Dreaming of a Disney spring break! THIS SECTION COMPLETED - Page 6 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Wow, Wow, Wow
Your plans are AMAZING, I am so jealous you will be able to spend so much time at WDW and a cruise!
I love reading your trip reports and am SOO excited about this one!
I hope you have a wonderful time
Wow!!! That is all I can say Cheryl. I don't know how you keep up with all that. LOL I think it is a great idea to get away from the crowds for a day or so. St. Augustine is very nice, lots of history. Sarasota.......hmmmmm, it has been years but there is not much there that I remember. You could go to the beach but that is about it. It may have changed though over the years. I am glad everything seems to be falling into place for you. Can't wait to see what your final plans are. I remember when they were doing the upgrades, what a nightmare and people were wondering if their ADR's were still there. I believe your trip just started so I hope you are having a blast.
Wow!!! That is all I can say Cheryl. I don't know how you keep up with all that. LOL I think it is a great idea to get away from the crowds for a day or so. St. Augustine is very nice, lots of history. Sarasota.......hmmmmm, it has been years but there is not much there that I remember. You could go to the beach but that is about it. It may have changed though over the years. I am glad everything seems to be falling into place for you. Can't wait to see what your final plans are. I remember when they were doing the upgrades, what a nightmare and people were wondering if their ADR's were still there. I believe your trip just started so I hope you are having a blast.
Sadly not yet... We have a few more days to wait yet!
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It's absolutely amazing how well all of that came together--I can't imagine trying to figure out all of those reservations for one trip! Are we there yet?
It's absolutely amazing how well all of that came together--I can't imagine trying to figure out all of those reservations for one trip! Are we there yet?
Pre-trip report – part five: all I want to do is book the rest of our ADRs!
Soon it was time to book the rest of our ADRs for our trip, but for those of you who were trying to book dining in mid October, you probably already know what a comedy of errors resulted from the first upgrade that Disney tried to do to the system. Things really were not working well. I’d already mentioned the fact that the system couldn’t find anyone’s reservations but when my 180 day came to book, the system wouldn’t let me put in my reservation number to get the next 10 days’ worth of dining sorted at the same time. Instead, I got a message to call. I debated and decided I would call, as I just wanted to get them out of the way by now.
I dutifully called WDW-DINE as soon as it was cheap rate for calls here, as of course it’s an international call for us. I spoke to a very nice Cast Member, who informed me almost immediately that because of “enhancements to their system” (problems, more like! ) they would have to book each reservation, put it in the basket and then check it out, before they could do the next. I probably had about 10 I wanted to make, change or cancel, so I just politely told her that I’d wait until tomorrow and hope that the latest upgrade did the trick and I could book then.
Of course, you can guess the next bit... the next day rolls around and I log on. Exactly the same issues as the previous few days. You can’t retrieve any of your reservations and you can’t book more than 180 days out online. I made do and literally logged on every day for the next few days to make all the remaining bookings we needed. Not ideal, but we got there in the end.
By the time we’d finished, I’d added the following into our schedule:
Mama Melrose’s (lunch)
Yachtsman Steakhouse (dinner with Elaine and Keith)
Rose and Crown (lunch)
Tutto Italia (dinner with Gemma and her husband)
Sanaa (dinner with Bruce and Marta)
Tokyo Dining (dinner) new to us this trip
Around this time, we could also start booking other things. I’d discovered that you could actually book tickets for Cirque du Soleil’s La Nouba at a much earlier stage than 180 days out. Even at the very beginning of October, tickets were on sale for the whole month of April, so I did some looking around to see which performance on which day might suit us and what sort of seats were available. We prefer the earlier time, as then we can go on to get dinner afterwards, but after a lot of consideration, I figured perhaps we’d go for a late lunch, as I fancied going back to Fulton’s Crab House, not having been there since 2004 now but I didn’t want to pay the dinner prices there if I could avoid it
It worked out that Good Friday worked well for us and the seats were pretty good for that performance, so that’s the one I plumped for. We went for the same category of seats as last time – category 2, simply because the seats we’d had before we were fine and I couldn’t see the point in paying out more money for either the front and center seat or category 1 seats. We love Cirque du Soleil and have seen a lot of their shows and we’re not afraid to pay out for good seats, but I do think the pricing of La Nouba has got a bit out of hand now. It probably doesn’t help that the exchange rate isn’t as good as it once was and that’s no doubt had an impact on our perceptions. We got two seats in category 203, in row E, which is the very first row of the category 2 seating. Even better, these seats are right at the front of the block, as they’re above one of the entrances into the theatre, so that worked out perfectly.
We also started to think about behind the scenes tours and, in particular, the Wilderness Back Trail Adventure at Fort Wilderness that we were looking at doing with Ben and Josh on our first full day in Disney. Wendy very kindly offered to book them for us and I took her up on the offer, which was very kind, with the promise that we’d pay for their meal at the Cape May Cafe on the first night we’d see them, as our way of paying her back. She’s a gem like that and it certainly made that month’s credit card bill a bit easier, especially with Christmas fast approaching and a number of tours to book and pay for, for our January trip to Egypt.
A little time went past and it was while researching updates to my PassPorter’s Walt Disney World for British Holidaymakers (heck, may as well give it a plug here... ) that I found the perfect Christmas present for Mark. To explain, I have to backtrack a little. I think, in total, he’s now done the Around the World on a Segway tour three times. I’ve joined him on two of those occasions and enjoyed it a lot more the second time around. Let’s just say that an unfortunate incident, in which he managed to knock me off my Segway the first time didn’t help my confidence much. : For this birthday in 2010, I decided to get him a Segway tour around Madrid, which he loved. Seeing the smile on his face in the photos we got showed just what a fan he is of these things.
When I discovered that there was another Segway tour that I hadn’t realised existed over at Epcot, called the Nature Inspired Design Segway tour, I immediately thought “that will make a perfect Christmas present for him!” Of course, he already knew that we were taking the one at Fort Wilderness, so it wasn’t like he was going to be bugging me to do one, but imagine his face when he found out he was doing a second one, just a few days later! The only problem I had was waiting to make the call to Disney to get it booked when he was out of the house, but finally the opportunity arose and I went ahead and booked it for the first Wednesday we were there. I had to time it carefully in with our other plans, as obviously we had a fair few lunch and dinner plans already. It fell on a day when we would be lunching at Epcot anyway, so that worked out really well for us.
I have to be honest though, researching backstage tours at Disney is dangerous, as you always come across even more to try out! I’d been keen on the new Wild Africa Trek at Animal Kingdom, when it was first advertised, but when more details came out, it became clear it was a little more active than I liked the look of, so I quickly forgot about that one. However, on doing some research, I came across the Gardens of the World tour at Epcot, which we had enjoyed a few years ago. Hmmm... that was a possible then. The next thing I saw I think I fell in love with immediately. It was a tour called Inspiration: Through Walt’s Eyes, based at the Studios, but it also included time at the Magic Kingdom in the Utilidors, which had been one of our favourite bits of the Keys to the Kingdom tour. It wasn’t cheap at $99 per person, but I immediately had a look to see if we had any free time on a Monday, Friday or Sunday, the only days that the tour ran, and identified a day that we could do it. Now if we had enough money between now and departure day, then I could go ahead and book it.... time to start saving!
For the next few weeks, we didn’t do much else, as all our meal plans were made, and there wasn’t much more to do. By late November, I logged on to the Disney Cruise Line website to check our reservations. I knew, when we’d booked it, that Sara had told us that the longer time went on, and we didn’t have a room number, the better our chances of getting an upgrade. Those hopes went out of the window that day, when I saw that we were in a category 10A room (which is what we’d booked), complete with a room number, 6669. A bit of searching around revealed that this was on deck 6, right next to the elevators. It didn’t seem like a terrible position, but equally it wasn’t superb either.
I really didn’t know how to feel about this. Part of me was delighted that we would get a virtual porthole, and I knew that those were incredibly sought after, so we were very lucky, but equally, I was hoping to get an upgrade. I guess part of that is because usually we cruise using our DVC points, and when we do that, the chances of getting an upgrade are pretty much non-existent. An upgrade would certainly have been nice, but equally, I couldn’t complain about what we had got. : We were going to be on the Dream, and that was the main thing!
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Pixie Dust
I believe your trip just started so I hope you are having a blast. 
,
PassPorter Guide Author
We have a few more days to wait yet! 
Nearly! 
but when my 180 day came to book, the system wouldn’t let me put in my reservation number to get the next 10 days’ worth of dining sorted at the same time. Instead, I got a message to call. I debated and decided I would call, as I just wanted to get them out of the way by now. 
but I didn’t want to pay the dinner prices there if I could avoid it 
: For this birthday in 2010, I decided to get him a Segway tour around Madrid, which he loved. Seeing the smile on his face in the photos we got showed just what a fan he is of these things. 
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