Forums Closed
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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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Best wishes for a wonderful and magical new year!
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04-09-2006, 09:59 AM
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#1
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Community Rank: Adventurer
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Greenville, South Carolina
Posts: 611
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Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
I know I've read a post similar to this somewhere before, but I wanted to see what you all have to say this time around.
The post talked about "the stake at Epcot that marks the middle of WDW", talking trash cans, walls, fountains, etc... I would like to know your secrets of WDW.
If we go down, which one of your secrets is a MUST SEE?
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Sponsored links
Check out the many e-books by PassPorter. The e-books are free to download if you have a PassPorter's Club pass.
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04-09-2006, 11:58 AM
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#2
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Community Rank: Adventurer
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 550
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
I have looked and looked for the "stake" and I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone have any more detailed directions?
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04-09-2006, 10:04 PM
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#3
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Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: The Colony, Texas
Posts: 2,019
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
I didn't think it was a stake, really. I thought it was a marker of some sort. I've heard two different stories. One is that the center of the place where all the inventors are--near the entrance to The Land--is the place. Then, going from Test Track over to Mexico via the path (takes you by a convention-like facility and a bathroom) there's a small little survey marker in the ground. It's a circle, but it has mickey on it. It just has a survey location or something- nothing saying it is the middle of the "World" but I thought it odd to have a marker there when I've not seen one anywhere else.
Anyone know for sure??
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04-09-2006, 10:13 PM
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#4
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Dopey's biggest fan!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: China Spring, TX
Concierge Level: 9
Posts: 26,975
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
[ QUOTE ]
I didn't think it was a stake, really. I thought it was a marker of some sort. I've heard two different stories. One is that the center of the place where all the inventors are--near the entrance to The Land--is the place.
[/ QUOTE ]
That is the correct place! There is no stake. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
I will see if I can find a picture of it somewhere! [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]
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04-09-2006, 10:17 PM
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#5
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Community Rank: Explorer
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: nyc
Posts: 9,580
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
i think it's more or less of a survey marker.
wouldn't be true anymore of it being the center of WDW anyway though.
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04-09-2006, 10:22 PM
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#6
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Dopey's biggest fan!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: China Spring, TX
Concierge Level: 9
Posts: 26,975
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
[ QUOTE ]
i think it's more or less of a survey marker.
wouldn't be true anymore of it being the center of WDW anyway though.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, anymore, yes, the EXACT center would be some sort of a survey marker. There's been a lot of land acquisition over the years.
But at one time "Discoveries"/the "Inventor's Circle" was the geographical center.
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04-09-2006, 10:38 PM
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#7
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Community Rank: Explorer
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Longfellow's "Jewel by the Sea"
Posts: 14,165
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
I thought I knew where it was but now I don't. [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/sorry.gif[/img]
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04-09-2006, 10:52 PM
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#8
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Dopey's biggest fan!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: China Spring, TX
Concierge Level: 9
Posts: 26,975
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
Here's a shot of it from a sort of distance . . . and circled . . . [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/roflmao.gif[/img]
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04-10-2006, 10:09 AM
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#9
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Community Rank: Explorer
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Concierge Level: 6
Posts: 7,386
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
One of my favourite little hidden treasures is the area in Innoventions where you can design and build a robot. It's very entertaining and you get to race your computer designed robot against other guests' robots. Afterwards, you can build your own little plastic robot which you get to keep as a souvenir.
Joy
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04-10-2006, 11:38 AM
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#10
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Community Rank: Scout
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Lansing, Michigan
Concierge Level: 6
Posts: 4,890
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
Okay, I think I have a picture I can post...
Yup, here it is!
And here's a picture of the survey marker that some folks have mentioned:
Hope this helps....I actually think that the first one is the actual geographical center of the WDW property. If you're wondering why it's "off-center", according to Lou Mongello in "The Walt Disney World Trivia Book":
"In the early phases of Epcot's construction, a nest of endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers was discovered in a wooded area that was scheduled to be cleared for future development. To preserve the area's natural state, Disney moved the entire construction site 300 feet. A backstage service road was later named for the woodpeckers."
If you notice that sort of thing, the "inventor circles" are about 300 feet west of the center of Future World...
Actually, I was wondering how Disney found out those birds' names so that they could name a road after them [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]
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04-10-2006, 01:15 PM
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#11
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Facebook Addict
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Philadelphia
Concierge Level: 6
Posts: 39,682
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
[ QUOTE ]
I know I've read a post similar to this somewhere before, but I wanted to see what you all have to say this time around.
The post talked about "the stake at Epcot that marks the middle of WDW", talking trash cans, walls, fountains, etc... I would like to know your secrets of WDW.
If we go down, which one of your secrets is a MUST SEE?
[/ QUOTE ]
Shelly,
is this the thread you are looking for?
http://www.passporterboards.com/ubb/...p;page=0#83119
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04-10-2006, 04:48 PM
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#12
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Community Rank: Globetrotter
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 3,651
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
Regarding hidden treasures in general, here's what I took on our trip last year:
Go to the Mouse for Less website - downloads page, and check out the pocket guides with "Hidden Gems" in the title, and you get a neat little booklet that easily fits in your PassPocket, PassHolder, fanny pack, or pocket. There's one for each theme park, two for Epcot. I also took the character listing.
Don't worry, the folding instructions aren't that hard to follow - once you do one it's easy.
http://themouseforless.com/tripplann...etGuides.shtml
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04-11-2006, 12:14 PM
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#13
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Community Rank: Jetsetter
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Lansdale, PA
Posts: 2,112
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
Christie,
Thanks for the website! I think these are cool, since they are small and will fit into a fanny pack!
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04-11-2006, 02:50 PM
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#14
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Eileeeeeeen!™
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Concierge Level: 6
Posts: 28,861
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
I have a small Word doc that lists a bunch of these by park. PM me and I'll email it to you.
Eileen
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04-11-2006, 05:06 PM
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#15
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Community Rank: Trekker
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Michigan & Florida
Posts: 1,601
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Re: Your secrets revealed... hidden treasures at Disney
Not exactly a secret, but a lot of people don't "get" the ending of the HM.
I was told some time ago that the story is once you go through the window, you are falling out of the attic, as the bride did. Up until this point you were alive. (You could watch the party in the ballroom but you weren't "in the scene" you see it from above) Once you fall out of the window, the only other mortals there - the caretaker and his dog - are shaking in fright. But who are they looking at in fright? YOU. Now you are in the graveyard (where you belong) and the ghosts are having a party to welcome you. It's fun and you are "in the scene" when the ghosts come out to socialize.
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