The Trip that Almost had No Memories! Nov. at WL! - Page 9 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Your trip sounds like it has been a blast so far. (With the exception of the lost camera.) I glad Kylie got to have so much magic sprinkled on her birthday celebration at the World.
Wow, this trip sounds like a blast! We too love LTT, and booked it for April even though the characters will be gone. How neat about the dream FP! You are certainly making the most of the day there. I didn't know that the sword actually came out of that stone! You have researched well, and it sounds like your homework has paid off!
Kylie is one cool kid, riding all those rides! You have many more fun trips in store with that girl!
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After dinner Kylie saw that we were by the Haunted Mansion (her favorite ride) and pleaded to ride again. Being the obliging parents that we are, we went on it another time. This time there were some other kids in line around us that were older than Kylie that were really scared about going on it. DD5 was so smug with herself, having already tamed this daunting ride. She told us that it was really spooky but she’s not scared . We loved it again!
We realized that it was getting close to SpectroMagic parade time at 8 and I wanted to be sure to have good seats for this. We went over to Frontierland and found a vacant bench, which we promptly staked out for ours. Then we waited and waited. Since we never went back to our hotel during the day, DH was getting a bit chilled with the night temperatures dropping. Kylie and I had each brought a jacket with us and she was not without her new trusty, favorite, castle throw blanket so we were fine. But there was DH in shorts and a t-shirt . First he went to look in the nearby shops for a sweatshirt but returned empty handed. Then I offered to go look (being a master shopper ) while he held our bench. Aren’t there shirts on every single corner? Not this time.
I found a little cut through with bathrooms that connected Frontierland and Adventureland so explored some more shops over there. I found a sweatshirt finally and it was great. But what’s this? You have every size but Large? Isn’t that like the most common size? They looked in the back with no avail and the only other one that would do was pink with Minnie. No, that wouldn’t work , especially for the price, I wanted something he would be happy with. So I dart back through and explore the gift shop at Pirates of the Caribbean and finally found a Mexican Sarape for $21. The price was good (for Disney) and the size was right so with my purchase I headed back to my bench that had been encroached upon by another family with just my husband at the far end. I chastised him for slacking on his bench guarding duty (loud enough so the others could hear ) and it worked. They vacated the area. So we had room to spread out again, although we did offer the end to an elderly lady who came to sit with our little group.
Finally the moment we had been waiting for….the lights dimmed and the announcements over the speakers began. Since I now had my new, multifunction capability camera , I was able to turn my flash off to get pictures of SpectroMagic. I was especially proud of my introduction pictures of the first few floats, “Walt Disney World Presents”, “Spectromagic”, and Mickey leading it. It was so much fun and reminded me of my trip to Disneyland as a child. I think it was called the Main Street Electrical Parade or something like that.
Believe it or not, after the parade was over, we weren’t quite ready to call it a day yet. Besides we needed to see the regular Wishes fireworks show as all we had seen was Holiday Wishes. We had gotten FPs earlier from both Big Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain so we went to redeem those. Being at night, it added a different element to the rides. This time we knew when the picture was taken at Splash Mountain so I went to great lengths to be prepared. I wanted this ride photo! We held up Kylie between us so that her head was about level with ours and smiled for the camera before going over the edge. But when we went to see our picture on the screen, we couldn’t find it. There was one screen that was blank and said the photo had washed away. Noooooo !!! We had to ride again, but the rest of my family said no way. DH suggested that Kylie and I could do it when we came back on our last day, but I didn’t want to chance getting wet with Kylie all made out from BBB, plus that was Thanksgiving Day! I was sure the park would be packed, not to mention I wanted all of us in the photo! Oh well.
As I try to snuff out my disappointment about this, we headed to find a spot to watch Wishes. It was all I could do to get them to stay with the program a little longer before we left. Same as last time, they both perked up the minute the fireworks started and I got a lot of good pictures of the castle changing colors and the Wishes show.
After Wishes, us along with many others decided to call it a night and started heading out of the park. Somewhere along Main Street I asked Kylie something and when she didn’t answer, I looked down in her stroller and all I could see was this Dale Chipmunk head over half a sleeping face . She had the blanket pulled up around her and was sacked out!
We went down to the boat loading dock and got in line with all the others waiting for a boat to WL. There was a CM down there doing his very best to entertain us with his beatboxing (which is: a form of vocal percussion which primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism, the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments. Beatboxing is connected with hip hop culture although it is not limited to hip hop music. Source Wikipedia). He was quite good at it and had an audience singing along and cheering. Leave it to Disney to even provide entertainment while waiting for transportation (now if they would have had it at all the different places, like bus stops…) We rolled our still sleeping DD5 onto the boat and remarked at how many other kids were sound asleep in their strollers too. It had been a long, long day and we were looking forward to sleeping in the next day.
The weather today: real cloudy and sprinkles a.m., then clear later but cool
The best things: Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain and Mickey’s Philharmagic, Character dinner at Liberty Tree Tavern
Worst thing: Ride photo was “washed away” on Splash Mountain
The funniest thing: Kylie’s squeals on Big Thunder Mountain
Today we tried: Staying in the park all day
And the result was: Productive!
The most magical moment was: Getting Dream Fast Passes coming off Peter Pan, Surprise Fast Passes for Philharmagic and a random CM handing us FPs for Peter Pan
Next up my adventures at DTD and a return to EPCOT
__________________
Laura in Austin
Catch my (COMPLETED ) WL trip report here: http://www.passporterboards.com/foru...es-nov-wl.html
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Oh You making me mentally jump up and down (since I can't actually do it), also making it hard to wait to get back there in November. But it makes me happy that your DD is learning to not to be afraid of new things.
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