Our Free Dining- Food & Wine Fest - Soarin' Challenge TR - COMPLETED 11/18!! - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
We’ve been home a couple weeks and I’ve been working diligently on getting my notes into a Word document. And today the Photopass CD came, so I think it’s time to begin posting my TR!
Who - Just DH (Jeff) and myself (Donna) When – September 28 – October 6th Where – Port Orleans French Quarter What – 8 nights standard room, 9 day basic passes, free dining plan
This was our 6th trip to WDW. We did two trips in the early 90s when our kids were younger, a trip by ourselves in 2004 for our 25th anniversary, a trip in 2008 with our now adult kids, and a trip last year, again by ourselves, for our 30th anniversary. Then we decided we didn’t want to wait for another “big” anniversary to come along, we wanted to go again this year, so we did!
We started planning back in January. We got a great price on plane fares for Jet Blue when they first came out with our dates, and booked our room-only reservations at POFQ shortly after that. When free dining was announced we changed our reservations to a package. We planned our days and made our ADRs. Of course in the process we changed them several times, but that’s part of the fun!
So…after months of planning and waiting and reworking plans and asking questions of my wonderful PP pals, our trip was finally here!
We were excited about getting free dining again and had ADRs at some great places we hadn't tried before. We were also looking forward to tasting around the world at the F&WF - our second time for this. And, like the title says, we had a Soarin' Challenge. We'd ridden Soarin' 5 times on our last trip. Could we beat that and make it 6 or 7 this time? We were sure going to try!
The forecasts from weather channel and accuweather did not look good. Also there is a “weather guy” on another forum I frequent and his prediction was not good either. Tropical storms were headed that way and it looked like a windy rainy week was ahead of us. Two different weather systems, one at the beginning of our stay and one at the end were both predicted to go through Central Florida. We packed umbrellas and ponchos and were determined to make the best of whatever weather we got.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
WDW - August 1997 Off Property
WDW - January 2005 AKL
WDW - May 2006 Pop Century
WDW- november-dec 2007 pop century
WDW- dec/jan 2009/2010 pop century
WDW- oct/nov 2012 art of animation
WDW- sept 2013 port Orleans riverside
WDW- july 2015 beach club
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
We got up a bit before 6AM, showered and had a small bowl of cereal. Our suitcases were all packed. Dad picked us up at 7:10. We arrived at Buffalo Airport at 7:30, unloaded our bags and said our good-byes to Dad. As we were walking up to the Jet Blue counter to check our bags, the attendant says “Hello Donna!” I did a double take and realized it was an acquaintance from church. I didn’t realize she worked at Jet Blue. So she checked our bags for us, and gave us a complimentary upgrade to the “comfy seats.” Yay – more leg room! Thanks Ellen!
Security was interesting. BUF now has the body scan machines. We had to put everything in bins and then stand in front of the scanner for 7 seconds holding our hands on our heads “like Mickey Mouse ears.” Then, as if that wasn’t enough, we got a pat down. After that we took a few moments to get our shoes, purse, backpack, wallet, belt, etc. all back on and made our way to the gate. I had just enough time to complete the morning crossword puzzle and then they announced they would begin boarding in a few minutes – and the priority (extra leg room) seats got to board first!
We took off on time and during the flight I did another crossword, read the paper, watched an episode of West Wing on direct TV and then started a book I’d brought along. We also ate some bagels that I’d packed that morning. We landed at 11:25 and after a bathroom break, and a quick stop to take some migraine meds, we made our way to the Magical Express check in. We never really stopped to wait in a line for the bus; just walked right on outside and onto the waiting bus which pulled out at 11:50. After a stop at SSR and OKW we arrived at POFQ, went to the online check-in window and were in our room by 12:45. Our room was in a great location in building 5. Close to the main building and the bus stop and a view that looked out toward the Jacuzzi. We were on the 3rd floor, but steps don’t bother us, so we thought the location was superb!
Always a welcome sight!
It was time for lunch so we decided to walk along the river to POR and eat at their food court. I think this is such a lovely walk.
I had a create-your-own salad and bottled water and Jeff had a Beef and Bleu Sandwich, pasta salad, apple juice and carrot cake. I wanted ice cream for dessert so the CM marked my receipt and I went back for that after I finished my salad. I opted for fat free ice cream, but with the amount she put in the bowl and the hot fudge and whipped cream on top, I guess it didn’t make much difference! Oh well, I try!
We walked back to the room but our luggage hadn’t been delivered yet, so we decided we’d head out to MK in what we were wearing. But by the time we used the bathroom again and were ready to leave, there was a knock at the door…our bags had arrived. So we took a few minutes to put our things away and then about 2:15 we headed out to MK. It was threatening rain so we were glad we had our two umbrellas and dollar store ponchos that were packed in the luggage. We walked to the bus stop and waited about 10 minutes for a bus to the MK. After getting through the security check and the turnstiles we took advantage of our first Photopass opportunity.
Then on to Main Street – all decked out for Halloween! The parade was just about to start but we continued on down Main Street and were one of the only people actually walking in the street. Everyone was waiting on the sidewalks for the parade to start.
After taking advantage of another Photopass op, we decided to head to Adventureland and rode Jungle Cruise and Pirates with no wait. When we got out of Pirates it was looking like rain. The skies were very dark and it was very windy, so we decided to do an inside attraction and chose Hall of Presidents. By the time we got out it was pouring! Jeff said, “ponchos or umbrellas?” I chose umbrellas and we were on our way to the Haunted Mansion. Everyone else was waiting it out under shelter, just standing there, wondering what to do, but this was our first afternoon in the world and we weren’t going to waste one minute of it! We got to HM and it was another walk-on – literally right into the stretching room! Earlier I had told Jeff to look for the guy hanging when the lightning flashes, but he misunderstood and thought the guy was somewhere on the ride, so after we got in the doom buggy he said “where’s the guy?” I said, “He was back in the stretching room!” Oh well, not a problem, we’ll just do it again tomorrow. We exited HM and it was still raining. Again, people were just standing around under cover. We were just about the only ones walking in the puddled streets! We decided to do another inside attraction and headed for Country Bear Jamboree. It’s been years since we’ve seen this and probably would not have seen it this time had it not been for the rain. It’s not really on our list of must-dos but we got a couple chuckles out of it and more importantly, we were dry. When we exited, it had stopped pouring, but was still sprinkling. We decided to head out since we had ADRs that evening and needed time to shower and change. On our way to the exit we stopped at the Main Street Fire House, which we had never seen before. We browsed for a bit and took some pictures of the Main Street area from inside where it was dry.
Then we made our way to the buses. We waited about 10 minutes for a bus back to POFQ. (By the way, MK has two separate bus stops for POR and POFQ, so at least from here there are no additional stops at Riverside.)
On the way back to the room we went to the gift shop to pick up some milk for breakfast tomorrow morning. They only had 2% and we usually drink skim. Oh well, we’ll live with it. We checked the food court and they had 1% in ½ pint cartons, but that’s way too expensive compared to the quart size in the gift shop.
Now it was time for a little rest and relaxation. Jeff took a nap. I wrote in my journal and tried to dry out our shoes and then we both got a shower and got dressed for dinner
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
Our ADRs were for 7:45, but we were at the mercy of Disney transportation, so we left for the bus stop at 6:30. As we approached the bus stop there was an MK bus boarding so we hopped on. Once we got to the MK we walked to the resort monorail station and found a train waiting, so we boarded and were on our way. We arrived at the GF quite early for our reservation but we took a leisurely stroll around the grounds and then out to Narcoossee’s and checked in about 7:30.
We got our buzzer and waited outside on the deck.
We were seated at 7:50, so just 5 minutes after our ADR time. Our waiter was Chevy. He was very pleasant and gave us excellent service. Jeff ordered the whole Maine lobster and I had the filet. Both were outstanding! My filet was cooked perfectly as ordered (medium) and Jeff thoroughly enjoyed his lobster as well. Jeff also ordered a Sam Adams Oktoberfest.
For dessert, Jeff had the almond crusted cheesecake and I had bittersweet chocolate mousse dome, which was very rich, but delicious. Jeff had the French press coffee, and I had tea.
We watched the EWP from our seats inside and after we paid the bill we went outside and watched Hallowishes. As we were leaving our table Chevy wished us a happy stay in "Wally World". It didn't hit me at first, but then Jeff reminded me that in Summer Vacation, Chevy Chase and his family went to Wally World. Too funny! Then we strolled around GF for a while.
Then we took the monorail back to MK and a bus back to POFQ. We texted DD about our day and then wrote/read for a bit and went to bed about 11:30. A long day!!
We love to do this at the end of each day! Another gerat thing we love about our passporter! Memories of our First Day
The weather today was…warm but rainy
The best thing today was…arriving in the World and our great room location
The worst thing today was…the rain
The funniest thing today was…Chevy wishing us a Happy stay in “Wally world”
Today we tried…Narcoossee’s
And the result was…a wonderful meal
The most magical moment today was…our unexpected upgrade to the comfy seats on the plane
Up Next: Our first full day and the weather predictions don't look that good!
About This Page: 
And today the Photopass CD came, so I think it’s time to begin posting my TR! 
Also there is a “weather guy” on another forum I frequent and his prediction was not good either. Tropical storms were headed that way and it looked like a windy rainy week was ahead of us. Two different weather systems, one at the beginning of our stay and one at the end were both predicted to go through Central Florida. We packed umbrellas and ponchos and were determined to make the best of whatever weather we got. 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Katie's graduation
PassPorter Guide Author
Linear Mode
