From no trip to celebrating 20 years together… planning it all in less than 100 days! UPDATED 6/30 - Page 33 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Glad you finally got your luggage. That happened to us once during a split stay and I ended up having to buy my kids swim suits at the Poly so they could go swimming and not wait around for the luggage to arrive.
Oh that is just crazy!
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What a nice picture of you and Mark. Brice looks wonderful!
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Beautiful photos outside. So glad you got someone to get a pic of the two of you - it's a cute one!
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Dinner sounded delicious. I guess pasta dishes are hard to present? I don't know, but lasagna is lasagna. I'm not sure I've ever seen it look any fancier than it is!
True. It's just when you're paying a lot of money for a lasagne, you just expect fancier presentation.
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The Portofino Resort looks so well themed as I remember this from Tara's TR and how much she and Muffin loved it! BICE, although on the high end looks great with the only blemishes being some presentation issues plus not giving you enough sauce on some of your dishes. You can always ask you waiter to bring more. I will definitely be adding this to my October trip.
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
I remember that one from when you were in Portsmouth and we had dinner at Jumpin'Jay's. Definitely time for a replacement, then!
It's not that old. Mark got it for me in Disneyland in September 2015, so that is my only disappointment with it. I would've hoped it would last longer. Don't get me wrong, it's still going, but it's not looking in good shape....
The Portofino Resort looks so well themed as I remember this from Tara's TR and how much she and Muffin loved it!
I was so excited to see all her photos of the resort, as it's not something you often see photos of.
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BICE, although on the high end looks great with the only blemishes being some presentation issues plus not giving you enough sauce on some of your dishes. You can always ask you waiter to bring more. I will definitely be adding this to my October trip.
It's a superb restaurant and I can thoroughly recommend it and, if I remember right, Tara did too.
I'm trying to catch up on TRs...I just checked the dates of this trip...I was at WDW on the days you were on the cruise!
I just saw you were in WDW and I was wondering if you were there the same time as us. Thank goodness you weren't, otherwise I'd have been really sad that we missed you.
Monday 27 February – part eight: where is everyone?
When we finished dinner, we went for a walk around the resort, just exploring, and honestly, we were blown away with the theming everywhere. We did assume that once we left the harbour piazza area, then that would be it with the theming, but not a bit of it. It was everywhere.
We made our way up to the lobby, and again, we stood there, just amazed at what we were seeing, but also amazed, as there was just no-one around. Where the heck was everyone?
We eventually headed back to get the car from valet, and I asked the one guy working (that’s how quiet it was! ) why it was so quiet, and he said that the hotel was really dead right now, but would be picking up towards the end of the week. I would so love to stay in a place that’s this quiet, as we really did feel that we had the place to ourselves, as we wandered around.
We both absolutely fell in love with Loews Portofino Bay. The theming absolutely blew us away, and we’d both happily stay here, even though it costs a small fortune.
We decided to go and check out the Hard Rock Hotel on our way out to see what we made of that. We figured we wouldn’t be as impressed, and we were right. Don’t get me wrong, again the theming is very well done, but it’s just not us.
We were able to park up just for five minutes to go inside and have a nosey around, and Mark tipped the guy who let us, as he didn’t have to do that, and he was very grateful.
Now the only downside was that we were hoping to meet up with Jennifer (jenseib) tonight, but we got into Bice early, so finished our meal early, and then we were literally only given five minutes at the Hard Rock, so I messaged to let her know that sadly it wasn’t going to work out. I am so sorry we missed seeing her, as I’ve really wanted to meet her for so long. Even worse, it then transpired after I put a photo on Facebook that she’d been at Portofino Bay at the same time we had. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be this trip.
We made our way back to the BoardWalk, and once there, we headed down to the shop to try and find some breakfast items. Good grief Disney, what are you doing with the selection of breakfast items? It really is becoming pathetic frankly. We managed to find some cinnamon buns, so got those, and some milk for our tea, and that was it.
We then made our way back to the room, and crashed literally as soon as we got through the door. It had been another long day.
The weather today was hot and sunny with some clouds and temperatures in the mid 80s. The best thing today was visiting Portofino Bay. The worst thing today was the mess up with our cases at the BoardWalk. Today we tried eating at Tiffin’s And the result was we were very impressed. It’s a great addition to the park. The most magical moment today was seeing the Portofino Bay at twilight.
That's like classical vs. rock n roll. Comparing apples to oranges! They're both very well done, but not to everybody's taste. It is very cool that you could get so many photos without people in them though! Portofino is done with great detail indeed, wow! I can't imagine anyone not enjoying their time spent there.
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Tanya
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