see there…
We made our way next into the rose garden, although sadly it wasn’t at its best now, but that wasn’t a surprise, given the time of the year. However, we were still able to enjoy quite a few of the blooms in here.
We stopped off at the Fountain of the Three Sturgeons. Now here there was a woman, who looked to be Japanese (she was certainly of Far Eastern descent anyway). She must’ve been in her 60s, but honestly, she was behaving like a little child, screaming in delight, then getting people to take her photo, which is fair enough, but in her world no-one else existed, and she got in our way a couple of times, as well as other people who were around. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she was enjoying herself, but it gets really annoying when your enjoyment then impinges on everyone else’s.
We were soon entering the Japanese garden. Again, there were a lot of steps on the way down, but I had another cunning plan to avoid those on the way back up. This was the first of Jennie’s formal gardens, and she started on it in 1906. She got help in the design from a Japanese landscape architect, and labourers from the cement works then helped to get the garden into shape. My goodness, they did an excellent job!
WOW! Gorgeous doesn't seem to do the gardens justice. Now I am SO sad we didn't get to Victoria.
The colors are so amazing. I could just sit on a bench in that sunken garden for hours, I think.
Every photo is just so beautiful! I can't believe this is all in one place. And you're not done yet! I can't imagine the gardeners upkeep they must do on a daily basis though....
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