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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Oh that is so cool!! What time are you all meeting? It would be nice to meet some fellow disney fanatics (though I doubt they'll be hard to find in the disney eutopia of the world )
We are meeting in time to watch the Illuminations fireworks show. I would say probably around 730pm - 8pm just to get to our area for great viewing.
What a great start! What other eateries have you made ADRs? You are so fortunate to be able to do a 3-week trip especially with your daughter so young. You won't feel rushed at all.
Considering we are staying at the resort, we are doing a lot of disney dining! I have never really done disney dining before (besides the burgers at the CS restaurants) so this too will be very new for us. We got so excited by reading all the reports from people who have gone to Disney restaurants that we went a little nutty with our ADR's *blush*
Basically our ADR's are these:
12-2: Supercalifragilistic breakfast at 1900 park fare, dinner at Liberty Tree tavern
12-3: dinner house of blues
12-4: Boma's (dinner)
12-5: dinner at Cape May (and maybe we want to have lunch at beaches and cream)
12-6: lunch at t-rex cafe and dinner at wispering canyon cafe
12-7: lunch at sci-fi and dinner at Akerhus with the princesses
12-8: boma breakfast and fantasmic dinner package at Hollywood and Vine
(after this my mum is joining us so we'll be 'complete')
12-9: breakfast at Chef Mickey's (dinner is non disney because we are going to the Pirate dinner adventure, which I loved 10 years ago)
12-10: all day at universal so no disney adr's
12-11: lunch at cinderella's royal table and dinner at Jiko's with some American friends of ours that we look forward to meeting up with.
12-12: Boma dinner
12-13: lunch at the chrystal palace and dinner at 1900 park fare (I am so curious to see what Lady Tremaine, Anastasia and Drizella are like and how my daughter will react to them, because she LOVES Cinderella)
12-14: dinner at Fullton crabhouse
12-15: lunch at Rainforest cafe (we're having a CS for dinner because we are goin to the mickey's very merry christmas party this night)
12-16: Dinner at Hoop dee Doo musical revue. (Can't wait, I love dinnershows!!)
12-17: Donalds Safari breakfast and another Fantasmic package (this time with my mom) but at Hollywood Brown Derby this time
12-18: lunch at 50's prime time and dinner at bistro de Paris
12-19: Candlelight processional package at Chip an Dale's Garden Grill (we really hope to see Whoopi!!)
12-20: breakfast with characters at Ohaha's and dinner at Chef Mickey's.
12-21: Breakfast at Boma (lunch and dinner in the airplane home)
Everytime I look at our schedule I keep thinking... WOW, this is so much, it's insane. But we don't get to go very often (my trackrecord is almost once per 10 years... well slightly less) so we decided that IF we go, we can go a little bit overboard I feel very fortunate that we can go, it took a lot of saving up! *smirk*
Your plans sound great so far. You and your family with love the Animal Kingdom Lodge. Your character meals are the best choices out there. Your DD will have fun meeting a great variety of characters. Just make sure to schedule plenty of down time. When my DD was about 2 years old she had a huge meltdown in ToonTown. And this is a child who NEVER had a meltdown or tantrum in her life. She refused to let anyone but me push her stroller around the park for the rest of that day. Grandma and Daddy couldn't even touch the stroller without her having a fit. I'm not sure where that came from but she was OK once we got back to the room and rested and swam.
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Margaret and I got to see the Cubs play in October. They won!
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You are all so lovely!! Thank you for your comments!
@Mickeywatch: We have definately planned a lot of down time. We want to do the theme parks every other day (sometimes with even more than one day in between) and we only want to spend the mornings in the parks. After lunch we are going back to the hotel for naptime. And we are going to see each day what our little one can take. So if we think that it's getting too much for her, we're going to take a 'day off' from all the excitement.
Otherwise I think it's going to be too much for all of us.
Stone Crab Claw Season just opened today. If you are so inclined you should try them at Fulton's. They usually have a starter size as well as an entree.
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whoohoo, I am doing the 6 weeks boogie (actually been doing it since yesterday) 6 weeks doesn't feel that long anymore. Considering I think I have been planning this trip since somewhere in the 18th century (okay I haven't but right now it feels that way... did I mention I should NEVER plan a trip this far ahead anymore... it's messing with my mental sanity)
Recently I have developed an unnatural obsession with luggage. Never thought I would find anything remotely interesting about luggage, but... I was wrong. I spent quite some time oogling suitcases in different shapes, sizes and colours. Even had a few unfortunate moments trying to order luggage and ending up with strange men on the phone who were trying to talk me into buying bright green and more expensive luggage instead (don't ask, it was very dodgy, and considering I don't like spending time on the phone (my female genes somehow got a little muddled there) especially with a hyper active man who was trying to convince me to buy ugly suitcases that looked like someone killed kermit the frog... not that I am anti-green mind you)
I got purple suitcases with another supplier (who didn't have the suitcases I ordered in the first place either... it was going on tragic) and now the suitcases are proudly displayed in my livingroom, where my two and a half year old is joyriding them. (No, you did not read this wrong... my daughter takes joy-rides on the suitcases)
Elora (my DD) was very upset that WE (her dad and I) got new suitcases and she did not. So now she is going to ask for a suitcase of her own (which is already hidden in the back of my wardrobe in wrapping paper) from Sinterklaas (Santa's cousin... longer beard, wears a robe and a pointy hat, which I really don't know the english name for)
Ofcourse when I finally bought the suitcases I found out they were like an inch and a half too big or something for Virgin Airlines. I am going to risk it... call me a rebel.
I read this awesome report of this lady (I think on this forum) a while back who wrote little notes to her daughter on their trip, so I got all inspired and I decided to do the same for my DD. Elora is convinced that Disney is where the real nemo lives, so who am I to tell her different. She actually recognises photo's from Disney World (I don't know how she gets that... it can't have anything to do with mommies obsession right? *blush*)
Right now I am still waiting to hear from our (incompetent... *eep*) travel agent about the latest update. Right now I am really an inch away of making a little voodoo doll building of the travelagents (I don't want to hurt the employees personally, just the company) because they are just costing us a lot of money for no reason. For some inexplicable reason we were not able to book a dining plan with them and they have been mocking up a lot of things. Of course they only started telling us they mocked up AFTER we made a down payment... *sigh*. So I got my sharp horrible needles ready.
I can't believe how much I am looking forward to this trip. The last time I was this excited (read almost mentally challenged) was when I was going on my honeymoon. And if I have to be really honest, I think I am even more excited now!!
So only a few things we need to do (besides packing etc) I need to print out the whole novel that Tourguide Mike wrote (how am I going to remember all that, I am like a goldfish with alzheimers lately) and make some nice notes for Elora.
Now counting down the 41 days remaining (hurray for tickers, because now I know that right now there are exactly 40 days 20 hours 17 minutes and 52 seconds are left until we get into the airplane... because that is really useful information to have (okay it isn't but indulge me okay )
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What a great start! What other eateries have you made ADRs? You are so fortunate to be able to do a 3-week trip especially with your daughter so young. You won't feel rushed at all.
I feel very fortunate that we can go, it took a lot of saving up! *smirk*
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