From no trip to celebrating 20 years together… planning it all in less than 100 days! UPDATED 6/30 - Page 61 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Thursday 2 March – part six: somewhere we’ve never had to visit in all our Disney trips….
We carried on walking…
… and headed here:
Here, we got the sugar-cane shrimp skewer with steamed rice, and coconut-rice sauce. Mark tried a bit, and told me it was quite spicy (seems to be a theme with him today… ) so I opted to try a bit with less sauce on, and it was fine, but I left the rest to him.
We also got the Caribbean conch salad with avocado, mango and onions, which I had the majority of, which was very tasty, although a few too many onions for my liking. I wish it had come without if the truth be told…
Once we’d finished eating those, we headed to somewhere we’ve fortunately never had to visit in all the years we’ve been coming to Disney, but today we needed to. I wanted some antiseptic wipes for the second insect bite I’d acquired (the first was on my left ankle and just to even it up, the second was on my right ankle ) as it had been weeping. I wanted to clean it up before I applied some antiseptic cream on it. The guy seemed very surprised that was all I needed, and that I had the cream with me. He even offered me a Band-Aid, but I refused, saying I understood it was better to let the air get to it. Hark at me – it sounds as if I know what I’m doing with these things…
Just as we were getting a drink at the water fountain they have in here, a lady called Cheryl from Rhode Island came out to check we were Ok and had been seen to, and we ended up chatting to her for some time. She was so lovely, and to think I only struck up a conversation with her because I share my name with her!
When we came out, the sun had mercifully gone behind a cloud, which was a relief, as my left arm was starting to go red, and I figured the factor 100 suntan lotion was probably starting to wear a bit thin.
We made our way around World Showcase, with me stopping to photograph the topiaries, as I noticed that they had put in some signs to explain more about them, which they hadn’t had the other night.
When we got to Germany, we browsed one of the many Flower and Garden Festival outlets, and I got a T-shirt, along with a fridge magnet. Now these you have to be careful of, as they do carry different merchandise (unlike the main stores, which are now sickeningly similar these days ), so if you see one, don’t assume that’s all there is, as there may well be other merchandise elsewhere…
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How nice to have equal bug bites. Is that first aid inside the Odyssey building? I'm thinking it is. At least it was probably a nice air conditioned break.
Gosh how I love Epcot this time of year! The flowers everywhere just bring it to life. I need to go back sometime in the spring, your pictures are so inviting!
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Tanya
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How nice to have equal bug bites. Is that first aid inside the Odyssey building? I'm thinking it is. At least it was probably a nice air conditioned break.
Yes, that's where it is and it was lovely to get into the air conditioning for a while.
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Gosh how I love Epcot this time of year! The flowers everywhere just bring it to life. I need to go back sometime in the spring, your pictures are so inviting!
Nice photos in Epcot of the topiaries and all the beautiful floral displays! Looks like you enjoyed some nice eats at the festival! Too bad Disney isn't managing the lines well to get them to move along better.
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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!
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Nice photos in Epcot of the topiaries and all the beautiful floral displays! Looks like you enjoyed some nice eats at the festival! Too bad Disney isn't managing the lines well to get them to move along better.
No and sadly that was very much a theme of this whole trip. It's something that we didn't enjoy and I must admit, going forward, more than ever, I'll be looking to go to Disney outside of peak crowds, as otherwise you just don't get much done outside of the Fastpass+ you've booked for the day.
Thursday 2 March – part seven: trying to keep cool…
We browsed the shops in Germany, as we wanted a Riesling spatlese that we can only get here. Annoyingly, they didn’t have it. They had another spatlese, but when we spoke to the girl at the counter, she recommended another Riesling. We bought a bottle, and figured we’d try it out on the cruise, and if we liked it, we could always buy some more…
We carried on walking…
… but I stopped here…
… to get a strawberry tiramisu, made up of ladyfingers, mascarpone cream and marinated strawberries topped with strawberry sauce.
It was very nice, and I’m really glad I got it. I was going to get a Rossini as well, which is sparkling wine and marinated strawberries, but thought better of it, as I remembered we had alcohol included in the Star Wars dessert party, so heck, we may as well enjoy what we’ve already paid for, instead of paying more, right?
We settled down in Italy on a seat in the shade, so I could enjoy my tiramisu, and then eventually reluctantly got up. The heat was intense by now, and I was doing everything I could to keep out of the sun, as I didn’t want to burn.
We got to the American Adventure, and Mark had the pulled pig slider with coleslaw from the Smokehouse: Barbecue and Brews. I lucked out and found another seat in the shade, so we sat there, while he sort of enjoyed it. I could tell from his face that he didn’t think much of it, and sadly I was right.
While there, we watched grandparents with their two granddaughters trying to put the right characters into the right country as part of the Easter egg hunt they’re running for the first part of the festival anyway. Whether it will continue after Easter, I don’t know. We got chatting to them, and they were asking if there was anywhere else to eat, as one of the kids wanted a hot dog, and straight away, I was like “yep, Liberty Inn just down there”. This wasn’t the first time I’d done that.
While waiting for the Pineapple Promenade, a woman walked up and asked if they could get a Dole Whip there. The Cast Member was useless, and I don’t think even knew what she was talking about. I told it wasn’t exactly the same, but it was the closest she was going to get in this park, but if she wanted a proper Dole Whip, she’d have to go to either the Magic Kingdom or the Polynesian. Hark at me, doing the job of a Cast Member!
We got as far as Japan before we stopped to sit in the shade (again – are you seeing a pattern here? ) and enjoyed a Kaki Gori. At least that cooled us down!
Just as we were leaving, the Matsurizadrummers started up…
We continued on our way, keeping out of the sun as much as we could…
… stopping only to photograph these guys:
We then headed for International Gateway, and thankfully there was a Friendship waiting, as there was no way we were walking back in this heat. The journey back was very pleasant, and then we headed back to the room for a break…
I took the opportunity to grab a shower and wash my hair, but what amazed us this afternoon was the music blaring from the pool. Considering we’d been back to the room every afternoon we’d been here, we hadn’t heard a thing from the pool so far. In fact, it had been one of my fears when we were assigned the room. However, things were very different today. Ugh!
Talking of the pool, it was open, and we would’ve loved to have used it, as some days it was quite quiet (obviously not today ) but what put us off was the complete lack of shade from the blazing afternoon sun. That really surprised us, considering how many kids use the pool with their parents. There was no way we were going to make ourselves hotter, and potentially burn down there. It didn’t seem like good planning on Disney’s behalf.
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) as it had been weeping. I wanted to clean it up before I applied some antiseptic cream on it. The guy seemed very surprised that was all I needed, and that I had the cream with me. He even offered me a Band-Aid, but I refused, saying I understood it was better to let the air get to it. Hark at me – it sounds as if I know what I’m doing with these things… 
Love that the rescue animals. Penguins always make me smile. 
They're so cute aren't they? 
) and enjoyed a Kaki Gori. At least that cooled us down! 
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