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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Great maternity photos!! Your daughter is beautiful! And she looks so much like you I LOVE the Splash Mountain pics! It's nice to actually be able to read what the words say at the end since they've touched up the paint lol
Great photos! We love Splash Mountain, but honestly...we've only ridden it twice. Since we typically go in the fall/winter, getting wet and cold is not a fun option! lol.
I just hate walking around in wet clothes!
Quote:
Originally Posted by pamcarey
Great pictures from Splash! One of my very favorite rides, as long as I don't get super wet. Honestly, I don't mind the amount of wet you get just from going down the hill, but I HATE that sometimes they have water cannons to get you super wet. Totally unnecessary, in my book.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Love all your photos as you were going around Splash!
Quote:
Originally Posted by disneydreamer33
Love all your photos from Splash. What kind of camera do you have?
I don't like getting wet either, I always hope the water cannons at the beginning miss me. Never know at the end though!
I have a canon 50D....but I have several lenses. I used mainly 2 different ones this trip though and I was pretty happy with both of them...though by the end, one had some issues.
I hate all those extra water spots too. Originally the ride didn't get you wet hardly at all and people wanted to get wetter....so I read so they added more things to get you wet. It had to be kids....because what adult wants to get wet?
Quote:
Originally Posted by lfredsbo
I am with you on the loving Splash - but not the getting wet part - and somehow I ALWAYS forget to sit on the left side to avoid that last area with the waterfall!
Love the maternity photos!!! Saw some of them on FB! Your daughter is absolutely beautiful and glowing!
I always forget about till I am there and I am always on the right side for some dumb reason.
thanks! She is pretty happy with them. She doesn't want me to post too many on facebook so I have been refraining. We are going to use at least 1 shot for her shower thank you cards, but we have decided which one yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Great maternity pictures! I feel almost like I've ridden Splash with you all as your pictures are a perfect account of the ride.
Your pix on Splash are great. Did you use your DSLR or the smaller waterproof camera? They look like the big camera.
Yep, I used the DSLR!
Quote:
Originally Posted by kingfamily1129
Great maternity photos!! Your daughter is beautiful! And she looks so much like you I LOVE the Splash Mountain pics! It's nice to actually be able to read what the words say at the end since they've touched up the paint lol
Thanks! She does look a lot like me. As a kid she looked more like her dad but as she has grown older I see more of me now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mpwife153
Just caught up on your TR. Great pictures of your trip.
We had some time before our first FP+ of the day so we wandered through Old Fantasyland.
And Claire does love It’s a Small World, so we had to make a stop there.
The line was long…and was not very fast moving either.
Finally we made it onto our boat.
I love when I get shots like this next one.
And continuing with more Small World pics.
My favorite room has always been the white and blue room…even as a kid.
And now Claire was happy and we went back out to the crowded park.
I was sure excited to see this…..The only time I had seen the new Fantasyland was back in 2012 for previews during the Halloween and Christmas parties…so this was my first time seeing it in the daylight.
And there she is! The Mine Train….which at this time was still not up and running. I had really hoped they would be doing soft openings for our trip and many rumor boards had predicted they might….but as it came closer to the trip, I lost hope. My Dad did see them run an empty car a time or two, but I never did.
Wow, it doesn't seem possible that you haven't seen New Fantasyland since 2012! It seems like you have more trips than that. It must have been great to see it with the construction walls down.
How lovely to finally see those construction walls down by the Mine Train, even if it wasn't running when you were there...
It was exciting to see the walls down and get a pretty good look at it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Great pics of it's a small world! We had had the same hope in May for a soft opening of SDMT, but that didn't happen for us either.
I had heard from very good sources that March would have soft openings, but then I think they had more issues with the ride and had to push it back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pamcarey
Wow, it doesn't seem possible that you haven't seen New Fantasyland since 2012! It seems like you have more trips than that. It must have been great to see it with the construction walls down.
I know! But it did take me a year to write that TR. LOL. I only went to Williamsburg last year and a weekend trip to my sisters.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MayraLR
Very lovely pictures of Paige!
I agree, the Tangled restroom area is very pretty. I find it even prettier at night.
I always have to make room in my itinerary for It's a small world. But I usually do it at night when the lines are not so long.
We did have better luck with some things at night, but it was still pretty busy...and then we really seemed to get tired more this trip too.
We were now on our way to our first FP+ of the day.
Warning…I took a lot of pictures of the Mermaid area over the week.
I was just so excited to see this in daylight. So different looking in daylight compared to the night shots I got 1 1/2 years ago.
We got in the queue and it moved fairly fast, though if I remember right, we did pause for a bit.
The FP+ line does miss all the neat things in the queue though….and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out where the standbye line merged with the FP+ line.
Soon we were in our clam-mobile and I took a few pictures on the ride, but since I had just rode the Disneyland version about a month ago and they are pretty much the same ride, I didn’t take a ton.
Ok…maybe I took more than I thought I did. LOL.
And a few more Little Mermaid shots.
Claire was a happy camper…she just loves Ariel and loves this new ride. We headed out and I once again made her get her picture taken.
And then went on to take several more pictures of Eric’s castle.
I was now needing a little snack…after all at Disney World it is important to try and snack as much as possible and keep your energy flow up, so we headed towards Gaston’s.
For some reason I can never pick the right line in here. Last time we came, which was the preview time during the Halloween party we came in for a quick bite to eat and I picked the longest line ever with a CM that didn’t know what she was doing. I picked the same type of line today and it took forever to get up to order. Claire wasn’t too hungry and said she didn’t need anything. I decided to order the hummus and chips.
We also got something to drink, probably diet coke, and we found a table to sit at.
Claire ate a few of the pretzels but she is not a fan of hummus. Actually she would’ve eaten ALL the pretzels if I had let her, but I reminded her she wasn’t hungry (once again she was a little liar) and that I needed the chips for the hummus as I wasn’t about to eat it by the spoonful.
It was good, but a little pricey for what you got. I could have used about double the amount of pretzel chips. It didn’t fill us up, but it was enough to keep me from turning into a crazy monster…and that is always a good thing.
We headed back out then.
I think we may have checked out the shop right there since we had not seen it when we did the preview in 2012.
And off we went again.
I know some of you are smokers, though these days you don’t want to admit it for fear of attack…LOL….but yes there are a lot of smokers that go to Disney World and the smoking area used to be to the left of the castle, but guess what? It’s gone due to construction. Of course they moved it, but where? And I was really shocked when I saw where it ended up at.
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I LOVE the Splash Mountain pics! It's nice to actually be able to read what the words say at the end since they've touched up the paint lol
the maternity photos!!! Saw some of them on FB! Your daughter is absolutely beautiful and glowing!
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Dreams, Wishes, Hopes... these are the parts of childhood we should never lose.
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