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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Yes, yes, most everyone's mad here is true! Or, maybe I'm just mad?!?
Welcome to my Most Everyone's Mad Here PTR. OK, I think I might have a slight problem with starting and finishing PTRs/TRs. My TR from January is unfinished (but really close to being done!) and I also started a quick TR for a brief trip last week. But I can't help it! I want to share!!! So bear with me, I'm going to get all of these done, I promise on the Passporter Guide!
On to the PTR at hand...
We knew that we would be making a trip this fall for MNSSHP, we just weren't sure about the timing. At first we thought we would aim for the first week in October because Tyler has fall break the Friday before Columbus Day. Then my husband's best friend and his family decided they wanted to make a trip with us and the timing for that weekend would work well.
Some things came up and our friends no longer are able to make the trip, and when we started looking for a room, we realized this was going to be a busy weekend. SO we went back to the calendar to see if there was another time that would work out.
Simeltaneously, my sister-in-law has a conference in Orlando the 4th week in September and my in-laws are traveling with her to take care of her 4 month old. My in-laws frequently travel with us to WDW and we were bummed that we wouldn't all get to do a MNSSHP together this year since they were going to be in Orlando the week before we had planned. So we started talking about switching the dates to coincide with when they will be there.
We came up with a plan to check in on Friday, September 21 and check out on Wednesday, September 26.
We had a few hurdles to clear before committing though:
We had agreed to watch their dog, which they don't kennel. So we had to find someone to take care of that. My brother-in-law isn't going so we asked him if he wouldn't mind stopping by to feed/play with their dog for the few days that our trips are overlapping. Thankfully he said so the plan is to kennel our lab and leave our cavalier king charles with their yorkie (they love each other and they'd prefer that she not be alone.)
Travel- I have work in Melbourne, which is about 45 minutes southeast of Orlando, the entire week of September 17th and I'd prefer to not have 2 cars in Orlando (one from me driving to Melbourne and then 1 with Allen and the kids when they drive to Orlando.) I could fly down but it's a pain in the rear to deal with from our airport and I try to avoid it if possible. We haven't come up with a solution to this yet, we are throwing some things around and I'll update this later.
Tyler's school- well, we will have to pull Tyler out of school for a few days to make these dates work. They allow 5 days per year for excused absence for vacation so we are ok to do it and he is a great student so I'm not worried that he'll fall behind, I just always feel a pang of guilt pulling him out.
All things considered, we have decided to move forward with these dates.
And for fun, here we are at our last MNSSHP in 2010:
Up Next: The Who and the Where, and plans for MNSSHP!
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I hope that you and your family have a magical time at the world
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Somehow I don't feel like we are getting ready fast enough though!!! I love these trips booked so quickly so there is no agnozing wait but goodness I'm way behind!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Glad rearranging your plans has worked out so well!
Even after I started this TR, we went back and forth on dates . But we are booked so it's settled!
Quote:
Originally Posted by MayraLR
Great start!
Quote:
Originally Posted by bsblady01
I hope that you and your family have a magical time at the world
I've been meaning to come back for an update but it's just been nutty getting these plans straight. But I finally think we have some direction- thankfully!
Oh boy, where to start?!?
Where: Originally we were thinking that we would just book OKW since the only availability we could find was there and SSR, and I'd rather spend less points . Great, decision made.
Not.so.fast.
I think I mentioned this but I will be in Melbourne the week leading up to this trip for some work. Well, last week something came up and now I have to be in St. Petersburg on the Monday for a meeting. It's a little bit of a bummer to miss part of a day at WDW but there is silver lining, and that is that now our hotel is covered, even at WDW, the entire weekend! Of course reimbursing DVC points is a little tough so instead we decided to just book a normal room and save our points. I pulled FL resident rates and got an amazing deal on All Stars Sports (like less that Motel 6 pricing I think!) I just couldn't pass up spending that kind of money (or rather, NOT spending hardly any money) so we decided to book here. I would have loved to stay at the Art of Animation but it was quite a bit more and this deal just couldn't be beat. So we are booked checking in Friday, Sept. 21st and leaving Thursday, Sept. 27th.
Our plan now is:
Arrive on the 21st from Melbourne around 1:30pm (just Allen, Stella and I) and the head who knows where. No park plans as of yet.
Tyler is arriving on Sunday around noon with the ILs, who are driving down that morning. I believe we are heading to MK that afternoon and I'm pretty sure Allen has booked a LTT reservation for this night.
Monday morning I'm heading over to St. Petersburg and hope to be back around 3:30pm. I'll meet the family whereever they are.
Tuesday night is MNSSHP!
Leave to head home Thursday early afternoon.
We really haven't made any dining reservations except LTT (when I looked it was slim pickings so I'm avoiding it!) And we don't really have park plans either, but we rarely do these days. So we'll see!
MNSSHP
I thought it was worth doing a little explaining about my trip title and it fits nicely here. As soon as we knew we were moving to FL earlier this year, we knew we would be making a trip for MNSSHP. I immediately started thinking about costumes and we came up with Alice and Wonderland pretty quickly (truthfully it was a toss up between that and Snow White.) But Alice won and I'm so excited for our crew to get dressed up.
Confession: I've done nothing to prepare costumes. Yikes.
So the trip report title is one of my most favorite lines from Alice- and really, I'd say it's a pretty fair descrption of our crew!
Here is the cast:
Stella: Alice
Tyler: Mad Hatter
Allen and FIL: Tweedle Dee and Dum
MIL and I were deciding between Queen of Hearts, White Rabbit, and the Cheshire Cat but we also have a new person in our crew, and that's my newest Niece, who is 4 months old. The reason the ILs are traveling to Orlando during this time is because my SIL has a work conference so they are going to "babysit" her baby. MIL and I decided we should make the baby a flower costume and so MIL also wants to be the same thing so they match. I'm not quite sure which way I'm going yet- given the timing, I need to do whatever is easiest so I'll be spending the next few days reviewing options!
Disney Journal
The last thing I thought I'd share in this update is my new journal, which was inspiried by several PP'ers!
Cam mentioned in her latest PTR that she is preparing her journal and I know she also talks about how she jotes down notes each night during their trips. I don't know why it never occured to me to take a journal before (aside from my PP) so then I set out on a mission to get a journal.
Then I was browing the scrapbook area of the forum and saw a thread about Smash albums. That really peaked my interest so last Sunday I took myself over to the craft store to check them out. OK, it's the PERFECT journal for me!!! And I'm so excited to take it to Disney .
Here's what I purchased: the 8x10 Smash Album and some Disney stickers/borders/frames (which also happened to be 40% off!)
I was in Indiana the last few days so I took my goodies with me and started to decorate the cover a bit (not sure why this is posting on it's side, but you get the picture):
My vision is that this is really going to be a journal and not a scrapbook for me (although i think this is a great spot to add in my Instagram pictures.) I really love everything about it, even the little pen has a glue stick on the end, which is great because I can add in things on the spot. I will say though that the glue stick didn't hold the little border on the front of my book very well so I am going to go back over that with some of my super-duty adhesive and then add a few more stickers and papers to the front cover.
I think that's all for now! Hopefully I will have some costume updates soon!
Mel
Plans sound great!
Love your idea using the Smash book! I am currently working on my WDW 2008 Smash book, "smashing" all kinds of stuff from that trip. I decorated the front cover too!
Plans sound great!
Love your idea using the Smash book! I am currently working on my WDW 2008 Smash book, "smashing" all kinds of stuff from that trip. I decorated the front cover too!
You're Smash albums where my inspiration to go get one (and decorate the cover!)
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so the plan is to kennel our lab and leave our cavalier king charles with their yorkie (they love each other and they'd prefer that she not be alone.)
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PassPorter Guide Author
I love these trips booked so quickly so there is no agnozing wait but goodness I'm way behind!!
. Great, decision made.
Hybrid Mode
