Chillin' with the Mouse was SUPPOSED to mean something else! - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Chillin' with the Mouse was SUPPOSED to mean something else!
Hi there everyone! We are back from our trip for the holidays with Mickey to celebrate our 26th wedding anniversary in a special way. When planning this trip I thought of so many different titles for the report, and had setteled on Chillin' with the Mouse because this trip was to be about taking it easy, no rushing around, little to no riding attractions and so forth.
Little did I know that the title would come back to haunt me by meaning something entirely different! In this case, Chilling ended up meaning frigid temperatures! LOL, Ah well, at least some things still worked out the way I had hoped.
The backstory:
Hubby and I decided to go for our anniversary all alone (ie minus grand daughter Kaitlin, who typically accomapnies us on all trips Disneyworld). We decided to use our remaining points to stay at the Yacht Club as hubby has always wanted to stay there. Also this trip was a bonus in other ways besides the leftover DVC points which took care of the room. We have AP's so the park entry was also taken care of, we got hubby's airfare for under $300, and mine was FREE as I had enough points on Southwest. So all that was left was to decide how to do meals. Something we always wanted to try was the Premium Dining Plan. So as a Christmas present to ourselves we chose to do this instead of buying presents for each other. All was decided and booked.
Wish I could say everything went smoothly as I am quite a planning diva, but this trip proved to be the exception to the rule in many ways. For sure we will not forget much about it anytime soon.
This is all for now.....more coming soon. This trip I also remembered to photograph our meal choices! (and there were some really great ones).
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I wanna hear this! DH refuses to go to WDW when there is even a possibility that it will be chilly. Joke was on him when it was 50 degrees and windy in March. We both grew up on islands in GA and for some reason he does not tolerate cold at all. I love the cold!
I thought a litmus test would be a few days before Christmas at my mom's in North FL. Nope. Cold. Rainy. Oh well!
I love that you have a Kaitlyn that goes everywhere with you! I have a Maddie. And the running joke when my DD mentions a cook out or bday party at her house is that I ask *Can I bring Maddie?*
I can empathize. We were there the week after New Year's in '10 when Orlando set three record low temps in that single week. Windchills were in the 20's in the daytime even! Naturally, the "weather guessers" had predicted the usual daytime highs in the 70's and nighttime lows in the 50's. They were very, very wrong!
We spent a lot of time lingering over meals rather than having to go out in the cold again soon, that's for sure!
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Mary - not enough trips!
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<--- Disney Fantasy 2016!
Previous trips: POFQ 2005 & 2007, Boardwalk 2008, BCV & AKLV 2009 (our honeymoon) & 2012, BCV & BLT 2011, BCV 2013, AKLV 2014
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