A special birthday, a diamond anniversary and a west coast adventure COMPLETED IN THIS FORUM 12/2 - Page 10 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I only go to the DVC mixers now for: a) FREE ALCOHOL and b) an attempt to win some cool DVC merchandise (which I never have) and c) for the hat (which this time was the Tervis-type mug). While I'd love to add on somewhere, I've been forbidden from doing so until the kids are out of college... I'd need a pretty big incentive to buy at Aulani, as I think the annual fees would be too steep (but I haven't really looked to see if that's true!).
You didn't mention - were they giving out the mugs and free drinks?
It is always surprising how long some people stay in the hot tub. I've often thought about throwing in a carrot and some onions, as they seem to think they're making stock!
We only had one time where we were in Cove Cafe and a very loud group came in. I think with them it was more a case of the batteries being out on their hearing aids... or they just didn't realize they needed hearing aids! They "whispered" in that way my gran used to - where you could actually hear her from a mile away!
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Hardcore DVC sales on the ship! They must be desperate. Did they offer anything for attending, a drink perhaps?
Yes, in fairness, we got free drinks, but it's not really enough for a hard sell and not when we had the gold and platinum member reception later, as we'd get more free drinks then, so free drinks weren't that big a deal for us...
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Score on the shopping! You were right - they had more shirts in stock.
The photos are crazy - that weather is crazy! I tell ya, Amaretto and hot chocolate and the changing scenery... sounds perfect.
You just really could not make up the weather on this day!
Glad you found some Alaskan merchandise. That was the sad thing on the NCL ship. They didn't have anything cute and not much of what they did have. They really were more geared to sell perfume, jewelry and alcohol.
I've been to two DVC member presentations on DCL and both were so boring I could hardly stay in my seat. I don't know what I expected, but it seemed like such a waste of time when you've got the whole ship to explore. I never went to another one. Glad the skies have cleared!
I only go to the DVC mixers now for: a) FREE ALCOHOL and b) an attempt to win some cool DVC merchandise (which I never have) and c) for the hat (which this time was the Tervis-type mug).
If it makes you feel any better, we've never won any cool merchandise either.
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While I'd love to add on somewhere, I've been forbidden from doing so until the kids are out of college...
Oh that's classic!
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I'd need a pretty big incentive to buy at Aulani, as I think the annual fees would be too steep (but I haven't really looked to see if that's true!).
Aulani isn't for us - it's just too pricey to visit regularly enough to justify a purchase there....
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You didn't mention - were they giving out the mugs and free drinks?
Not that I saw.
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It is always surprising how long some people stay in the hot tub. I've often thought about throwing in a carrot and some onions, as they seem to think they're making stock!
Love it!
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We only had one time where we were in Cove Cafe and a very loud group came in. I think with them it was more a case of the batteries being out on their hearing aids... or they just didn't realize they needed hearing aids! They "whispered" in that way my gran used to - where you could actually hear her from a mile away!
Tuesday 1 September – part four: not what we expected
Just before 11:30am, we headed downstairs to the gold and platinum Castaway Club members’ reception. We saw Tom and Rhonda there, and we were a bit surprised, given she’d told us she’d only done four cruises to date. We heard her tell one of the officers that, so how they got in when they weren’t actually gold members, I wasn’t quite sure.
I’ll be brutal here. I was really, really disappointed with this reception. On the last couple, we’ve had drinks….
….and food, which we got:
However, we also had a character meet and greet, and this time we had nothing. No Captain Mickey, no Minnie, as we had on the Dream, absolutely nada. Not what I was expecting at all. Now, having said that, Mark did comment that we looked like the youngest people there, and there wasn’t a single family there, so maybe that was why, but I was really disappointed. I wasn’t the only one. We got talking to a couple from the same part of the UK as us, who were on their 40th cruise, having spent a total of 378 nights on Disney cruises, most of it in the last three and a half years. They were also staying on for the Hawaiian cruise. We asked them about the lack of characters, and they told us they’d never come across that before, and would be complaining. I don’t blame them.
We were only spoken to briefly by one of the officers, a very nice guy from Crotia, who answered Mark’s question about how much weight had been added to the ship over the years by adding more and more layers of paint – although of course I can’t remember the answer now but it was staggering. We were bypassed by about three other officers, including cruise director Clayton, who did a great job of ignoring us twice. We were not impressed.
Now had it been our first Castaway Club reception, I’d have probably still enjoyed it, but it wasn’t, and this bore no resemblance to the quality of the other two we’ve made it to so far.
A bit disappointed, we headed out towards the aft elevators, which are packed with Route 66 theming everywhere.
We made our way up to the spa to go to the Rainforest. Here was another disappointment. Instead of being able to select which body scrubs you wanted, you were just handed a pack. You got four, and could apparently pick number five, but that was it. It was very annoying, given that I knew which one I liked (lavender) and I wanted to stock back up on it.
That disappointment aside, it was very enjoyable in the Rainforest. There were three other people in there when we arrived, but one was in the sauna, so there were two hot stone chairs empty, which we grabbed, and settled down to do a bit of reading.
The place then emptied out and we were the only ones left, so I didn’t mind leaving my stuff on the hot stone chairs while trying out all of the showers. They’re not as much as fun as the Dream or Fantasy, but then again, we are talking over 10 years difference in technology, so I guess that’s only to be expected. I did find they were all either very hot or very cold, there didn’t seem to be any in between middle ground anywhere.
I went into the mild steam room twice, which is never mild. I can never endure more than a couple of minutes in there. Sadly, the aromatic steam room was out of service, because you opened the door, and it wasn’t even remotely warm.
I went into the sauna for a bit as well, before heading back to claim my chair and finish reading the chapter of my book. Then I headed off to shower and change, mainly because I remembered the shower being better than in the room ( ), and the hairdryer being better ( ) – it was pitiful, so I left with wet hair, with a very important appointment with Olaf shortly…
When I got back to the room, I got some photos of the scenery outside:
We headed down to Studio Sea at 2:15pm, our appointed time, and I have to say they did a great job of theming it to Frozen.
We met Anna and Elsa first…
… then saw Olaf and introduced him to Hawaiian Olaf.
It was very cool (scuse the pun! ) meeting him, especially as I don’t know anywhere else you can meet him right now, which is a shame, as he’s a great character. I hope when the rehab of Norway is done that perhaps they can just squeeze in a little meet and greet with a cute snowman, maybe?
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I'd need a pretty big incentive to buy at Aulani, as I think the annual fees would be too steep (but I haven't really looked to see if that's true!). 
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We asked them about the lack of characters, and they told us they’d never come across that before, and would be complaining. I don’t blame them. 
but it was staggering. We were bypassed by about three other officers, including cruise director Clayton, who did a great job of ignoring us twice. We were not impressed. 
), and the hairdryer being better (
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