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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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What special things do you during the holiday season? We always go to a special Christmas tree farm that has a bonfire with smores, hot chocolate, sleigh rides, etc.
We also go to Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia each year for the coolest Christmas lights display ever. It's a few miles through the woods with gorgeous Christmas displays and music.
My in-laws melted into our family for holidays, so we don't have to figure out splitting. We do Christmas Eve at MIL's house (everyone, for an intimate gathering that's more than just family) and then Christmas Day is over at my mom's house.
Ever since we moved here in 1976, we have celebrated the holidays with my parents' best friends. This is significant because they are Jewish. So, growing up, we always celebrated one night of Hanukkah with them and they came over for Christmas (we also did Passover with them every now and then and they always came over for Easter). It's gotten harder as we got older and had kids of our own, so most times it's only dessert on Christmas now. But it's one of our oldest traditions.
Also an old tradition - when I was 5 (it was our first Christmas in Vegas) my parents bought us a bird for Christmas. They picked him up on Christmas Eve and couldn't keep him wrapped all night, so we opened that gift on Christmas Eve. That started a tradition of opening a "family" gift (one year it was a typewriter, one year a piano) the night before, which progressed to each of us chosing one gift when we got too old for family gifts.
We go to "Our Lady of the Snows" for the drive through Holiday lights and activities.
We also go to my In-laws house for Christmas Eve. They roast a Prime Rib, have boiled Shrimp, this awesome spinach thing, and a bunch of other yummy stuff. It is by far my favorite meal all year long.
We also have the Holiday family fight or argument every year. Not really a tradition, it just happens. Matter of fact, my family hasn't spoken to me since last Christmas, when I politely told them how I felt about things they were doing. We'll see if they come around this year.
We decorate the house and front yard the weekend of Thanksgiving and watch a few Christmas movies.
We begin our shopping officially on Election Day (simply because we are all off that day).
We will eat out and see a movie on Christmas Eve before going to the service at church. Later we'll each open one gift (usually pjs and some new Christmas movies). We'll cuddle up on the couch with hot chocolate and watch the movies we got. Right before bed we get out the big family Bible and read the Christmas story by candlelight. Then it's off to bed to rise at 5:30 AM for loads of presents and some yummy breakfast.
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On Thanksgiving evening (one dinner is at 12 and the other at 3) we put up our tree and decorate it. This is done with only Christmas movies playing. The first, as it has always been with my son as he was growing up, is A Muppet Christmas Carol. The day after Thanksgiving is for heavy duty shopping and mailing out my Christmas cards.
Christmas Eve is spent with my dad and that side of the family and Christmas Day is spent with my mom and that side of the family.
Ours have morphed a bit over the years, but ours holidays are pretty low-key. Just my immediate family and my grandma. We go pick her up on Christmas Eve and take her home on the 26th (she doesn't like to be away from home even that long anymore). On Christmas Eve we do oyster stew (DHs family tradition), and lots of hor du overs (sp?) and the kids open one present (always new jammies).
On Christmas day, we do a breakfast casserole and Dh make cinnamon rolls that are to die for. Open presents, and generally hang around playing games, watching movies, etc. We do a Prime Rib, Twice Baked Potatoes, Green Bean Casserole...etc.
We spend a lot of time in the kitchen together on holidays, and everyone has a part in making the food.
We used to go into the forest and cut our own tree, but now it's so much less expensive to pick one up at Home Depot that we've done that the past couple of years. I've been lobbying for a fake tree and keep getting shot down. We spend a weekend day/evening before Christmas decorating the tree with all our heirloom ornaments. It's like a little trip down memory lane. My mom always got the kids an ornament representing something from that particular year. When Zoie was a toddler she was a Barney nut. We still have that purple dinosaur on our tree every year. Just fun little memories.
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One thing we may start this year, is freshly made donuts on Christmas morning. We'll find out tomorrow how it goes - I bought DH a Dough-Nu-Matic (SkyMall - Dough-nu-matic) for his birthday and we're trying it for the first time tomorrow...
Our neighborhood is along the shore..years ago we formed a beachclub..similar to a condo association..One of the traditions we have over the yrs is we all save the large plastic milk containers year long..cut the tops off and fill them with sand..we put tea lights inside and on Christames eve we line the side of the streets . It may not sound like alot..but its very impressive when you see thousands of these things lit all along the road way...Plus we hire carolers who stop and sing outside the houses 7-8 ..we have eggnog and punch and all end up outside our homes . We have never missed an Christmas eve since we built our house 16 yrs ago...Our children now bring their friends and their familes over..so we make it a fairly big production..But the only gifts opened are the ones the girls give to one another..thats a tradition too...I absolutely LOVE Christmas..I go to the Hallmark store the day after Christmas and buy up all their bows and paper..its just too pricey in season...and I wrap as I buy..I get the Kleenex holiday tissues...already have 6 boxes ready to put out..I went to Yankee candlee with my internet coupons and bought all my candles...and I did get two new sets of Disney ornaments while I was there last week....I am ready to go.....I have alot of gifts bought...UPS will be here daily for the next month or so....
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Notice my trusty PASSPORTER tucked away in my handbag..
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We take DGS Skyler to dinner at Cracker Barrel and then to Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile to see their Christmas Display.
We also go to the Christmas on the water boat Parade in Biloxi. All the boats decorate and play music and they come sailing into the channel. We have done this now for 10 years, the first year we wore shorts took a blanket and a bucket of chicken and sat on the beach. Another year it was so cold and damp we had to wear our winter things and we took along a thermos of hot chocolate.
Christmas day the kids come over we have Christmas Breakfast and then we iopen gifts. This year we will be going to Pennsylvania and spend Christmas with our huge family. Skyler has asked for snow for Christmas.
On Thanksgiving afternoon we put up the Tree and start to decorate the house. We also bring out all the Christmas videos.
If the weather cooperates, we like to head to Portsmouth, NH one weekend to Strawbery Banke. They have a beautiful holiday celebration (different houses from different time periods reflect how Christmas and Hannukah were celebrated then).
We go to Mass at 4 pm on Christmas Eve, then we celebrate traditional Polish Christmas Eve - Wigilia - with my mom's family. There are over 30 people, all ages, and we alternate at my house or my aunt's. (My house is a lot bigger than my moms - we can all eat in my dining room.) It used to be strictly seafood - baked stuffed shrimp, baked haddock, fried smelts, etc. but I don't eat seafood, so we often include lasanga or cold cuts.
Christmas morning we invite my DMum, DSis, and DDad over, and have breakfast together. We save our gifts for later. Then it's off to DH's family which is just over an hour away. We do gifts with my family usually the next day.
I try to get to Hershey Park during the Christmas season. They operate the rides and have a great light display.
On Christmas Eve Santa comes around town on a fire truck. Although the last few years we've heard the siren but the truck by passes our street.
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Not really a tradition, it just happens. Matter of fact, my family hasn't spoken to me since last Christmas, when I politely told them how I felt about things they were doing.
We'll see if they come around this year.
Cathy
...I have alot of gifts bought...UPS will be here daily for the next month or so....
NYC-Canada Cruise Sept 2012
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