"This is Not the Trip You're Looking For" TR May/June 2011 - COMPLETE - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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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"There is no shame in falling, there is only shame if you refuse to rise once again." ~ Pernicar
I’ll be honest; I wasn’t going to write a TR for our latest vacation at Disney. If you had asked me two days into the trip if I would ever come on vacation with my family again…or ever even go to WDW again, I would have answered “No way!”
But Corinne reminded me if I didn’t write something, there would be a lot of people wondering what happened. So I decided maybe I could just write a short summary of the highlights of this trip (if there were any <grumble, grumble>)
I know we all read so many TR where everything is just so hunky-dory, practically perfect in every way, and all so Magical! And many times they are! But even the most awesome vacation to WDW has some snags and some not-so-memorable times – and we all know, some trips turn out to be the total opposite of what we intended.
“To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night, Padawan: but choose!" ~ Yoda
And even though this is so cliche, hind-sight is 20/20 and time does have a way of bringing the cream to the top. After we got home and I let everything settle a bit, I was able to look back over our vacation with fresh eyes and understand some of the reasons for why things happened as they did.
Also, since I am learning that what I focus on becomes what I experience, I have decided to see this trip through another lens….
"Your focus determines your reality." ~ Qui-Gon Jinn
So – thanks for sticking with me (trust me, things get better!) and let’s get on with this trip report!
One quick thing I feel I should mention…this trip to WDW had a couple things unfairly stacked against it from the beginning, which definitely helped shape how we were feeling going in…
1.) We had just come off one of the most magical trips to WDW that you could imagine. Our last trip was so wonderful in most every way; special moments, wonderful interaction, great family dynamics, etc. that we just expected that all following trips would be the exact same.
2.) We all started vacation under a lot more stress than usual with all the severe weather that had been passing through our area, and ultimately, with the loss of some fellow PassPorters (Lorie and Glenn) just a week before we left.
Our house (along with the majority of the houses on our street) had suffered some damage from tornado activity earlier this spring. I happened to be standing at our back door, looking out onto our deck, when it happened. I was watching Big Black Cat and Wendy, the stray cats that live on our deck, as the storm approached. They were huddled as close as they could against the back door. Within the span of a couple seconds, three things happened: the wind and rain suddenly whipped up intensely; the cats both shot off the deck like rockets ; and the lawn chairs flew across the left side of the deck to the right and then wham! wham! slammed back across to the opposite side again!!
We didn’t realize we had any damage until the next morning when we saw all the shingles on the lawn and a piece of fascia bent out at a 90 degree angle from the roof. A couple of the tall pine trees in back were snapped in half about 20’ up and a few big trees further down the road were torn up from the roots.
We had to re-roof the entire front slope of our house but even with homeowner’s insurance, our deductible ate up a big chunk of vacation money (ouch!) Plus, with each new storm system that come through, all the neighbors and we were praying we wouldn’t get hit again. That makes for lots of anxiety and sleepless nights.
In fact, the night before we left for Disney, Corinne and I were up until 1:00am watching the weather channel as another severe storm moved through. Kevin couldn’t sleep either, and so we were all pretty tired when the alarm went off at 6:30 the next morning.
I’m a planner, and I had everything planned down to the minute to make it work. Our plan was to leave at noon, drive to Cordele, GA and spend the night- completing our trip to Orlando the next day, arriving at our resort by noon so we could spend the rest of the day in the parks, particularly to see The Hyperspace Hoopla at DHS that evening.
Duncan and Rosalina got off to boarding without a hitch that morning. The girls and I only had a few last-minute things to pack and we were ready to load up…when Kevin decided he needed to run to the store to pick up ‘a few things.’ Noon came and went – no Kevin. By the time he got back and we ate a quick lunch, we were running about 45 minutes late.
Off we go!! But….about 35 minutes down the road, Kevin suddenly realized that he had forgotten to bring his VitaMotion-S spray (for his severe motion-sickness)….Around we turn the van and head back home to pick it up. By this time, we are about 2 hours behind schedule. (Yes, I am grumbling a bit inside, but at least it was just a traveling day, so not too big of a deal.)
We actually had a very enjoyable drive from this point on. The girls were occupied with their DS games and Kevin and I didn’t even turn on any music; we just talked and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. I love the drive from Nashville to Atlanta – the mountains are gorgeous and the four hours seem to go by very quickly.
Not far from the TN/GA border, Kevin decided he needed a cup of coffee - he was experiencing a very bad headache and pressure in his sinuses. (Remember this as it will be important later...) We pulled off at a Wendy’s and couldn’t believe what we saw. A tornado (I’m assuming from the April batch that went through Alabama) had gone through. On either side of the restaurant was the rubble of destroyed buildings and the trees across the road were ripped apart. Unbelievably, the Wendy’s was untouched except for the front sign which had blown down.
Back in the van, we continued down the road with Atlanta quickly approaching. But coming quickly on our heels, something else was approaching – another severe weather system….
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Sorry the trip wasn't everything you wanted, we were there the same time. I agree some CMs were just crabby and not friendly. With that said we had a great trip. Matter of fact we are already planning next year.
Sorry it wasn't as magical as the last trip. I'm worried about that myself. Our trip last year was wonderful, magical and very special (our honeymoon) and I'm hoping this year will be just as good. I know I shouldn't compare or get my hopes up because stuff happens. Glad you were ok after the storms. I will be following.
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Oh Cathy, I am so sorry that this trip did not turn out to be what you had hoped, but I am so glad that Corrine has talked you into writing a TR anyway. It sounds like you all had some extra stress that did not help this trip start out at 100%, but knowing you I am sure that once the dust settled you will realize there were a lot more "wonderful" moments then you thought. Looking forward to hearing more.
I know we all read so many TR where everything is just so hunky-dory, practically perfect in every way, and all so Magical! And many times they are! But even the most awesome vacation to WDW has some snags and some not-so-memorable times – and we all know, some trips turn out to be the total opposite of what we intended.
And even though this is so cliche, hind-sight is 20/20 and time does have a way of bringing the cream to the top. After we got home and I let everything settle a bit, I was able to look back over our vacation with fresh eyes and understand some of the reasons for why things happened as they did
There are always lessons to be learned in the littlest things in our lives, including trips to Disney.
I am glad that you are sharing so that we may all hopefully learn along with you.
As for the perfect trip - not since I was a kid did I have one of these. Especially now that I travel with someone with special needs. The perfect trip has been re-defined in my house.
Oh, dear. I'm glad you're writing this up even though it wasn't the magical trip you hoped for. It does sound like there were a lot of things weighing down on you right from the start.
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I'm glad to hear that we are not the only ones who have had less-than-magical trips to WDW. After our 2008 Tropical Storm Fay vacation I could not even talk about the trip. While we were there I kept trying to keep positive for my family but when we got home I just kind of crashed... Rain is a 4 letter word!!!
Sometimes even the worst trips can become sources of laughter later on. I know a trip to Baltimore with my DSF was not the "best" day while we were there, but now it is a source of comedy for my kids and I. And a grown man screaming "I can't read the road signs and drive at the same time" is a magical saying now in our family!
Sorry about all the weather troubles Cathy! That would definitely be a stress increaser for me! And we too were at WDW for TS Faye. 5 days of pouring rain, which led to a less than magical vacation!
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Our last trip was so wonderful in most every way; special moments, wonderful interaction, great family dynamics, etc. that we just expected that all following trips would be the exact same.
I love the drive from Nashville to Atlanta – the mountains are gorgeous and the four hours seem to go by very quickly.
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