Our Stop and Smell the Roses (a.ka. ditching the itinerary) Trip Report- COMPLETE!! 2/16 - Page 12 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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[QUOTE=WeRDisneyFanatics;3145896] They are fun to collect! I'm already thinking about which one to get next time. The small sized print-on-demand are only $22 plus shipping and now that they put the white border around them to standardize the size so custom framing isn't needed, they really are a bargain.
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Thanks everyone! Here's my last installment -- final thoughts:
Transportation: We flew SWA from BDL to MCO. I’m really glad that we added EBCI for our flight home – it was nice not needing to keep our eye on the clock for our 24 hour mark. We just went about our business enjoying our last morning and printed out our boarding passes when we came back to the hotel for our afternoon break.
I am also happy with our decision to stick with DME for our return to the airport. We’d debated getting a car service so we could get a little bit later pick-up but in the end I’m glad we allowed the full 3 hours with DME because the airport was really busy. Plus we saved some money – always a good thing!
Going in January: I really enjoyed the weather – it was warm enough to be a nice break from the New England winter but cool enough that we weren’t wiped out from the heat. The crowds were also very manageable although I did find the restaurants to be as crowded as ever. We tried a couple of times to make changes to our ADRs and no luck. There were a fair number of tour groups in the parks during our visit but we always seemed to be going the opposite direction from them so there was no impact in terms of lines or crowds as far as we were concerned.
For me, the one downside of traveling in January was worry about weather (on our end in terms of travel delays) and illness leading up to the trip. There were a lot of winter illnesses going around before we left so keeping everyone healthy was a challenge. Everything worked out great in the end though!
Paying for meals out-of-pocket: For us, this was a great decision for this particular trip. We dropped the DDP when we switched our reservation to CL. We knew that most of our breakfast and snack needs would be met with the offerings in the lounge. I haven’t done a full accounting yet, but I did do a rough add-up of receipts and it seems like we spent out-of-pocket about the same as what the DDP would have cost us but I just added the total bill, so that includes alcoholic beverages, tips and other things (like apps) not included on the DDP – so really we probably came out ahead. In addition we had the flexibility to order how we wanted (like our all apps feast at Kouzzina) and cancel meals (like Marrakesh and ‘Ohana) without feeling like we were missing out on the value of the plan.
The Grand Floridian: Boy, this is a tough one for me to review. I’ll preface this by saying that DH and I have dreamed of staying at the GF since our first trip to WDW together. In fact, the last page of my scrapbook from that trip says, “Next time..” and then there is a picture of the GF. Next time turned into 11 years and numerous trips before we finally made it there thanks to the amazing 7 for 4 deal.
On the plus side, the proximity to MK is fantastic – we spent most of our time at MK and really loved the short monorail ride there and boat ride back. I also love the look of the resort – the grounds and architecture are beautiful. I love the light and airy look of the rooms. We enjoyed the pool area – especially the kiddie pool and hot tub, which we didn’t have on our last trip at Poly. I also liked the shops in the lobby and being able to walk over to the Poly was a big plus for us since DD loves the kids’ club there so much.
On the down side, we found the staff here weren’t as friendly as the CMs other Disney resorts we’ve visited. I have read many positive reviews about the wonderful service at GF and I have to be honest, that wasn't our experience. I didn’t find the CMs to be very helpful or engaging--they actually seemed to avoid interaction. We had a few incidents with unfriendly or unhelpful CMs that maybe weren’t a big deal individually, but the cumulative effect left me with less than stellar feeling about the resort. DH pointed out that he thinks they are going for formal feel of a resort from days-gone-by, so maybe that explains part of it. I think it’s just a “different strokes for different folks” kind of thing. It’s good that we don’t all have the same favorite resort or we’d never be able to get a reservation because it would always be packed!
We may give the GF another shot some day, but it’s not on our immediate “must return to soon” list like BC or Poly.
So that about sums it up! Thank you all for reading along with me – it’s been fun reliving the trip with you.
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Looking forward to your final thoughts!
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Pixie Dust
Deb
PassPorter Guide Author
Dreams, Wishes, Hopes... these are the parts of childhood we should never lose.
Your posters are fabulous!! 
so much for sharing your trip and thoughts with us! 
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