This is what the original Disney Community was about before the cancerous "DisTwitter" came along, and all of these vloggers. The love of the parks brought people together from all around the world, people were on these boards because they truly loved and had a passion for Disney. Today I feel a lot of people (and I'm not necessarily talking about members here, mostly people on YouTube and Twitter who claim to be a Disney fan, but care more about their own popularity)
I'm truly sorry about your friend marni :/ but I'm happy you got to make pure, genuine connections like this... something that is extremely rare nowadays.