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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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In the past, we have have only done the quick service dining. In 2013, we plan to get the deluxe dining plan. My daughter wants to do quite a few character meals, which is fine with me.
However, I'm wondering how to best decide which day for each meal and where. And with all the ADRs needed, how do you organize yourself? Does anyone use a chart or spreadsheet?
What things do you take into consideration? Park hours, type of meal, etc. Since the only ADR I ever made before was for Cinderella's castle (which got cancelled due to the hurricane), I don't know what else to consider. We've been studying our Passporter and deciding restaurants that sound good, but I just don't know the best way to figure out when to eat where.
And then of course, to keep it all organized to make the ADRs.
Well if I'm going for five days I let my dh pick several, we go on allears.net and look at menus, and asking everybody on here about the different restaurants, as for times I try to avoid peak times.
I did use a google spreadsheet so i could access it from any computer and my phone as well. I looked at menus on allears and chose depending on what park we wold be in. My kids are young and are early risers, so we made sure to get early ADRs. The biggest problem that I ran into was that my 6 year old was exhausted by 3:00 and wanted to "go home" to the resort, but we had dinner ADRs at the park. So, next time I will make only lunch ADRs and do QS for dinners.
Before I plan my ADRs I like to look at the park calendars and choose which parks we will be visiting for each day of our trip. Once I have that figured out, then we sit down and look at the menus on allears.net and choose restaurants that are in the park we will be at, or atleast in a nearby resort.
As for times, I really don't have a system for that. It all depends, I suppose. For breakfasts I like to make the ADRs early, I don't like to stop touring the park midmorning to eat. Plus, if you make your reservation before the park opens you get the wonderful experience of seeing the park empty, like you have it all to yourselves. For lunches and dinners, I try to make them for off peak times too. We might have a late lunch (around 2) and then we'll just need a snack for dinner. Or, we'll plan to have an early dinner. It's really up to you and your touring style, the options are endless!
Before I plan my ADRs I like to look at the park calendars and choose which parks we will be visiting for each day of our trip. Once I have that figured out, then we sit down and look at the menus on allears.net and choose restaurants that are in the park we will be at, or atleast in a nearby resort.
^ Same here. I use an excel spreadsheet to keep all of my ADR info together as well asn park hours and any EMH. I plan character meals acording to what characters we want to see. If we're going in the Summer I try to plan a TS or character meal for lunch as a nice way to escape the heat. I've planned TS breakfasts before but I really find myself just wanting to head straight to the parks.
I always use a spreadsheet and I tend to use our dining as the basis for which parks we'll be touring. If we're having lunch in Epcot, we may go to another park for a few hours in the morning and then head to Epcot for the rest of the day for example. I also take account with dinner of the night-time shows/fireworks we might want to see and try and time eating accordingly, so we have time to get to them.
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I plan out which park we will be in at the mealtime first by looking at the announced park schedules. We decide which park will work for us each day to start and end our day (we park hop). We also plan our meals for off times for the most part, with early lunches (11:30) or dinnners (5-5:30) if we can. We like to beat the crowds whether we are doing CS or TS meals. We don't plan breakfast meals, stopping for a pastry or fruit early in the day if we can't wait for lunch.
I make a spreadsheet as well - kind of slowly start adding in information such as park hours, show times, then depending on where I will be at mealtime I will choose one off our list for that area. We enjoy many of the resort restaurants so depending on what park we will be at I plan those accordingly as well.
I have a idea of where I want to eat well before the hours are announced, based on allears.net. I then wait (and wait) til ADR day and plan them based on what park I want for what day.
I try to space meals 5 hours apart like
Breakfast 7:30 - 8.
Lunch between 1-2
Dinner after 6 (closer to 7)
We are normally eat dinner around 5 but we are still full if we eat earlier. If we do breakfast earlier we dont get enough sleep.
Also we like resorts for breakfast. like Cape May, after its a quick 5 min (even w/ little ones) walk to Epcot. or one of the monorail resorts on MK day. Toss in a dinner show (hoop-dee-doo) and have a late (9:30) breakfast, snacks for lunch (sundeas) and hop the boat over.
If you have extra credits at the end head to DTD and grab Earl for the flight home.
Speaking of which we arrive as early as e can and depart as late. Its like an extra day.
If you want I can PM you my "list" for next Nov./Dec.
We usually make a list of places we'd like to eat at based upon reviewing menus at AllEars, characters we want to see and the general needs of the group. We look at park hours (or historical hours if the official hours haven't been posted yet) and crowd levels and try to align our dining choices with the most sensible touring plan for us. We also try to have a mix of foods and experiences (character meals, unique setting, vary the cuisine, resort vs. park) and have back-ups and back-ups to the back-ups if our first TS choices aren't available.
Once the ADRs are set, we firm up our touring plans. We do remain pretty flexible though. If we aren't really up for an ADR we've made, we look for something else ASAP, then release our ADR so someone else can use it. We use spreadsheets to track everything.
We try do go to a few new places each trip and then hit some of our favorites too. We try to avoid resturants in parks to keep our schedule more flexible. We then make reservations for what time we want to eat and plan the rest of schedule around that.
I check the park hours and either TGM or EasyWDW for best parks to visit on which day. Then I start my spreadsheet. (first of several revisions) For each day, I give at least 3 possible ADRs. We have family meetings and discussions about it every time we get the kids together. (LOL)
I then make out a list of preferred ADRs (based on where the majority want to eat, and their list of must dos!) Then I list my back up and even a third choice for each day. At 180 day mark, I get up early and start online to get as many of the must haves as possible, and call at 7 if I have any problems.
We then fill in the rest of the park hours, EMH, shows, parades, etc into the spreadsheet.
Since we are coming up on trip number 9 in 10 years, I always try to add at least one new place each visit.
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