~Some Things I Observed This Trip... - Page 3 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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My biggest beef is that all the stores carry the same stuff - there is very little diversity.
I totally agree. It used to be that each store had it's own niche (the Villians store in DHS, the Splash Mountain shop, the ToT shop, etc...) and you could find unique items in many places. Now it seems like every store has EXACTLY the same stuff. The same shirts, the same sweatshirts, the same plushes, the same keychains, etc... the list goes on.
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Also the sizing in clothing has gotten bad. My sister is a Medium and we were getting her size XL in things. What about us that are average people.
Glad it's not just me who thought that. I know I've put on some weight, but seriously. The t-shirts aren't long enough and everything shrinks so easily, you have to buy 2-3 sizes bigger than what you are. We also noticed that sizes for the kids t's were not consistent. My DH could not just be told to buy a 3T; I had to look at it to see if it would be OK.
And ditto on everything being so generic, and not just the clothes.
to me I think the reason is because you can go to wal mart and find every disney character in t-shirts, the only difference in getting them in the parks is they may have the park name on them. But when you can get wdw merchandise in dollar general and dollar tree, it seems to me that the same overpriced stuff in the parks and the stuff in the dollar store are of the same quality. You would think the stuff at the parks would be first run and high quality and the stuff in the dollar store would be second run and lower quality, Not the almost exact same thing,
Does this only make sense in my head?
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I think this is why I only seem to have bought at the AK and the AKL, there stuff could NOT be found anywhere else, and that is what I like...something different! I also noticed on all my trips I used to buy note pads that had magnets and you put on the frig, I could not find those anywhere. Also they always had these nice candles with covers with mickey ears on them. They had cost 10 bucks, it was the perfect gift!! NOPE, nothing!!!
It is just the quality and quantity of what they have that is just wrong, and what they DO have I swear that they are outsourcing now to have them made! which explains why they have smaller sizes!!!
We too notice that that quality of the clothes was not up to the standards we had come to expect from Disney. We found that the T-shirts were more light weight and that they didn't hold the shape as well.
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My DH surprised me with a fleece hoodie with the Seven Dwarfs on it in Fantasyland. It is a 3X and a small 3X at that. DH is a little more than 6' 6" and he can't buy a souvenier anything - not even caps fit his head.
I also won't buy anything that doesn't say where we are. I can get plain character stuff at the Disney Store. If I grab something for my sons, it's got to say WDW, MK, EPCOT, etc...
My dd got a cute night-shirt with the WL totem pole on it, & I got a nice zip up plain black hoodie with a small WL logo on it at the WL gift shop. I liked the hoodie cause it was long. I had bought the white one with Mickey on it last year & I like it, but it's shorter.
There is a Disney discount outlet store not far away at the Premium Outlet mall in Lake Buena Vista, not far from DTD.
I also think they are missing a bet by not selling some limited merchandise from the other parks at EPCOT. Many years ago when EuroDisney opened (as it used to be called) they sold t-shirts and guide books from there at the France showcase. They could now sell some stuff at Japan and China from those parks. Just limited items, just for fun. It could work as kind of a little add for those parks as well.
Suzie
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Disneyland 1969
WDW 1983-2004 Disney Village Resort,Fort Wilderness Trailer,CB, PO, Dixie Landings,ASS, ASM, ASMo, Contemporary, Polynesian,PORiverside,POP,AKL,Coronado Springs, Disney Village Resorts, Grovesnor, Lake Buena Vista Hilton, etc....
Feb.2005-AKL,Oct.2005-PopCentury,Feb.2006-
Contemporary,Aug.2006-POP,Dec.2006-POR,Feb.2007-POP,June 2007- POP,Dec. 2007- POP
I haven't been to WDW since 2003 when I got some really nice things. Shopping is a big part of the fun for me so I'm a bit alarmed at these posts. I do think of Disney as being all about "quality", the last thing I want to see is "cheap and nasty" stuff in the shops.
I've been to Disneyland Paris more recently, shopping there was still okay.
I have to agree. I started noticing the decline in t-shirt styles I liked back in August 2006. I thought it was just me being picky. Then I had the same issues in November 2006. Then December 2007! It was my first time not coming home with a shirt, although my DH surprised me with a blue monorail resorts one.
i have bought t-shirts galore each trip and I am quite sad that I am not finding what I like. It's not just the tackiness of them, but they also seem to be made of cheaper, flimsier material, unlike the study cotton ones I'm used to buying.
I've only bought 1 hoodie at WDW and that was in December. I was not happy because it was white, but it wasn't for me. I didn't like that there weren't many to choose from and I looked in several resort shops. Also, it seems to be harder to find the sizes for us Pooh sized people!
What bothers me most is the sizes run 1 size smaller than other stores!!
(I am also a Pooh sized people.) But what really struck me was the number of people asking us where we bought our tshirts because they liked them better. We bought them at the end-of-the-season sale at the Disney store.
Way back when we went in '83, t-shirts were about the cheapest thing to buy (free advertising is what we were told) and they lasted for a very long time.
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we too were asked where we had gotten our Mickey Camp shirts (w/ matching sun dresses for us girls.) We wore them to O'hana for breakfast and everyone asked if we had gotten them in the lobby gift shop or something. They were really dissapointed when I told them we had gotten them from Disney shopping on line. There wasn't a lot like that that went for everyone. We love the theme thing in our family and we couldn't find anything like that.
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My 19 year old hero! Hurry home! (A.K.A. D_Stitch)
I do miss the pj's I used to always come home with cute pj's, havent bought them in a long time, my dec/jan trip, I did get a really nice hoodie with embrodery on the sleeves and fleece lining. I still haven't worn it yet, there is 50 some odd dollars wasted so far..I will wear it sooner or later.
but for me, everything seems huge, they don't make alot of XS's.
I am in the same boat. It's difficult to find small sizes, and the prices for anything with long sleeves is crazy. Last year, I actually bought a kid's XL hoodie and it fits great. It was also much cheaper: $35.
I agree, in the past I always came home with a really nice Disney shirt or hoodie. The last few trips I couldn't find anything I liked, not to mention the prices seem to have gotten very high.
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was the number of people asking us where we bought our tshirts because they liked them better. We bought them at the end-of-the-season sale at the Disney store.
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