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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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 made two autograph books for our most recent trip. I used scrapbook pages for the cover and then put stickers on the cover (a red background with a large "Disney" sticker and Mickey heads on it and a pink background with a castle & Tinkerbell sticker on it) and ribbon. I printed off pages and then glued them to the pages in the book. We got tons and tons of comments on them by the characters, the people with the characters, and other guests.
I can take some pictures for you to show you how they looked. I'm definitely going to make them when we go again.
Depending on what size pages they were OR if you knew how to make them different sizes, you could go to the mouseforless.com and download some of their pages for to use the above idea.
Or you could just print them out and then take them to staples and have them bound (for 2 4X5 books made and 1 5x8 1/2 journal to be cut, covered (just a thin pice of plastic), the backing (thin thing), and a comb/spiral bound it was 12.50)This is what I did for a set of 9 year old twin boys for their first trip to disney this year.
I have also learned not to decorate the pages first....learned the hard way from the first trip!
I use a Creative Memories 8x8 book and do a title page in between each year with the "theme" that Disney is using at the time. Then the kids get their autographs using the paper from the Disney autographs (my friend just used a small spiral type notebook that did not have lines on it.) Then when I get home, I design my page around the character, cut down and back the autograph, as well as provide a picture of the kids with the character or of the character signing the autograph book.
I agree that these autograph books make great storybooks for the kids. Ours are looked at OFTEN!
My son has a children's encyclopedia of Disney characters, and he gets a kick out of having the characters autograph on their "page" in the encyclopedia. You get lots of comments from the characters and sometimes they read their descriptions out loud.
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I was wondering if anyone has unique autograph book ideas. I am a scrapbooker. So I can definitely put something together. I have an 8x8 album that I could use. I would appreciate any ideas that you have used (and pictures would be even better!).
TIA!
I made 3 autograph books these past months for my nephews & niece. I made a 4x6 page for each character w/ thier picture and a quote from them or their movie. The cover has each kid's name and lot and lots of character pics on it. I had it spiral bound at Kinkos (I think it was around $15 for all three books). Then I tied ribbons on the binding to add a little to it. I don't have any pics scanned in yet, but I would be happy to email you a copy of the file though if you would like.
It took a long time since I cut each page w/ a cutter, but it was worth it in the end. My sister & sister-in-law love them and I'm sure the kids will too.
Since we did alot of character dinners on our last trip, I made a book based on each dinner and the characters that we knew would be there. I could decorate the pages base on the characters and the theme for the dinners/breakfasts. There was room for pics of us with the characters too. It turned out great!
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A Fairy Godmother wannabe -
Look what a little Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo can do!
On our last trip I didn't make a book, but brought a photo mat for a 5x7 picture and had the characters sign it then put a favorite picture in a frame with the signed mat around the picture. Now it's hanging on the wall and we can remember all the characters we saw that trip.
I just posted the autograph books that I am working on in an album in my profile.
I got spiral books from my local scrapbook store but here is a link to the type of book I bought 7gypsies Naked Journal: Vertical Index (I did not realize they had tabs before I bought them & I cut the tabs off)
I am using this to get lots of practice with my new cricut machine. There are books for my 2 sons & my niece who will be with us on our next trip. Each has a different cover & the pages inside will be alittle different but I have posted one of each character I have done so far. For the characters that I do not have the ability to do with the cricut I will look for stickers when we get home. Right now I am keeping the top of each page empty so that we can either use that to add pictures when we get home or use for more autographs if they get more than I had expected.
I looked at our autograph books from previous trips to base what characters I will design pages for ahead of time. There are a couple of more elaborate autograph books on the cricut website but I thought it is probably hard enough for the characters to sign the books with out adding too much to the pages so I am trying to keep them as simple as possible, I can add more when we get home if I want.
On the dis boards, I found several ladies who shared their character cards (they personally created them-thanks ladies!). I copied them to snapfish & ordered 4X6 prints of them. (They turned out GREAT!) I did the most popular characters & the ones we hope to see. I put them in a cheap 100 pg. photo album I bought from walmart ($2.47). They can take the pages out & the characters can bare down on the album to sign the cards w/ a sharpie. After the trip, my plan is to put them in another photo album that has 2 photos per page. I'll put a pic of them w/ the character on the top & the autograph card under it. It didn't really cost me a lot because last yr. I prepaid some prints with snapfish to get our photopass pics printed. So all I paid was shipping for these. I'm more excited about them than the kids are. I also bought some blank 4X6 index cards in case we find characters we didn't print cards for. But I have about 63 cards in each of my (2) kids albums right now. Just in case-we're prepared.
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7/06 All-Star Movies
6/07 Pop Century
6/08 Universal Studios/Islands of Adv.-rented condo
1 day at WDW Magic Kingdom & 1 day Downtown Disney
For DD7 & DS5, I bought a 100-pack of 4 1/2" x 6 1/2" cardstock (like a matte stack but not bound) in various primary colors. It was in the greeting card section at Michaels. Then I took heavy chipboard (I think the kids had journals that were all used up and I cut the covers off), cut it to size, covered it with scrapbook paper (each kid chose their own) & clear laminate paper (in case it got wet), then punched holes & bound it with purple & green metal binder rings (Target). So each kid had a 50-page book in about 1/2 hour.
We use fanny packs, so I needed something small that could get beat up, and they held up perfectly. The nice thing was that I could just take about 20 sheets and the two covers, bind those together, and go to the park. Then when we got back to the resort at night, I'd replace the autographed pages with blank pages and be ready for the next day. That way, the books weren't ever more than an inch thick, and I wouldn't damage yesterday's autographs.
Each kid ended up getting about 40 autographs, and when we got home I took the whole thing apart, put them in the order I wanted, and put the 4" x 6" photo of the kids with the character on the facing page. The kids were going to decorate them further with stickers, but never got around to it. For this year's trip, all I need to do it get another stack of cardstock & punch some holes. Love it!
Have fun! Everyone has their own design ideas, and that's what makes it fun.
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Disney Magic - Oct 2015
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