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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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My wife and I are looking at a two week visit to WDW this fall and trying to decide on where to stay. We are not DVC members so we have several options.
(1) Use the current Disney offer which includes free dining, Got a quote for 5 nights 6 days with hopper tickets and dining at a regular room at POR for about $1800.
(2) use our banked weeks and exchange into an off property resort in a 2 bedroom suite full kitchen. This would use 2 weeks of exchange and would cost about $300. Plus tickets and meals OOP. I can get a resort about 1 mile off World Dr and 192.
(3) exchange into a DVC resort for one week and then move to an off property resort for the other. This uses 3 to 4 weeks of exchange and would cost about $500. Plus tickets and meals OOP.
This last option presents me with a major issue as I found out after speaking to an RCI guide about this fall. Specifically mid to late September. I found that there is availability but at a very high exchange rate. RCI has set a trading power value for DVC property in that time frame at 41 to 45 points. This creates problems for us with outside DVC ownership. The resort we own at has a trading power of only 17 to 18 per 2 bedroom unit. This is great for most of RCI properties but NOT DVC. It requires that I merge several weeks of my time (for a fee) to get one week at DVC. And then all I can get is a studio at OKW or SS. Trying to make up my mind now as to whether it is worth trading three weeks outside the property for one week on site. This is really causing me to think hard about staying on property.
Number 2 makes more sense to me. What do you think?
I would say #1 or #2 depending on what the meals and tickets are going to cost you out of pocket in addition to the $300. It may be a better deal to stay at a moderate with the free dining package!
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Teresa
Sammy 5 years and Peyton 15 months - September 2013
Just checked RCI again and found that I can get a 2 bedroom suite off property for 8 RCI power points per week. This will allow us to have my wife's brother go along with us. He would help with the driving and some of the expenses. (He is a loud sleeper so he needs to be in a room by himself.) He will also need to use an ECV for the park. I am looking into the best way to do this as well. I also checked the tickets: one annual pass and two ten day MYW+hopper tickets would be about $750. DW and her wife do not want to be in the parks as much as I do. The annual pass would allow us to have free parking plus the opportunity to get TIW for a food discount. (Not sure that TIW would be worth the price since there will only be three of us and we are not going to be in the parks every day.) There may be other perks that go with the AP that would make it more attractive (that is, to help me with the higher cost.) This does give me an incentive to go back late within a year.
Off-site is always cheaper. Cash...timeshare...trade...you can find many locations of equal or better quality to Disney's for less money. Every day people are paying 2-3 times as much for a Disney resort as what they would spend a mile up the road.
But for many it comes down to that desire to be on-site / right in the "middle of the magic."
If you're content paying less and staying off Disney property, go for it.
We have stayed on property several times and really enjoyed the convenience but this time it makes more sense to stay outside. Just confirmed two weeks back to back at Vacation Village at Parkway for a very low exchange fee. Both weeks hopefully in the same unit so we won't have to move. I plan to check with the resort on Friday to see if that can be arranged. These units are actually two one bedroom lockouts which means there are two suites connected. One has a full kitchen and a whirlpool, the other has an efficiency kitchen and a regular bath. We are saving enough from what we would have paid for 5 nights at a moderate on property to cover the cost of the tickets and a large portion of the food costs. By staying near the intersection of I4 and 192 we will also have easy acces to SW (haven't been here for about 13 years) and IOA (it has been 9 years since we have been here and I really want to see WWoHP.) I am starting to select the restaurants and will start calling in for ADRs in about a week to two weeks. Also, I need to start a PTR soon.
Glad to hear that you were able to find something with decent exchanges. I can't believe it was going to cost so many points, but I haven't been in September. We're using 9 of our points for a week in April (we are owners at Orange Lake in Kissimmee, which is where we will be staying in April as well). We stayed at Orbit One Villas for 8 or 9 points in December as well. Now that I know it's so 'pricey' points wise, I'm looking forward to having to travel around my daughter's school even less. Eek!
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Disney World Trips So Far: 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a (2016b in planning)
About a year ago we were looking and had a week and some left over trading power points. We checked with RCI and at that time we could have traded into AKL 1 bedroom unit for only 25 RCI points. We paid the fee to combine the points and then ran into some family issues which would not allow us to go. When we looked again, we could not find anything @ DVC. Fast forward to now, you can imagine my surprise when I found out how many points it would take now for a studio at SS or OKW. The changes @ RCI are proving to be a challenge to work with. After these last two exchanges, we now have two 5 point leftovers which will expire in Dec. We will need to combine these with another week's points to get to a high level for a future exchange. One good thing about combining points is that the new points extend the expiration date by 2 years. It is getting too complicated.
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Last edited by rhinohunter; 03-09-2012 at 11:20 AM..
Reason: correct typo
I understand! We bought in 2000 and are technically weeks members, but when we deposit a week they give us so many points and blah blah... it was easier as a straight week to week trade, but at the moment it's actually helping us out a bit. We deposited this year's week in January (we own the week after Thanksgiving) and got 21 points for it, but it only cost us 9 points to book the week we're going to use in April. That means we'll hopefully be able to get two weeks out of our one, which is nice. (Plus exchange fee, of course.) But they're definitely changing things and confusing us!
I hope you have a fabulous trip, though!
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Disney World Trips So Far: 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a (2016b in planning)
The resort we are trading into is a sister to our home resort Woodstone @ Massanutten. Because of that we get a discount on the exchange fee. The trading power for our home is 18 points per side. We own a 4 bedroom unit which banks as two 2 bedroom units. So when bank it all we can exchange for several weeks. For the past several years we have been using the full for us, the son and the grand children. Not this year, wife and I are going with only 1 maybe 2 grandchildren to the home sort in July and then we are going without children or grandchildren to WDW. They can't go because of school and work.
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