Alice, Mickey, and Pooh Bear ... Oh my! A First Timer's Trip Report -- Updated 8/19 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Alice, Mickey, and Pooh Bear ... Oh my! A First Timer's Trip Report -- Updated 8/19
Hi all!!
I have gotten so much from these boards to help me plan my very first trip to Disney World, so I thought I would return the favor by creating a trip report! This may help someone else, provide entertainment for the masses, or just give me a way to get my excitement out to people that will enjoy it (instead of my family, who will say "oh yeah? cool."). LOL
We officially leave in about a week, but I thought I would get this party started with some of my planning ideas (that way you can say to me "Oh my Gosh what a NooB choice!! You have to do this instead, it's what all the cool kids do." )
But first today, I have for you the cast of characters::
First off there is me, Rachel. I am the mom in this story and this is my very first time at Disney World. I am beyond excited to be going, and am pretty much the sole planner. I am okay with this though, as it extends the trip for me. My family does think I am a little nutso, but the good news is, I am flexible in all our plans, and even if none of it gets used, it's fine. I mean come on!! We'll be in Disney World for goodness sake, that is way better than anything else we could be doing at that time!!
Secondly, there is my husband Kris. He plays the role of "dad". We will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary on the trip. Well honestly, it's our 10 year anniversary of the day we met, not the day we got married (married for 9), but we want to celebrate something while we are there!! So we are going with this. Plus if we had never met, none of this would be possible. Kris has been to Disney World a few times with his family when he was a wee boy, but has not been to the world in over 15 years, so it's almost like he is a born-again-first timer.
And lastly there is Kolby. Kolby is the 8 year old child-unit, and the love of our lives. This will be his first time in the World as well. I don't usually share this with people, but Kolby has recently been diagnosed with Sensory Integration Disorder. We have always dealt with this, but it is nice to know what it is now. SID presents many issues for us, the biggest being that he hates loud noises and fast rides. We are taking many things into consideration regarding this for our trip to Disney, and while I normally don't like talking about his disorder (it's still surreal to me to have a name for it), I did want to include it in my TR, because it will have a huge toll on our trip. Plus our plans and ideas may help others who have a similar child in tow.
Here is a picture of the three of us from about a year and a half ago. (I've been kind of slack on getting pic lately of all of us together. )
When I have time to sit down again tonight, I will also type up some of our plans.
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.
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.
First off, thank you to everyone for the kind comments. I think this will be fun to have a place to share all the memories from the trip. Being a scrapbooker, I am acutely aware of how fast a vacation can go, and once all is said and done the things you take pictures of and write down tend to be the moments you remember the most. I am excited to have this TR as my own mental record of this trip. I am not sure if we will be able to head to Disney again anytime soon, so I want to be able to cherish every moment and memory for years to come.
Okay on to the planning!!
The Journey Begins
Have you ever met a person who is all gung ho about an idea? They will come up to you and say “We are taking a cruise next year!! Yay!!” and then 4 months later, you ask them how the planning for said cruise is going and they forlornly tell you that the cruise is off. They just didn’t have the [insert any reason here] to do it. Well if you and I were friends in real life, that person would be me. I am notorious for coming up with big, huge vacation plans, and then deciding for one reason or another (money, no vacation time, too much work) that we can’t do it. So when hubby decided that we should plan a vacation to celebrate me quitting my job and staying home to homeschool my son, I thought small. I now try and follow the KISS method when planning vacations, so my friends don’t have to give me the leery eye when I tell them what we intend to do. So our plan was to stay local and maybe do a camping trip or rent a hotel in a bigger city. As I was perusing our options on the interwebs I happened across an ad online (I guess those really do work!) for free dining at Disney. First I laughed at myself for even considering it, I mean really? Could I commit to such a trip? But I figured I would at least check out the prices. They had to be expensive right? Disney is popular, but this isn’t like going three towns over to Six Flags … this is Disney! Once I plugged in our selected dates, my jaw hit the floor. Even with the extra money for plane tickets, the total cost for a trip to Disney would be less or about the same as what I was thinking for our other options, especially when you took food and entertainment into consideration. But could I really commit this time?
I hemmed and hawed over this for quite a while, but I finally decided to go ahead and make the reservation. I didn’t buy the plane tickets yet, figuring if I wanted to back out, I could still do so. At that point my other half and my baby boy had no idea what I did. Our plan was to meet up and write our trip ideas on little slips of paper and put them in a hat. We each had the chance to write down 5 things we might want to do, and we threw them all in the hat. I wrote DISNEY on all 5 of mine. I let my son choose first, and he pulled out a camping/fishing trip in Maine. Both guys were all set to go with that, but I suggested that perhaps they may want to maybe choose two or three and then decide. They objected at first, but finally conceded. Hubby picked next and he got one of my slips. He opened it, read it, and looked at me with shocked, wide eyes. He says “Really???” and of course the boy is jumping all over him to see what it is. I gave him the nod, and he fessed up what was on the paper. Well they both hit the ceiling!! I told them we just had to pick one more slip….. well you can guess what happened to the rest of the slips, yeah, into the circular filing cabinet they went.
Since the boys were so excited for this trip, I went ahead and bought our plane tickets. With these bought, there was no going back. Plane tickets are pretty much impossible to cancel, so losing that kind of money is high on my “never will do” list. This cemented it. Finally, a big trip that we were saying we were going to do, we were actually going to do!!
We are all excited to be staying at the All-Star Movie resort for 6 nights, 7 days with park passes for 6 days (no hopper pass). We decided against the hopper pass since this is our first time going and figured we will have enough to see and do in each park for a full day. If this wasn't our first trip, I might see that the hopper pass had more value, but I just couldn’t see the extra expense this time.
The Quick Service Dining Plan came with our package, but my family insisted upon doing a character breakfast. Then I thought it might be nice to do one sit down lunch. After looking at the prices of paying for these two meals out of pocket (!), it made more sense to upgrade our dining. We would get more sit downs (which we really enjoy) for the same price of the two meals.
So our trip is as follows:
Resort: Disney All Star Movies
Length of Stay: 7 days, 6 nights
Park Tickets: 6 Day Passes with no hopper
Dining Plan: Disney Dining Plan
Now that the tickets are bought and the family is excited, it’s my job to make a skeleton plan for our trip. Up next Act II: Making Plans.
Sounds like you are going at a good time for Kolby--not so crowded. We've seen kids with headphones--to block out noises--and earplugs.
You are on your way to a magical first time trip!
We have picked up some earphones for him, and are glad that the crowds will be lower that time of year as well, these are things that will help us out a lot. We have already told him that he does not have to go on any rides if he doesn't want to, but we are also going to get him some help with not having to wait in line. The few rides that he can ride would immediately be ruined with a wait, it's too much anticipation for him (at least the first time, after he knows what it's like, he's usually fine). Luckily most of the rides should have a short wait anyway, but we want to make it as fun for him as possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jackid2
Great start! We're leaving in a week from today as well!
Awesome!! We'll "see" you there!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by saibot0001
Great start! Can't wait to read more. Every time at Disney is magical, but nothing can compare to the first time! So excited to read about yours!
Thank you so much, I am beyond excited for this trip and I can't wait to share it as well.
What a great story about surprising the boys with your trip plans! I'm glad you committed and I'm sure you guys are going to have a great time. The best advice I can give a first time Disney traveler is: take your time, take breaks, and don't try to over do it. It's impossible to see everything in a week.
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.
About This Page: 
)
Kris has been to Disney World a few times with his family when he was a wee boy, but has not been to the world in over 15 years, so it's almost like he is a born-again-first timer. 
)
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
]Read all about our Disney Experiences on the Williams Family Blog: 
Linear Mode
