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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Glad the food was good, but sorry about the service.
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Originally Posted by lauriep
The glacier photos are beautiful. Too bad about the service on the ship. Celebrity has such a good reputation for food I assumed the service would follow.
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Originally Posted by shazza
Agree - great photos of the Glacier, and too darned bad about the service.
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Originally Posted by Cam22
Exit Glacier is beautiful! Glad the food is better, but sorry about the poor service!
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Originally Posted by num1DVCfan
Signing on, I've been loving your TR so far. An Alaskan cruise is on my bucket list and I hope to do it within the next few years. Sorry to hear about your poor service. We sailed on Celebrity about 10 years ago (I forget which ship, maybe Galaxy?) anyway, it was great service. However, a lot can change in 10 years.
Exit Glacier was gorgeous. We think the service was due to poor training. When we encountered particularly good service (and we did from time to time), it seemed those people had worked other cruise lines or places before this ship. Most of the poor service seemed to be linked to dining or food service in some way. Our stateroom attendant was wonderful, as was the sommelier I mentioned earlier. We also had one really superb server/ assistant combo a couple of nights. They just weren't taught the ideal way to serve people, certainly wasn't the Disney way!!
Sorry to hear the service was not up to par. Great photos of Exit Glacier. Did you hike up to the actual glacier or just to the overlook?
We only had about 40 minutes, so the majority of our crew (mostly senior citizens ) just went to the overlook. A few people made the hike to the glacier. We settled for the overlook.
Monday, June 15-- Today was a lazy, at sea day although during the afternoon we were at Hubbard Glacier. We had a quiet morning. DH, DD and DSiL all were participating in a wine tasting this afternoon. Here was another case of confusion on the part of the staff. The sommelier had signed them up at dinner the first night and charged the fee to our rooms. We didn't know they had already been paid, so questioned it at the tasting. The staff there had no clue what was going on. The tasting was good, but there wasn't enough time allowed. There were a large number of wines and only one hour allotted for the tasting. Remember, DD and DSiL are in the restaurant business with DD hoping to become a sommelier. Needless to say, they were really doing the tasting properly and taking their time. They had not been told they had to be done in an hour. A staff member spoke to them with 10 minutes left and told them they had to be finished. They couldn't even just get the wines they hadn't tasted and use their own time. When it was done, it was done! It was enjoyed, but would have preferred more time.
At the time of the tasting we were approaching Hubbard Glacier. I was surprised it was so open. I only had previous experience with Sawyer Glacier in Tracy Arm which is so enclosed. Hubbard is beautiful, but stark in comparison to Sawyer. There was a lot of ice in the water.
We got up to about 6 miles away, but it seemed much closer to me. Distance is so different out on the water like that. Needless to say I took a lot of pictures of the glacier. The first couple were taken straight from our balcony. I had walked out and looked to the right where the glacier had last been. I didn't see it and thought the ship must have turned. As I turned back to go in, I realized that it had indeed turned and the glacier was right in front of me.
Tonight was our first formal night. We were going to have pictures taken, but never saw a photographer! That's a bit strange for a cruise ship, isn't it!? We had the same bad service tonight. DD went to the hostess and requested we not be seated in his section again after tonight.
Sorry the wine tasting was so rushed and the service at dinner remained poor. Great pictures of the glacier!
We did have the same server this night on the service. Thanks for the compliments on the glacier shots.
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Originally Posted by chezp
What beautiful shots of the glacier. How odd that they didn't have a photographer out for formal night.
I'm sure they did have them set up somewhere about the ship, but we didn't spot them (didn't look too hard, I'll have to admit). I do think it strange that we didn't see any wandering through the dining room.
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Originally Posted by lauriep
Love the glacier shots. It's so nice in this heat to look at all that ice!
It does cool one down, doesn't it.
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Originally Posted by shazza
Great shots of the Glacier. Hubbard looks so big. I hope the service improves.
Hubbard is really big, especially when you realize how far we were from it. I can't really imagine what it would be like up close. There were some bright service spots later on.
Today was an absolutely amazing day, comparable only to our day in Talkeetna with Mt. McKinley. We had a whale watching tour scheduled with Harv and Marv. I had heard wonderful things about them here and on other online sites. They were indeed fantastic. I know what we saw can only be credited in part to them. It is the luck of the draw where whale watching is concerned, but…
We were picked up at the dock in a small van. Our driver gave us a good tour on the way to the boat. We made a couple of picture stops to see a distant view of Mendenhall Glacier
and then to an off the beaten path trek for a lovely reflection view.
We arrived at Auck Bay and met our captain, Liz. There were a total of 6 of us on the boat, our group of 4 and a couple of older ladies touring on another cruise ship. Liz was an amazing captain. As we got onto the water she talked a lot about the wildlife of the area. Then she radioed her partners and was told it would be “worth our while” to come to a particular area. Boy! What can I say! They weren’t lying. We cruised for a short while and came upon several boats in an area. Liz explained boat protocol about where she was positioning us. The entertainment was on. There were 8-10 humpbacks putting on a show. We stayed with them for at least an hour and there was never a dull moment! My pictures were very lacking, but DD got some wonderful shots and videos.
This video just brings it all out, the sounds and excitement we were feeling . You can hear DSiL Jon enjoying every minute and the really excited lady you are hearing is Liz.
These shots were clipped from the video.
We witnessed bubble net feeding at least 3 times while watching them as well. Watch very closely at the start of the video for the ending of one such event.
Again these shots are clipped from the video.
After loving this for an hour or more, Liz gets the message that “if we are tired of the big guys, we should move over to another area.” So off we went to see Orcas! There were about 4-5 of them including a baby. Pictures were again very lacking, as Orcas don’t give the warning blows, so it is hard to know where they will pop up next. We were absolutely thrilled to see one of them do a complete breech out of water, reminiscent of Shamu at Sea World, but much more awesome. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone captured that on film.
As we were heading back in and almost at the dock, Jon yelled out “whale at 3 o’clock!’ One lone humpback was there and exhibited 3 major tail flaps followed by a dive with full fluke. What an amazing end to our adventure. Liz just sat there so excited and stunned. She assured us that we had had the whale watching adventure of a lifetime and not to ever expect to see it again if we ever come back. I can’t credit Harv and Marv for the whale show, but I can credit their knowledgeable staff and small boats for the ability to communicate and maneuver into the best positions. I would use them again in an instant.
After our boat trip, we boarded another bus and headed to Mendenhall glacier, where we had about a 20 minute photo stop.
We were then dropped off in town where it was time to fill our bellies. We decided on the iconic Red Dog Saloon.
It was nothing exciting but fun. It was really hot in the restaurant, as we were seated upstairs. The temperature today was about 80! I believe that this was the day I checked my phone and discovered it was 95 in Talkeetna! While we were waiting for our food, Jon looked up and discovered a Nebraska flag on the ceiling! He is a huge Nebraska fan, so he was quite excited. The server brought him a sharpie and invited him to autograph it, which he did.
We split up after eating and wandered the shops before heading back to the ship. We had a different server tonight for dinner, but the service was only marginally better.
That was incredible! I've seen video of bubble-net feeding several times on TV and it's just the most amazing thing to watch. I can't imagine seeing it in person. What a day!
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Glad the food is better, but sorry about the poor service! 
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) just went to the overlook. A few people made the hike to the glacier. We settled for the overlook.
The tasting was good, but there wasn't enough time allowed. There were a large number of wines and only one hour allotted for the tasting. Remember, DD and DSiL are in the restaurant business with DD hoping to become a sommelier. Needless to say, they were really doing the tasting properly and taking their time. They had not been told they had to be done in an hour. A staff member spoke to them with 10 minutes left and told them they had to be finished. They couldn't even just get the wines they hadn't tasted and use their own time. When it was done, it was done! It was enjoyed, but would have preferred more time.
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