Falling in love with New England… TRIP REPORT COMPLETED - Page 19 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Sorry for the rough start to the trip with the dreadful news. The only consolation was that you were meeting up with so many PassPorters to honor Bill's memory and could sympathize with what you were going thru!
That was a huge consolation, as I knew everyone would understand and we'd all be on the same page.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Fairly good start to this morning, and I'm sure it helped that you did sleep well. I can't stand to be trapped in an area with excessive perfume odors. I tend to avoid those shops in the World Showcase.
Fairly good start to this morning, and I'm sure it helped that you did sleep well. I can't stand to be trapped in an area with excessive perfume odors. I tend to avoid those shops in the World Showcase.
I've never noticed it in the World Showcase shops, but in fairness, I'm guessing the worst offenders are the ones in France, and I never tend to go into those.
I've never noticed it in the World Showcase shops, but in fairness, I'm guessing the worst offenders are the ones in France, and I never tend to go into those.
France is definitely the worst offender, and I haven't been in those shops for years. But I also can't spend much time in Italy's or the United Kingdom's perfume areas. Just too many at once.
France is definitely the worst offender, and I haven't been in those shops for years. But I also can't spend much time in Italy's or the United Kingdom's perfume areas. Just too many at once.
I guess my nose must be oblivious to the perfume in the United Kingdom, as I've never noticed it in there.
Wednesday 23 September – part two: lounging around and enjoying a massage
We took the elevator upstairs to the airport lounge…
… and this is what greeted us. Very nice!
We settled down in two seats right by the window, so we could see the activity out on the tarmac. In truth, we were just interested in finding somewhere with power points.
The lounge comes with one item per person from the kitchen menu, so I went for the poached egg pot, soft poached egg on a “bubble and squeak” (and if you guys don’t know what means, you’ll have to ask, as I assume you do ) potato cake, topped with hollandaise sauce. It was very nice, but there wasn’t much of it.
It was the same story with Mark’s bacon roll, cured bacon served in a lightly buttered soft white roll with your choice of ketchup or brown sauce.
I also got some cheese and biscuits from the deli selection.
Here you can have as much as you like from the selection on offer…
I took the opportunity to wander around the lounge and see what other areas they had:
The bar – and it’s not all free, although wine and beer was…
The entrance to the spa
The children’s play area
Inside the games room
Cinema
I liked the look of the library, and it had somewhere to sit that was a bit more relaxing and some power points, so we moved in there…
We settled down to catch up on things, and I found various videos and news items online about Bill. I found it a bit easier to read them this morning and found I could remember him much more today without crying, but could think more about all the wonderful memories we’d had with him over the years at Disney. I even managed to find a photo of the two of us, which I put on Facebook, as I wanted to share the good memories, as so many others had already done.
Just before 11:00am. I headed off to use the restrooms, which were very nice, but not as nice as the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse lounge. Then again, we were paying a lot less to be here than there, so what else can you expect?
Then it was time for my treatment. The room was very nice, and I thought actually much better than Virgin. This felt much more like a proper spa to me, whereas the Virgin one felt like a bit of a clumsy addition.
The treatment was perfect. I filled in the health questionnaire, and the woman questioned it, as I’d written down I had “bruising on back”. I explained I’d fallen over, and said she’d know when she saw the bruising and she admitted she did! Yep, it’s a big bruise…
Probably because of that, she spent most of the session working on my shoulders, which was fine with me, as they were tight and in need of a good workout, and Jess who I’d seen for a massage on Saturday, had mainly worked around the bruising to ease that up, but at the expense of my shoulders. I came out of there feeling a lot more relaxed. Let’s see how I feel after seven and a half hours in a plane!
As soon as I came out, Mark headed in for his leg and foot massage. I can imagine that was a lot of fun, as apparently he was very ticklish everywhere on his feet today!
When Mark emerged from his spa treatment, I went to check out the offerings on the deli table, as they’d now changed from breakfast to their all day menu…
I liked the look of the sponge cake, but couldn’t believe my luck. It was peach, which I’m allergic to. At least I was able to sample the lemon loaf cake, which was very light, and enjoy some Amaretto biscuits with my hot chocolate.
That was the only problem about where we’d chosen to sit – it was very cold, as it was air conditioned, and I’d say that was on a little bit high. However, I looked at getting somewhere else to sit, but everywhere else was a lot louder than the library, so we stayed where we were.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
The lounge looks very nice. Looks like you could make a very nice meal for breakfast or lunch from the free deli items. As nice as these lounges are, though, they dot look appealing enough to make me decide to get to the airport early enough to enjoy them!
The lounge looks very nice. Looks like you could make a very nice meal for breakfast or lunch from the free deli items. As nice as these lounges are, though, they dot look appealing enough to make me decide to get to the airport early enough to enjoy them!
Oh we never have an option on that - Mark always likes to be at the airport super early, so it's a good way to pass the time.
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.
I'm glad you were feeling a bit better this morning. I'm still sad about Bill's passing, and I barely even knew him, so I can't imagine how you and the rest of the PP'ers that knew him so well are coping with this.
The library lounge looked quite peaceful and was probably exactly what you needed after the shock of the previous evening.
Looking forward to reading more!
So was this a lounge from one of the airlines, or just a general lounge? Are there many of these at Heathrow? I guess you need to know what terminal you fly out of before booking one. I'm thinking about booking that for our flight home in August. Our flight out is 4:30 pm, and I believe we disembark at 8 am. We are looking at a car service that would take us from Southampton to Windsor Castle, and then on to Heathrow, but even with tat I think we'll have lots of extra time.
Glad your massage was a good one!
The egg dish does look pretty sparse. Good there was more to choose from.
I'm glad you were feeling a bit better this morning. I'm still sad about Bill's passing, and I barely even knew him, so I can't imagine how you and the rest of the PP'ers that knew him so well are coping with this.
I'm sure all those who knew Bill will say the same, it's been tough. I saw an amazing sunrise yesterday driving into work and I was in floods of tears, as Bill loved to photograph sunrises and sunsets and it was as if he was looking down and created the perfect sky.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
the M&M's having tea! 
Very nice! 
) potato cake, topped with hollandaise sauce. It was very nice, but there wasn’t much of it. 
it’s not all free, although wine and beer was… 
At least I was able to sample the lemon loaf cake, which was very light, and enjoy some Amaretto biscuits with my hot chocolate. 
Linear Mode
