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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Hello out there. This is my short, but useless, report on my recent one day trip to Santa Clara, California. This was to go to a convention center full of great vacations I can't afford to take.
6am. Up! Even though the alarm is not going to go off for a hour I always wake up early when I am going to go somewhere. I let my wife sleep. And instead of watching the news as usual I put into the dvd a Scrubs episode. There is nothing that truly makes me fully awake then watching buddies bond and watching Sarah Chalke do anything. (See also my next report--stalking Sarah Chalke). Or maybe don't.
7am. Coffee, shaved, brushed teeth, and wife is awake. Yahoo life is good. Well all except that whole weather thing. Saturday is going to be a cold day and slightly wet. But still we are going. More DVD watching. How many shows can they fit on one DVD? (The correct answer is 8).
8am. After checking email(I won the lotto 7 times in one day it turns out) we leave the apartment right on time. We always like to give ourselves extra time because public transportation sometimes stops running for a while. Like when the driver needs coffee!!! However no delays this morning and we get the train downtown without a problem. I suspect a trap. but get on the light rail anyway. Must be to the train station by ten.
9:15: I arrive at the bank(Washington Mutual--about to become Chase) and make my deposit. I get 200.00 bac for the trip. Time for a side trip to Border's Books which has a excellent bathroom. This area also has a new Baseball Stadium so fun to look around.
9:45am. Time to buy tickets and board the train. 2 tickets 3 areas. $12.00 dollars. Not bad.
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10am. The train leaves the station right on time. And we get to go past some the most ugly scenery outside you would ever care to see!!! Junk yards full of dead cars, rusted metal, piles of everything old ugly and useless. But the scenery outside the train gradually becomes more pretty and interesting. And pretty soon we even take the train past the airport. The airport is where I want to live but don't tell anybody please. 45 minutes into the train trip we are in Atherton. One of the richest cities in the United States. From our train Window we can just see beautiful old houses amd trees everywhere. Atherton is not for people that work swing shift but very nice to look at. After Atherton we start to get into the area known as Silicone Gulch. Where computers are born--as was large parts of the internet. We travel through Palo Alto--a very famous college town. Where a lot of the computer people are from(It is not known if the inventor of the internet--Al Gore) went to school there. And at long last we pull into Mountain View right on time. (What is it about trains and being on time??) And we are ready for the next exciting trip to begin.
11.16 am. We stumble out of the train and switch to another light rain system. Santa Clara Transit. A fun new system that is very very clean. About 27 years ago I lived in Sunnyvale which is right next to Santa Clara. And it was just amazing to see all the changes. My wife and I cannot figure out how to buy tickets though. So the driver actually comes out to help us. Amazing. In San Francisco the driver would have pointed at us and laughted. I love the area down towards San Jose. We go through some computer building areas(A lot are empty) and about 25 minutes later we exit the train as we arrive at Great America(Amusement Park)
11:45 am. We turn away from the Convention Center and starting heading towards IHOP. Thats the only coffee shop I know in this area. We happen to ask a couple of women(Who have been to the show we are going to go to) if they know of any other coffee place around. They direct us to the Hilton Hotel which is built right next to the Convention Center. We go into the convention center and it takes us a while to find the right exit to the motel. We want to eat before we get all the travel stuff. We enter the hotel through a side hallway. And it turns out the hotel was having a large convention of dancers. Very hard to walk through. There were hundreds of girls (Maybe ages 8 to 15??) standing around waiting to do whatever they were gonna do. Cute--but I was hungry. We went to one cafe but decided it was too expensive. But instead found a place that sold slivces of pizza for $5.00. We went for that(After all this was the Hilton) and had a great lunch. We sat among groups of dancers. They were making lots of noise and were very excited about everything. A very entertaining lunch all in all. But then it was time to go see the show.
No we did not go to Great America. It is not like Disney. It closes for months at a time. We might go next Summer though. Its fun but a lot smaller then Disney.
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12:30. We marched by the Belly Dancers in the lobby and bought our tickets. $12.00 a piece. Not bad for a big show. And then we entered the land of Rick Stevens. We knew he was going to be there but did not know he would have so much stuff for sale. Books,back packs, videos, cloth lines, panchos, etc. But he was in very good company. There were hundreds of vendors there--each trying to sell us on a vacation. AAA was the over all sponsor. And they had a lot of interesting sounding vacations. And the various aisles were very well split up. Rick Steves had his own...so did AAA. And then there were cruise lines, trains(India had a fantastic Train Tour package deal) and a lot of small independent dealers and travel agents. Most were helpful but let people make up their own minds as if they wanted info or not. However The Philipines Woman just immediately wanted to know when we were going to go see her islands. Well we are just looking really. Ok so can I call you to talk more about the trip??? We left soon after that to talk to Amtrak because they seemed to be a whole lot more relaxed about everything.
1:00. And then we came to AAA Disney. All the standard stuff. But whats this? A Disney ship is going to Norway next year?? And then on to Copenhagen? And Finland? Now thats excitment(well for people who can actually afford to go) and so I get that information. Its a 12 day cruise. And they also have a cruise from Spain to Rome. Ok gotta get all that info. And then we walk on. But I do have one bad habit I have not mentioned. (Be quiet Janice don't tell anybody the rest of my bad habits). I love picking up travel information. So I go to table after table and get phamlet after phamlet. By the time we leave I have four bags full. Mary just looks at me like I am crazy. Well I might be but I want to plan a nice trip while I am in the mental hospital.
2;15. We are starting to get tired. We have been thru the show twice. So we leave the show and try to figure out where to go. Mary does not want to spend money on a motel room. So we decide to go back home. We go get back on the lightrail to go back to Mountain View. I check the train schedule and figure out we are not going to make the next train north. So we get off in Sunnyvale and decide to walk to a closer train station. But the area we get off in is pretty much empty with no busses or taxis. So we start walking down a street I used to live near 27 years ago. Its a long walk especially with 4 heavy bags of travel stuff. We walk for about a hour and arrive at the train station just in time to miss the next train. But at least we are now in a area I know. So we go into a coffee shop and get a sandwich and wait for the next train.
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Parts of it were like The Twlight Zone. The mall that I used to hang out at was all boarded up. That was rather depressing. I wonder if they are gonna tear it all down or put in something new?? In the past I would have expected new buildings--but these days--who knows.
And then at last (4:17) we got the train home. A very quiet trip back since we were both tired. But 6pm we were home and ready to clean up. And this concludes the trip. The floor is now open for questions. Hey will somebody close that dang floor??
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