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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 booked our land and sea vacation for October 2009. Color me crazy, but I thought I had read that Disney made the Disney Dining Plan available starting in 2008 for the land portion of the vacation and that I would just have to contact them them to add this to my reservation (at the added usual cost, of course).
Well, I was informed by Disney Cruise Line that the Disney Dining Plan is not available for Land and Sea packages for 2009. And that what I would have to do is book the land portion and the cruise portion separately in order to add the Disney Dining Plan to the land portion. Impossible to do this, since I already booked the Land and Sea together.
I assume my information was wrong. Or is it available to land and sea cruises for 2008, but not for 2009?
It is indeed available for booking in 2008. Maybe they are not going to do it again in 2009 or maybe they just don't have the option yet. Either way, you should be able to change your package if the option becomes available I would think.
After doing a little research, it looks like the package just hasn't been announced yet. I would check again in late summer - around August. Then you should be able to change your package to include the dining, presuming it will be offered.
Thanks to all. I guess I assumed (wrong of me, I know) that if it was available in 2008 it would be in 2009 too. And perhaps it will be, but I just have to wait for it!
We are also going to Disney this October (just land no, sea!) and we will be using the Dining Plan for the first time. I have successfully made reservations for the following restaurants:
Crystal Palace (Hello Pooh Bear!) - Breakfast
Hollywood & Vine (Playhouse Disney) -Breakfast
Rose & Crown - Dinner
Tutto Italia Ristorante - Lunch
Raglan Road Irish Pub - Dinner
Tony's Town Square Restaurant - Dinner (no character, but my daughter has a thing for Lady and the Tramp!)
Cinderella's Royal Table - Lunch
I am considering paying off plan for Cinderella since I don't want to use two table credits each for it.
I also have to decide which is the best night to do the Not so Scary Halloween Party. I'm thinking 10/13, 13 being a very Halloweeny kinda number.
Crystal Palace (Hello Pooh Bear!) - Breakfast
Hollywood & Vine (Playhouse Disney) -Breakfast
Rose & Crown - Dinner
Tutto Italia Ristorante - Lunch
Raglan Road Irish Pub - Dinner
Tony's Town Square Restaurant - Dinner (no character, but my daughter has a thing for Lady and the Tramp!)
Cinderella's Royal Table - Lunch
I am considering paying off plan for Cinderella since I don't want to use two table credits each for it.
Oh, we loved our dining plan! It's soooooo worth it. I would recommend (regarding Cinderella's RT) that you look at what it normally costs and compare it to what 1 "regular" lunch would be. If you use 2 credits for CRT, instead of 1 at a different sit down, you are short just 1 sit-down credit, meaning one day you'd have to get lunch or dinner on your own dime. Would you, in that case, eat at a walk-up where it's maybe $10-12/person? If that's the case, I still think it's cheaper than paying for CRT (at $36-45/person) and having 2 credits to use elsewhere. Even if you chose a sit-down for that "own dime" day, would you order enough food to equal what CRT costs? That's what, I think, you need to compare.
We used 2 credits for Mickey's Backyard BBQ and just did 2 walk-up services one day to compensate. But we are also walk-up service kind of people, usually. On our own, I doubt we'd actually eat a sit-down meal every day.
(BTW, Tony's Town Square was a last-minute addition for us, to use up our last sit-down credit, and it was FABULOUS! We were there in December, so they had Mickey and Minnie Santa hats on the Lady and the Tramp fountain. So cute!)
I booked our land and sea vacation for October 2009. Color me crazy, but I thought I had read that Disney made the Disney Dining Plan available starting in 2008 for the land portion of the vacation and that I would just have to contact them them to add this to my reservation (at the added usual cost, of course).
Well, I was informed by Disney Cruise Line that the Disney Dining Plan is not available for Land and Sea packages for 2009. And that what I would have to do is book the land portion and the cruise portion separately in order to add the Disney Dining Plan to the land portion. Impossible to do this, since I already booked the Land and Sea together.
I assume my information was wrong. Or is it available to land and sea cruises for 2008, but not for 2009?
That is only true for the deluxe ddp. The regular ddp is easily included in your reservations. That's what I was told by Anita Answer on allearsnet for last week.
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We will be "land-locked" in Disney World for 7 days...so even tho I am hesitant about spending that money (for the plan) I am thinking in the long run it will be better? I may use the stimulus package to pay and then when our time comes to travel we will not have to worry about the cost of food. Sound good?
Also: do any of you think that Disney will expand their current free meal deal to November? Our dates are 11//20-11/27. Thanks
We will be "land-locked" in Disney World for 7 days...so even tho I am hesitant about spending that money (for the plan) I am thinking in the long run it will be better? I may use the stimulus package to pay and then when our time comes to travel we will not have to worry about the cost of food. Sound good?
There were 6 of us - 2 grandparents, me and DH and 2 kids (3 & 7) - on our 7 day stay at WDW in December and we all agreed that it was worth it. In the long run, you might pay a little less using cash, if you are not the type to get a lot of snacks (drinks and/or ice cream - Mickey Premium Bars!!! Yum!) or if you don't usually order appetizers and desserts (we don't usually), but I feel that it's not so significant a savings that it overrules the ease of having it all paid off in advance and using a simple card for almost everything.
Sit down and make out a chart of what you realistically think you'd spend each day (do you buy snacks? Will you do several sit-downs or a character meal?) for a snack, lunch and dinner. Add it all up and see what the savings would be. At that point, only you can make the call on whether it's worth it. But I can tell you how much easier it was to not worry about how much cash we would need to finance meals! All we needed was enough for one "meal" (usually light breakfast), traveling expenses (airport food!) and souveniers.
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Sit down and make out a chart of what you realistically think you'd spend each day (do you buy snacks? Will you do several sit-downs or a character meal?) for a snack, lunch and dinner. Add it all up and see what the savings would be. At that point, only you can make the call on whether it's worth it. But I can tell you how much easier it was to not worry about how much cash we would need to finance meals! All we needed was enough for one "meal" (usually light breakfast), traveling expenses (airport food!) and souveniers.
Hope that helps!
OK. I sat down and figured out how much my husband would eat. He loves the ice cream mickeys and churros. ..plus as I said before:::we will be land locked at the resort/parksfor 7 day and 6 nights. I am leaning towards the dining plan..the basic one...only because my hubby will tolerate 2 maybe 2.5 days of counter foods before he says "I need real food!" It will be me ( I can eat the kids menu or snacks), our 7 year old daughter who sometimes eats alot and then other times doesn't eat at all, and my hubby who is 285, 6'1 and likes a real meal.
I was talking with him this morning, explaining the dining plan to him when he said "I can't believe that I can go to RF Cafe and order a $30 steak on this dining plan"..."Disney is not going to allow me to eat as much as I want for $37.99 a day!"
I told him he had credits, I would have credits and our daughter would have credits...but he is just so skeptical about the whole "you can eat at Rainforst or Living Seas...you can order a "great" meal and only use 1 credit".
Have any of you dealt with feeding a hugry hubby on this plan?
When I figured out the cost for us without the plan it was about $38.00 a day (with snacks).
One thing that I did was to book buffets and family-style which are both all you can eat, along with the 'Aloha show, which is family-style. That way, they will most likely find something they like and they can eat as little or as much as they want, for one price.
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Contact DCL or your TA to arrange this! 
Lisa Jean
) or if you don't usually order appetizers and desserts (we don't usually), but I feel that it's not so significant a savings that it overrules the ease of having it all paid off in advance and using a simple card for almost everything.
dinner at Rainforest??
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