A 40th celebration to end the world! COMPLETED 6/24 - Page 46 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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RSR does indeed look like fun but I can not imagine waiting for 2.5 hours. I once saw a 3 hour wait for Soarin' - hearty people to deal with that.
I am 100% with you on that. I do not know how people could wait that long for anything. Before I got chronic fatigue, which means I can't stand for long periods of time, about the longest we'd consider waiting was 45 minutes.
Just getting caught up again! Sorry Storyteller's was a bit of a letdown! Great pictures from CA! Glad you got to ride on Radiator Springs! The crowds have certainly arrived from earlier this morning! Love the PP pictures in front of DL!
I know with all the great shots on RSR, even your random ones, my DH will really love that ride, as will my DGS. I just love seeing all the Christmas decorations around the Parks. Also, your Photopass photos are really great too!
I know with all the great shots on RSR, even your random ones, my DH will really love that ride, as will my DGS. I just love seeing all the Christmas decorations around the Parks. Also, your Photopass photos are really great too!
Glad you all were able to use your FastPasses from the night before for Radiator Spring Racers! We had a similar wait for our second ride on Forbidden Journey at IoA with announcements telling us progress, but the line not moving. That ride looks so cool!
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So apparently the crowd of people were all in line for Radiator Springs Racers! I'm glad you were finally able to get on that ride. It would have been such a shame to get that close and then not be able to ride. Can't wait to hear about the holiday tour.
Tuesday 25 December – part six: they’re trying to sneak in with us!
We checked in for our tour, and were told we were in “team red” and to grab a seat to the right of the booth. As there was no-one around, and it was almost an hour before the tour was due to start, we decided to have a quick look up Main Street USA, as Mark thought he’d seen a kitchen shop. They were starting to get ready for the three o’clock parade, and it was pretty busy in the park now as a result. Unfortunately what Mark thought was a kitchen shop was in fact a sweet shop. Oh well, we tried…
We wandered back to the tour meeting spot through the Emporium.
It turned out there were three groups, silver, red (us) and green, and there was certainly some friendly rivalry between them as the tours wore on. We were the second to leave with Garrett. Immediately, we headed over to the California Adventure, passing through gates operated by the Cast Members, so we could just walk across the plaza. You can’t do this in Walt Disney World!
We entered into Buena Vista Street, and talked about how this dates from the Los Angeles of the 1920s and 1930s, which was in the depression, so they didn’t have much money for Christmas decorations, and this is reflected in the simplicity of the garlands here.
We then moved down to look at the Christmas tree, with Garrett explaining how decorating trees came to be. It was a result of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert being pictured by a decorated Christmas tree, which then became the fashionable thing to do.
We headed next for Cars Land, although we didn’t go very far down this area, with Garrett just explaining about each of the Christmas trees here, and how they represented the various characters from Cars. I thought this bit was really interesting, but it was a shame we didn’t have the five minutes extra just to walk down and see each of them, so that we could see them for ourselves as we heard about them.
We made our way back to Carthay Circle, where we went into our favourite Fiddler and everything else café (can you tell I so can’t be bothered with the name of this place? ) and were given the choice of either eggnog or peppermint marshmallow. I went for peppermint, while Mark went for eggnog, which he did not enjoy. Well, come on, it’s eggnog for goodness sake. I can’t think of anything worse…
Mine was much nicer…
We headed back down Buena Vista Street to the entrance, just catching the trolley containing Mickey, who’d just given a show, as we left.
We crossed the plaza again… and in Town Square, Garrett told us about the Christmas trees here. One is very obvious…
… the second is no longer present, but is during the Candlelight Processional here, which is again made up of Cast Members, while the third is the Christmas tree in Walt’s apartment in the fire station:
We walked a little way up Main Street, pausing at this doorway to look at it, as it shows how the Jewish faith celebrate Christmas. The little doorknob you can see to the right of the doorway is a symbol of blessings.
Our next stop was the hub, where we talked about the castle. I can’t remember how many lights it has on it, but it was a stupid number.
From there, it was into Frontierland, and then into New Orleans Square. I think you can guess what was coming next… you got it a ride on the Haunted Mansion Holidays!
We went in through the Fastpass line, and Garrett told the Cast Member there were 16 of us. Unbelievably, two people came in behind us, but he was wise to it, did no more than told the Cast Member at the front of the Fastpass line, and she dealt with it. They didn’t have Fastpasses, so I suspect they were directed to the back of the standby line, which was now showing 75 minutes. The irony was there were still Fastpasses for about an hour’s time. What would you do?
In we went, and enjoyed another ride on this great version of the Haunted Mansion. I got one shot I wasn’t able to get earlier.
When we came out of there, we walked around the Rivers of America, heading for Frontierland. Garrett was telling us how good Fantasmic! is here. Well, I guess it will have to wait until another visit, as there are no opportunities left to see it now. He also told us to ride Big Thunder now, as it’s going down for rehab in the New Year and when it’s back up and running, in his words, it would be “very different”. I have no idea what that means…
We stopped outside the Jingle Jangle Jamboree, with Garrett explaining what happens here. This is where I felt the tour could benefit from maybe an extra half hour or hour, because, as with Cars Land, I’d like to have gone in here as part of the tour, rather than just hear about it.
I will say that, as well as Garrett, you had some very cool excerpts, mainly from Walt, but also others, explaining about Christmas at Disneyland, played over your headsets, which I loved. It was a good way of adding to the experience.
Here, we took a restroom break, and I have to say I thought it was a long time to expect people to go without one (by now it was maybe 4:45pm ) as this tour is open to all ages. Personally, I’d set a lower age limit, but I understand why they don’t, as a lot of people do this tour just to get the reserved seating at the end for the Christmas parade, and I get that. We spoke to one local family who are doing this tour for about the third or fourth time for that very reason.
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I didn't realize that you've not seen Fantasmic! at Disneyland! It is MUCH better than the WDW version. Fantasmic! started at DL, and we were lucky enough to live there then, and to be there for the premier. Just blew us away the first time we saw it. First, you're much closer to the action. I wish I could adequately describe why it's so much better. You MUST see it on your next time at DL!
Love the sound of the tour! Too bad you're seeing some things from a distance, though.
I can understand people doing the tour just for the parade viewing and for skipping the Mansion line, but so far, it hasn't been that great really, Although I seem to remember it was very inexpensive, right? I'm in agreement with Colleen about Fantasmic! at DL. I skip it now at WDW, but saw the DL version on my first visit years ago and it was so much better. It feels more like a surprise happening than a theater production.
Silly Mark. Eggnog!!
Sounded like a good tour, if a bit rushed. I suppose they expect that folks should go back and look at things later, maybe? I've also skipped Fantasmic and am skipping it again this trip. Some day, some day......
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I do not know how people could wait that long for anything. Before I got chronic fatigue, which means I can't stand for long periods of time, about the longest we'd consider waiting was 45 minutes.
Great pictures from CA! Glad you got to ride on Radiator Springs! The crowds have certainly arrived from earlier this morning! 
) and were given the choice of either eggnog or peppermint marshmallow. I went for peppermint, while Mark went for eggnog, which he did not enjoy. Well, come on, it’s eggnog for goodness sake. I can’t think of anything worse… 
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