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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I keep hearing people mention forums on the D23 site but when I go there nothing like that exists. It's really just an information area. Does somebody know something I don't?
There aren't any forums as of yet at least. I'm starting to feel they will not create any. Lord knows they don't want any negative comments posted on their own site.
Do I think Disney is thinking of using D23 to run other fan organizations out of business (now or in the future)? Probably not. Disney knows they can't make them (us) go away. They can't prevent people from talking about something they want to talk about. It's more likely, though, that the growth of independent fan groups will be limited in scope (lots of discussion and information, little in the way of inside info or "star power"), because Disney is capable of trotting out "goodies" that an independent couldn't ever hope obtaining. The existing description of the September D-23 convention, for example, is way beyond the scope of anything seen at an independent Disney fan convention. It's certainly beyond the wildest dreams I ever had for MouseFest. Disney has the power to bring all those celebrities into one place, and produce all kinds of materials based on the films, parks, etc. without having to get involved in licensing agreements, etc. Whatever it may cost Disney to produce, anyone else trying to match it would have to spend twice as much (with half the money going to Disney for licensing).
One comparison I can offer is the difference between Birnbaum's and all the unofficial Disney guidebooks. Under nearly all circumstances, only Birnbaum's is allowed to have images of characters. Disney, being so product licensing-focused, doesn't want to "give" character images away for free, when clothing and toy manufacturers are paying them so much for a similar privilege. The unofficial guidebooks manage to do quite nicely without characters. Our focus is on providing information and advice. Pictures of Mickey might help people get excited about their vacation, but they usually don't provide a whole lot of useful info or advice for vacation planners. Our philosophy is to provide photos that help people understand what they'll encounter at the parks and resorts - what do attractions look like, what do the rooms look like, what does the park look like?
It's more likely that Disney is trying, one more time, to find a way to benefit from organized fan activities in a manner that they can control. If you go way back, the original Mickey Mouse Club was a fan club, after all. Fan loyalty is a very powerful thing (as I know all too well from PassPorter), and there have been more than a few other organizations that have done a better job addressing the interests of their core fans lately than Disney has (comic book conventions, Star Trek conventions, conventions dedicated to games like World of Warcraft, etc., or even Mac World). I suspect Disney was looking more closely at those, rather than at fan sites or organizations like NFFC.
Disney has always been reluctant to provide "goodies" to independent fan organizations - speeches/appearances by Imagineers, film stars, etc. Since the organizations themselves are beyond Disney's control, it meant Disney had limited means to protect its company image. And with Disney's financial and promotional muscle, they have the ability to create a much bigger group of hard-core fans than already exists, if they play their cards right.
Meanwhile, "online community" as I define it, "a place where people meet and interact around a common interest" is generally not something Disney wants to try to create online (at least, not in a big way). Most large companies avoid that, because doing it well can be very labor intensive, and doing it poorly is like having a tiger by the tail. They prefer more controlled "communities," where they speak, and everyone else listens.
So, I don't mind if D-23 has a really cool "magazine" that's similar in scope and quality to their coffee table books. It's always going to be far more challenging for an independent publisher to do than it will be for Disney, since Disney controls all the resources. I don't mind if Disney manages to produce a convention on the scale they promise for Anaheim - if I decide to go, I'll be as geeked-out by the speakers, films, and exhibits as everyone else. Our PassPorter gatherings (and other gatherings like it) have a very different focus - enjoying the parks/sharing our passion with our friends. And as I've said elsewhere, if Disney does manage to swell the ranks of hard-core fans, I have a feeling that will help swell the ranks of plenty of unofficial Disney fan communities, too.
__________________
Co-Author, PassPorter's Walt Disney World, PassPorter's Disney Cruise Line, and PassPorter's Disneyland and Southern California Attractions
i don't know what the enforced rule is, but the guidelines that WDW publishes for guidebooks absolutely don't forbid photos of characters. they do state that every photo featuring a character must be approved and provided by them and they will not approve other photos.
Quote:
For a Guidebook with which Public Relations is working to use any of these Disney-provided images, the procedure is:
...
* Use of images (photos, artwork or illustrations) depicting the characters that appear at Walt Disney World® Resort -- other than those included among approved Walt Disney World® Resort and Disney Cruise Line images for potential Guidebook use -- is prohibited.
...
although that could simply mean that they won't offer anyone photos with characters. it also implies that you're free to use the characters if you want, but you won't do it with their blessings and good luck to you.
anyway, i can't speak with any real certainty but I don't believe online forums are ruled out. what i can say with certainty is a lot of things didn't make launch date and will be appearing slowly as time progresses.
I'm as big a fan of Disney as there is, but to me D23 is paying a decent amount for a printed Disney infomercial. I also think it was seriously over-hyped.
i don't know what the enforced rule is, but the guidelines that WDW publishes for guidebooks absolutely don't forbid photos of characters. they do state that every photo featuring a character must be approved and provided by them and they will not approve other photos.
although that could simply mean that they won't offer anyone photos with characters. it also implies that you're free to use the characters if you want, but you won't do it with their blessings and good luck to you.
The portion of the guidelines you refer to relates to the use of the photos supplied in the guidebook library, not to character images. You'd be closer to the truth if you said "it also implies that you're free to use photos of WDW other than character images, but you won't do it with their blessings."
Character images are specifically addressed in the paragraph you quoted.
I am speaking from ten years' experience as the publisher of guidebooks to Disney destinations. The library of photos approved for guidebook use has virtually no character images, especially of the Fab 5, unlike the library of press images available to "professional news media" (by which they basically mean newspapers, magazines, and TV).
As to whether they imply that "you're free to use the characters if you want, but you won't do it with their blessings and good luck to you," or that they "absolutely don't fobid photos of characters," I'll repeat that quote from Disney's Guidelines for Guidebook Media
Quote:
Use of images (photos, artwork or illustrations) depicting the characters that appear at Walt Disney World® Resort -- other than those included among approved Walt Disney World® Resort and Disney Cruise Line images for potential Guidebook use -- is prohibited (my emphasis).
I don't know how much plainer they have to make it. Either they supply character images, or you can't use them.
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Co-Author, PassPorter's Walt Disney World, PassPorter's Disney Cruise Line, and PassPorter's Disneyland and Southern California Attractions
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