Going north, south, east and west! BACK HOME 11/2 - Page 3 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
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This is so great so far, Cheryl!! Sounds like you will have an amazing time. My dad flies in and out of Long Beach on Jet Blue all the time (he lives in Los Angeles) and loves it. I don't think you'll be dissapointed. . . . . I truly cannot wait to hear all about this trip!!
great start chez
you will love jet blue
glad everything worked out for your vegas trip
I also look forward to traveling with you as well
hurry back with more please
Pre-trip report, part three: wouldn’t looking at the park hours be a good idea?
On to the next problem. As a die-hard Disney fan, you would think that I’d have learnt by now to look at park hours as soon as they come out. Apparently not. I managed to do that with WDW, but I can only blame what happened next on the fact that Disney World now publish theirs so far out, that I just forgot about getting the hours for Disneyland – until August! By then, I had purchased our three day tickets, figuring we’d go into the park all day on Monday, Tuesday and then Wednesday morning and I’d also asked Sharon of the Princess variety to book our meals, which she’d kindly done.
The first warning sign that something was wrong was when she told me that she couldn’t get the Carnation Cafe any earlier than 10am, as that’s when the Disneyland park opened. I’m sorry – just run that one past me again... the main park isn’t opening until 10am that day? A quick visit to the Disneyland website confirmed that and the fact that it (and the California Adventure) wouldn’t be opening until that time every day we were there. OK, plus side – it means that they expect the parks to be quiet, which will be a very pleasant change from the last time we were there, as we managed to hit the tail end of the spring break and it was murder, and the second plus side, it doesn’t matter if we’re up late the night before, as the parks are opening late, but I was still a bit disappointed by that.
On the Wednesday, I was planning on getting out by about 1pm or 2pm, having seen Aladdin – the Musical Spectacular. It was at about this time that someone kindly told me that it would be down for rehab at this time. Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!! This was one of our main reasons for going back to Disneyland, having missed this last time we were there and I had deliberately planned our days, so that we could see that first show early on the Wednesday. Not good and, as the parks weren’t opening until 10am, did it really make a visit on that day worth it?
The dilemma became even worse when I saw that the Disneyland Park would be open until midnight on the Sunday we arrived. Our flight gets into Long Beach at about 7.30pm and I know it will take a while to get to Disneyland, but maybe we could go in for a couple of hours, especially as that’s the only night that the fireworks will be on. Yes, you read that right – a big surprise to me. And as for the parades, let’s not go there. Having looked at historical hours (you see, I did do some research, even if it doesn’t sound like it!), I thought I’d worked out the times of the parade. Not so. There’s no afternoon parade while we’re there, but evening ones – and guess what we’re doing while those are on? One is dinner at the Napa Rose, which I did not want to change, as I know Sharon had a job snagging that for us and then the other night is the Trick and Treat Party at the California Adventure. Having bought tickets for that, I don’t want to miss that either. Dilemmas, dilemmas.
A word here about booking for the Trick and Treat Party, which (from what I can gather) is a bit like Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, but on a smaller scale (and that’s reflected in the ticket price) – it couldn’t have been easier. I said after our trip to Disneyland in 2006 that there’s a lot that Disney World can learn from its big sister and, equally, there are a lot of things Disney World does that should be introduced in California. This is one area that Disneyland has got right. You can book your party tickets online. That’s right – a very simple process that took me just a couple of minutes, then you get an e-mail to your inbox and print your tickets off. I can but hope that one day it’s something that Disney World latches on to...
In short, I’ve learnt my lesson. You neglect to check Disney park hours at your peril. It’s a mistake I won’t be making again in a hurry. My only defence (apart from the fact I dropped the ball totally!) was that, at the time, as well as planning a five destination vacation, I was also actively planning for our Spanish holiday in September 2008 and Japan in 2009 and making plans for Florida at Christmas 2009... you get the idea. But those are all reports for another place and time...
Finally, the waitlist came through for us and we were able to scrap that one night at the BoardWalk to a full stay at the Beach Club Villas. It was a close call though – I think I only got confirmation of that about three weeks before we were due to head out.
By now, I was panicking and wondering whether there was anything else I’d forgotten. I don’t think it was so much forgotten, it was more a case of getting round to booking things – and paying for them. I learnt my lesson with this vacation. Just buy everything in one go, don’t decide (as I did) that you’ll pay for them month by month, as it won’t happen. Something seemed to come along almost every month and then we’d have no spare cash that month, then the next month and the next month and so the pattern continued, until we had a fair bit still to pay for and only a couple of weeks before we were due to depart!
So, about 10 days before we were due to travel, I spent the weekend spending our hard earned cash on a variety of things:
Getting the Deluxe Dining Plan for our Walt Disney World stay – having confirmed that snack credits could indeed be used at the Food and Wine Festival booths.
Getting tickets for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferry.
Getting tickets for the observation deck at the Rockefeller Centre.
Getting the car rental from Disneyland through to Vegas and it’s a convertible!
And, best of all, after much debate, we finally decided to go all out on our trip to the Grand Canyon this time. It’s fair to say that we were a little disappointed in 2006 with the helicopter trip we took out there. It was amazing to land at the bottom of the canyon and have breakfast there, but we came back, feeling that it had been over too quickly and we’d never got a chance to view the canyon from the rim, which we thought was a missed opportunity. That was something we intended to put right on this trip and to do that, we’ve booked a trip that flies us out to the canyon by plane, then you land and transfer to a helicopter to descend into the base of the canyon. From there, you take a 20 minute boat ride along the river, then it’s back up to the rim by helicopter. After that, you take a bus tour of the rim, including lunch and a visit to an Indian reserve, before heading back to Vegas on the plane. It didn’t come cheap – try more than $320 per person but the more we wondered whether it was worth it and thought about maybe saving the money, the more we realised we wanted to do it, so we went for it and this will be our Christmas present to each other.
Travel money card, travellers cheques and dollars then purchased, the packing commenced and finally we were ready to head out on our grand tour of the States...
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
Great update!! Sorry DL wasn't cooperating with the hours or parades/fireworks
On a better note, congrats on booking the Grand Canyon tour....I'm really looking forward to hearing about that one Sounds like everything is coming together!!
You are going to get some Grand Canyon photos. You should go easy on yourself re: DL hours...I get overwhelmed with a 1-destination trip....FIVE! You are so organized! Can't wait to see it all!
I think the Grand Canyon is one of the most amazing places and most photogenic. Even a novice like me got postcard like photos from the rim. I can't wait to see yours.
When I did my quickie trip to Disneyland this spring, I was a little shocked by the park hours and lack of fireworks, shows, etc. on a daily basis. The good news was that I did every attraction I wanted to (I am not a thrill rider) in both parks in a day and a half. I was also able to do many of them more than once.
Great update. I don't know how you are keeping everything straight. I'm sure your Passporter is getting a work out.
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Sounds like you will have an amazing time. 
My dad flies in and out of Long Beach on Jet Blue all the time (he lives in Los Angeles) and loves it. I don't think you'll be dissapointed. . . . . I truly cannot wait to hear all about this trip!! 
Danny and I at Epcot 8/14/08
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Hurry back with more!!
PassPorter Guide Author
Sounds like everything is coming together!!
Grand Canyon photos. You should go easy on yourself re: DL hours...I get overwhelmed with a 1-destination trip....FIVE! 
You are so organized! Can't wait to see it all! 
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