Our own California Adventure - Pre Trip **Updated 3/21/11** - Page 4 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
I finally have time to write an update. Things have been kind of crazy around here for the last week or so. I had to go to a funeral last week for a co-workers infant son, DS was off school most of this past week, had to book a hotel for a wedding out of state in May, and our stove broke the other day. We weren't thrilled with having to go buy a new stove a month before vacation but what are you going to? I always try to look at things like that as being thankful we can afford to replace things without a problem.
Anyway! On to the good stuff...vacation plans. Our park hours came out and I ordered tickets for Hearst Castle. Now we actually have some sort of schedule so here we go!
Sat March 26: Departure day!
Our flight leaves O'Hare at 10:00am so we'll probably have to leave here around 7, 7:30. We figured it's not that drastically different of a normal weekday schedule, for the boys anyway. I don't usually get up until about 7:30 or 8. The plan is to load up the car the night before - a first for us since we have a house now. It's always been apartments and we didn't want to leave our luggage in the trunk overnight in a parking lot. We've done lots of early morning trunk packing in the dark. We'll get breakfast at the airport.
Arrive at LAX around 12:15. We need to pick up our rental car and grab lunch. By now it will be like 2:15 our time so I'm sure we'll be starving. We'd like to grab lunch at the airport before we get the rental car but I'm not sure how LAX is set up. I know at O'Hare once you get your luggage there's pretty much no where to go but outside.
Then we have about a 2 1/2 hour drive north to Lompoc where DFiL lives.
Check in to Holiday Inn Express. I want to stop at the grocery store across the street from the hotel to get a case of water, snacks, etc. I'm not sure if we'll see DFiL today or not. He's one of those early to bed early to rise kind of people.
Sun March 27 No real plans for today other than spending time with DFiL. He usually comes up with a day's worth of things for us to do and cool little spots to show us. Last time he took us to 'Shell Beach' where the beach is covered in little shells. We drove a lot even stopping to buy the biggest juiciest strawberries I've ever seen from a road stand. So I'm sure whatever we do we'll have a good time.
Mon March 28
We plan on driving up north today to see the seal beach, visit Hearst Castle, and just sightsee along the drive. I ordered tickets the other day for everyone at 2:00pm. That way we can sleep in. Plus it's easy to kill time on the way up there if we need to.
Tues March 29 Again no real plans for today other than spending time with DFiL.
Wed March 30 The 'Disney Surprise' reveal day!
So DS thinks we're leaving for home today. Our plan is to check out then drive down to Hollywood for the day. We might stop by Santa Monica again, it depends on time mostly. We want to be on our way to Disneyland by 3:00. DH and I really don't think we'll spend much more time past that in Hollywood anyway. Hollywood is a strange place. There's a few blocks that are nice but go past that and it's pretty seedy. Besides, there's really not that much there that a 11 year old boy is going to find interesting for more than a couple hours at most. DH wants to go back to the La Brea Tar Pits too.
DH and I have been looking forward to this part for months. Keeping this a secret from DS has been tough. We figure we won't even tell him where we're going. We just want to see how long it takes him to figure it out. We're guessing it won't be until he sees a sign for Disneyland. Then again he doesn't pay that much attention out the windows anyway so it could take a good long while for him to notice.
We need to check in to Disneyland hotel, then return our rental car. We're using Alamo so their office is right nearby.
We have dinner reservations at Goofy's Kitchen at 7:00. No park today. We figure we can wander Downtown Disney and just hang at the hotel. We have an early start too so this way we're guaranteed to get to bed at a decent time.
Thurs March 31 Disneyland Park - park hours 9:00am-12:00am
Magic Morning hours are at 8:00am. They have pretty long hours the whole time we're there since it's spring break time. Fireworks are at 8:45 and there are 2 Fantasmic's - 9:05 and 10:15. I'm hoping to catch the second one. We'll stay as late as DS can hang. He'll be 11 by then so it's not like when he was 8 and wore out.
Friday Apr 1 California Adventure park hours 10:00am - 10pm
I think we'll probably grab a fastpass for WOC since we can line up early being Disney hotel guests. I want to catch the Visa Meet n Greet and that's between 10:30 and 12:00. World of Color is shown at 9:00 and 10:15. Again I'd like to catch the later one but I'm not sure how this works if you're getting a fastpass.
Saturday Apr 2
We'll go to whatever park we feel like or, more likely, both. The park hours are the same as the past few days. I imagine we'll end up at DL since they're open later.
Sunday Apr 3 Departure day
Our flight leaves at 10:45. That way we won't have to be up at 6:00am.
So that about covers it! Whew! We always seem to need a vacation to recover from our vacations. I ordered our Disney Visa rewards card. I also started to pick up things we need like coffee filter pods, little coffemate packs, etc. I managed to find a new swimsuit - that both fits and I actually like - at the first store I went to! I have a really hard time finding one that I like and fits ok. I hate that most of them have the strap that goes around the back of your neck. If you happen to be, shall we say one of the endowed, those straps kill your neck after about an hour. We still need to pick up DH new swim trunks. His must have shrunk
Oh and the best news! One of my co-workers needed to trade some shifts in April. She has a wedding out of state to go to. So I traded one of her later April shifts for my Monday, April 4! The day after we get back! I normally work Mon, Thurs, and Sun so by getting that Monday off, I just extended my 'vacation' by 3 days! Really it will be nice to have 3 days to get laundry done, grocery shop, and all those other fun little errands you have to do when you get back from a trip.
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.
Wed May 30 The 'Disney Surprise' reveal day!
So DS thinks we're leaving for home today. Our plan is to check out then drive down to Hollywood for the day. We might stop by Santa Monica again, it depends on time mostly. We want to be on our way to Disneyland by 3:00. DH and I really don't think we'll spend much more time past that in Hollywood anyway. Hollywood is a strange place. There's a few blocks that are nice but go past that and it's pretty seedy. Besides, there's really not that much there that a 11 year old boy is going to find interesting for more than a couple hours at most. DH wants to go back to the La Brea Tar Pits too.
If you are going to be in Hollywood you need to visit a little known Disney Property. It is called "Disney's Soda Fountain and Studio Store at 6934 Hollywood Blvd. Next door to the El Capitan Theatre (Also Disney owned) and across the street from the world famous KODAK Theatre home of the Oscars.
BTW, Is it MAY or MARCH that you are going? You have May listed for most of your trip, fall back to Mar and then on into Apr. Just asking and rubbing it in. Only goes to show how excited you are that the trip is around the corner. LOL
If you are going to be in Hollywood you need to visit a little known Disney Property. It is called "Disney's Soda Fountain and Studio Store at 6934 Hollywood Blvd. Next door to the El Capitan Theatre (Also Disney owned) and across the street from the world famous KODAK Theatre home of the Oscars.
BTW, Is it MAY or MARCH that you are going? You have May listed for most of your trip, fall back to Mar and then on into Apr. Just asking and rubbing it in. Only goes to show how excited you are that the trip is around the corner. LOL
Oops! It's March. I'll have to go fix that. It's because I just booked a hotel in Maryland over Memorial Day weekend for a wedding. I have May on the brain.
I read about that store and forgot all about it. It's definitely getting added to the list.
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.
As for the halter style bathing suit, I also hate that style, but I took the styles and then made them into normal straps..over the shoulder. ANd it worked. It was a little DIY project I did.
Mares75, I'm thrilled to read that you're also going to Hearst Castle! We're not going on our trip until May, but will be heading to San Luis Obispo in early June, after our DL portion of the trip....have been there years ago, (just me) now I'm thrilled to be able to take the family! We're taking Amtrak up that way and spending a couple of nights and then heading back to the Anaheim area. Your whole trip sounds exciting!
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.
We can finally say we leave this week! A whole week of no cooking or doing laundry, no work, no helping with homework!!
We've been so busy around here I haven't had time to update and all kinds of fun stuff has been going on.
First off, last weekend was DS's birthday party bash. Saturday he had his very first friends only party at a laser tag place. He invited almost all girls! He is 11 after all. Then Sunday we had the families over to our place for our birthday party. It's so hectic to get everyone together because DH's family is spread out. It even involves picking up people from train stations. Plus I had to make a cake for here and cupcakes for the Saturday party.
In the meantime, I got this box from UPS not having a clue what it was and it was all our stuff from Disney! This is our first time booking a trip with our Disney Visa and holy cow! I wasn't expecting all the stuff:
* Disneyland backpack - really cute by the way
* Tickets
* Photopass card - it says to pre-register to receive offers after your vacation
* World of Color luggage tags - really heavy duty plastic ones
* Vouchers for pin and lanyard, 1 for everybody
* Preferred seating vouchers for Aladdin, MuppetVision 3D, ITTBAB, and the Animation Academy
*Vouchers for Mickey's Toontown Morning Madness - since there aren't any parades in MK right now, instead of the preferred parade seating, they gave us an extra set of these.
Last night DH wanted to pull out the luggage and see what we're going to use. SW killed my bigger suitcase on our honeymoon so we're down to 1 large and a bunch of the smaller sizes. We have to pay luggage fees so we're trying to see what's the cheapest way to do it. We finally decided to just get another large suitcase. It's not like we won't use it and I for one don't want to have to go through this luggage mess every time we go somewhere.
The weather now is saying 75 to 80 when we're at DL. We decided to toss in a pair of shorts for everyone just in case. Don't ask me why neither of us thought if DH's swim trunks didn't fit anymore, his shorts probably don't either. Then he says he should probably get a new pair of shoes too. Keep in mind I've been bugging him for 2 weeks, did he need to get anything. I reminded him all last week that this past Sat was our last weekend day to get whatever we needed. I work on Sundays, so Saturday is our only weekend day to do things. So of course he decides Sunday night he needs all this stuff. Looks like we'll be making a trip to the stores tomorrow night. Sometime this week I need to dig through DS's room while he's at school to find his pins. We want to take them with so he can trade with them if he wants but we have to do it without him noticing. We also have to keep all the Disney info, pins, etc hidden during the entire first half of our vacation. This could be tricky.
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.
About This Page: 
PassPorter Guide Author
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
I have a really hard time finding one that I like and fits ok. I hate that most of them have the strap that goes around the back of your neck. If you happen to be, shall we say one of the endowed, those straps kill your neck after about an hour. We still need to pick up DH new swim trunks. His must have shrunk 
It's because I just booked a hotel in Maryland over Memorial Day weekend for a wedding. I have May on the brain.
He is 11 after all. Then Sunday we had the families over to our place for our birthday party. It's so hectic to get everyone together because DH's family is spread out. It even involves picking up people from train stations. Plus I had to make a cake for here and cupcakes for the Saturday party.
Then he says he should probably get a new pair of shoes too. 
Keep in mind I've been bugging him for 2 weeks, did he need to get anything. I reminded him all last week that this past Sat was our last weekend day to get whatever we needed. I work on Sundays, so Saturday is our only weekend day to do things. So of course he decides Sunday night he needs all this stuff. Looks like we'll be making a trip to the stores tomorrow night. Sometime this week I need to dig through DS's room while he's at school to find his pins. We want to take them with so he can trade with them if he wants but we have to do it without him noticing. We also have to keep all the Disney info, pins, etc hidden during the entire first half of our vacation. This could be tricky.
Linear Mode
