Happy 10 Years - The Anniversary of our "Dreams" TR - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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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Happy 10 Years - The Anniversary of our "Dreams" TR
OK, it's time to get this started!
For those of you who don't know us, I'll start with introducing me and my little family.
Me (Jenn - 37): Lover of all things Disney. My first trip was in the summer of 1983, just a few months before my 7th birthday. I was instantly hooked, and now after 16 + trips I’m still feeding my addiction. I’m so happy to be making new Disney memories with my own children now, nothing makes me happier than seeing the smiles on their faces when we are there. My Favorite characters are Minnie and Tink.
DH (Chris – 38): Though he’ll claim to be not nearly as “obsessed” as I am, he is a Disney lover through and through. His favorite characters include Grumpy, Goofy and the Beast.
DD (Kaeli – 9): Bright, creative and funny are some of the words I’d use to describe my Kaeli. She’s turning into a little planner too, one of her favorite things to do is watch Disney Parks videos on line always taking notes for future trips. Favorite characters of hers are Duffy, Goofy and Merida.
DD (Abby – 7): Quiet and shy, but also silly and fun loving, Abby is a true believer in Disney magic. It’s always fun to see things through her eyes. Some of her favorite characters are Minnie and Duffy.
This trip to the World was our family's 5th and we decided to make it extra special to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary which was this past May. We planned on a nine night stay in a Royal Room at POR, followed by a 3 night Bahamian cruise on the Dream. To top it all off, we stayed one last night after the cruise in a Little Mermaid room at AoA. What an amazing, magical whirlwind of a trip it was
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Oh, that error with the nuts on the plane makes me so mad! Good thing you caught the situation in time, but it was so unnecessary for it to have become an issue for you and for the other passengers.
I woke up fairly early today, even though our flight was not until 5 pm. We were off to Disney today and the anticipation made it easy to bounce out of bed a little before 7 am I won’t bore you with the details, but the morning was filled with some last minute packing, some straightening up around the house and a few errands. Everyone but me ate an early lunch since we planned on an early dinner before the flight at the airport. My pre flight nervous stomach was already acting up so I decided to skip lunch at that point. I figured I’d grab something light at the airport later.
After packing up the car and locking up the house, we were off to Newark Airport around 2:30.
We're off!
The Turnpike was free and clear, we made it to terminal A in a little more than 20 minutes. We grabbed our bags out of the truck and headed inside to find no lines at all at check in. A few minutes later our bags were sent off and we had our boarding passes in hand. I headed down to the pre security food court with the girls while Chris went back out to drop the car off at the Police building parking lot. The girls and I sat at a table near the window, watching the planes outside as we waited for Chris to return.
Once Chris was back, we decided to get something to eat for the girls. Chris wasn’t too hungry yet and I was still dealing with my nervous stomach so most of the heavy food court offerings weren’t appealing to us. The girls finished up their meals and we headed off to security, only to find a huge line. Thankfully, because Chris was with us, we were able to use the employee entrance and bypass the line. It was probably about 3:45 at that point, and our flight was boarding at 4:30. It definitely would have been cutting it close had we been stuck in the regular line.
We breezed through security and headed to our gate. The screens were showing our flight as “on time”, but the plane was not there as of yet so I was hoping we wouldn’t be delayed. We sat and waited, and as time inched closer to 4:30, still no plane. I was starting to get a little hungry at that point, so I grabbed a quick pretzel from Auntie Anne's and took the girls for one last bathroom break. Chris went to speak to the gate agent about Kaeli’s peanut allergy while we were gone as well. When we got back to our seats our flight had arrived and it’s passengers were getting off. We probably started boarding around 4:50, with our flight still scheduled to leave around 5:09. As we boarded the plane, Chris reminded the Flight Attendant that was greeting us about Kaeli’s allergy, just as the gate agent told him to do. Well, she just seemed annoyed that he was letting her know and very curtly said that she was aware and everything would be taken care of (Jet Blue’s policy is to create a buffer zone around the person with allergies – those people in the buffer zone are supposed to be asked to refrain from eating peanuts/nuts on the flight). I let it slide and headed towards our seats, I figured maybe she was just grumpy because of the delay or perhaps something else. We got settled into our row, with Chris and the girls sitting together across the aisle from me. About 20 minutes late, we were finally taxiing down the runway for takeoff.
Everything was going smoothly until snack time came around and the female flight attendant who greeted us was no where to be seen. Instead, another flight attendant began handing out snacks in our section and I noticed that nuts were given to some guests who were in the supposed “buffer zone”. I immediately spoke up and started saying “excuse me” to get his attention, and when he finally looked my way I reminded him of the allergy in our row. He looked like a deer in headlights and completely panicked. Instead of asking for the nuts back from the other customers, he just began grabbing them back out of their hands yelling, “you can’t have those!”. Obviously those customers were a little upset with his reaction, and after he told them of the allergy they were looking around to see who these people with allergies were. It was just an all around uncomfortable situation. To top it off, when he mentioned it to the original flight attendant who had greeted us all she said was “oh yeah, I forgot about the allergy.” No apology to us, or the other customers for that matter. Way to drop the ball after “assuring” us that everything would be taken care of!
Other than that, our flight was smooth and we arrived at MCO at 7:50, about 10 minutes early, even with our 20 minute delay back home. We headed off to the baggage claim and got our bags
Excited to be on the "other" monorail!
And then we made our way over to the DME. For some reason our reservation information was not showing up in the DME system, even though it was clearly printed on our WDW travel booklet. It wasn’t really a problem, they just printed us up some new vouchers, scanned them and we were sent off to a waiting bus. There were quite a few people on the bus already, but the front seats were open so we grabbed them and got settled in.
I think I pretty much look like your girls when riding the "other" monorail. In fact, I think it's probably the most exciting "ride"!
Sorry about the plane situation. They really did drop the ball on that one. Disgusting when it can really hurt the person, like a peanut allergy can. Glad you caught it and Kaeli was no worse for the wear.
I have been looking forward to reading this. Glad your flight wasn't too late but what an awful way to manage a peanut allergy. Most flights I have been on lately won't serve them at all on a flight where there is an allergy. Maybe it is time they found a snack less prone to allergies as peanut allergies are so common these days.
Hope you were not too late getting to your resort.
Oh, that error with the nuts on the plane makes me so mad! Good thing you caught the situation in time, but it was so unnecessary for it to have become an issue for you and for the other passengers.
It really was an unnecessary issue, especially after we followed all of the airline's policies about flagging our reservation and informing the flight crew of the allergy. I have since emailed Jet Blue about our experience and they let me know that the information was forwarded to the In Flight Management Team so that the flight attendants on our flight could be trained again regarding the allergy policy. I'm glad, because hopefully future customers will not experience what we did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Sounds like a relaxing travel day, except for the failure of the flight attendant to heed the allergies.
Minus that little hiccup it was definitely a nice relaxing travel day
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Sorry about the incident with the flight attendants. What a horrible situation to be put in. They definitely did drop the ball on that one.
It was especially frustrating since we followed all of the instructions given us by the airline. It just shouldn't have happened at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mushu22
Great Start except for the problems on the airplane.
I'm just glad we got the problem rectified, it certainly could have been a lot worse!
Quote:
Originally Posted by OneLittleSpark
I think I pretty much look like your girls when riding the "other" monorail. In fact, I think it's probably the most exciting "ride"!
Sorry about the plane situation. They really did drop the ball on that one. Disgusting when it can really hurt the person, like a peanut allergy can. Glad you caught it and Kaeli was no worse for the wear.
It's always exciting to be on that "ride", except for when you are heading back to your gate to go home. All of those bouncing, excited people are suddenly moping and sad
I'm so glad I caught the issue too, and hopefully the retraining that crew will get will stop future fliers on Jet Blue from having the same experience as us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomhazel
I have been looking forward to reading this. Glad your flight wasn't too late but what an awful way to manage a peanut allergy. Most flights I have been on lately won't serve them at all on a flight where there is an allergy. Maybe it is time they found a snack less prone to allergies as peanut allergies are so common these days.
Hope you were not too late getting to your resort.
I agree, Hazel, I wish all airlines would give up the peanuts as snacks since there are so many other options out there. Maybe someday they'll all get on board with that idea.
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"Sparky"(My first trip.)
I won’t bore you with the details, but the morning was filled with some last minute packing, some straightening up around the house and a few errands. Everyone but me ate an early lunch since we planned on an early dinner before the flight at the airport. My pre flight nervous stomach was already acting up so I decided to skip lunch at that point. I figured I’d grab something light at the airport later. 
A few minutes later our bags were sent off and we had our boarding passes in hand. I headed down to the pre security food court with the girls while Chris went back out to drop the car off at the Police building parking lot. The girls and I sat at a table near the window, watching the planes outside as we waited for Chris to return. 
Thankfully, because Chris was with us, we were able to use the employee entrance and bypass the line. 
We got settled into our row, with Chris and the girls sitting together across the aisle from me. About 20 minutes late, we were finally taxiing down the runway for takeoff. 
Instead, another flight attendant began handing out snacks in our section and I noticed that nuts were given to some guests who were in the supposed “buffer zone”. I immediately spoke up and started saying “excuse me” to get his attention, and when he finally looked my way I reminded him of the allergy in our row. He looked like a deer in headlights and completely panicked. Instead of asking for the nuts back from the other customers, he just began grabbing them back out of their hands yelling, “you can’t have those!”. Obviously those customers were a little upset with his reaction, and after he told them of the allergy they were looking around to see who these people with allergies were. It was just an all around uncomfortable situation. To top it off, when he mentioned it to the original flight attendant who had greeted us all she said was “oh yeah, I forgot about the allergy.” No apology to us, or the other customers for that matter. Way to drop the ball after “assuring” us that everything would be taken care of! 
PassPorter Guide Author
They definitely did drop the ball on that one.
Deb
Hybrid Mode
