We Can Fly, We Can Fly, We Can Fly......We Flew Trip Report - Page 15 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
It was sooooo great to see you. Crazy how it's like seeing an old friend, isn't it? I would have talked longer, but my boys and my mom were ready to go I hope our paths cross again sometime!!!!
Hi again Beth. I agree, it was really great to meet you. I'm so glad you came over and said something to me. I too could have talked longer but I can understand how your family was ready to go. Disney was brutal with the heat that week and AK is always brutal anyway so it was even worse that day than in our previous trips. I don't think we would have made it as long as we did in the park without our trips on Kali. That and the rain actually. The car we had gave us outside temperatures and almost every time we got in it, it was registering 99 (I think that's as high as it went) but when we left AK, the outside temp was down to 75.
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
Thursday morning, I was up early again at 5 to do laundry. I went back to the room, washed our cups, then started writing my TR . When I went back to the laundry room to dry our clothes, a maintenance guy was there and for me it was a good thing. I had put my clothes in one of the dryers, put my money in and hit the button to start the dryer but it wouldn’t work. I guess the latch was broken on the door so the dryer wouldn’t start. Since the maintenance guy was there, he had me transfer my clothes to another dryer and he started it for me. Once that stuff was going, I went back to the room to write up more of my TR.
Lenny finally woke up about 7:50 and Abby about a half and hour later. I had told them we didn’t need to be at any park for opening this morning, I would let them sleep in and possibly go swimming but Lenny didn’t want to swim. He wanted to get some breakfast but since the food court was a mad house, he wanted to avoid it. We all got ready for the day and hit the McDonalds drive thru instead. From there, we went to the Hess Station by the Boardwalk for some cheap cigarettes and cheap soda. Since we were so close, and there were new pennies, we went across the street to the Boardwalk for them. Abby went in with me and we got the ones from the lobby with no problem but the ones at the ESPN club we couldn’t get as it was closed. Abby was okay with that and said we could come back another time for them. With pennies in hand, we headed to Epcot for the day and we got there about 11. We started with SSE and UOE since we hadn’t done them yet. Because we had started the park so late, I told Abby we needed to do anything in FW that would close at 7 before we went to dinner as there wouldn’t be much time to get any of it done after dinner.
Abby’s next ride choice then was Imagination, which was no surprise. We rode the ride, Abby made a Figment to send to me and then we went outside.
Like the day before, we weren’t overly hungry for lunch and with dinner quickly approaching, we had some snacks instead. Lenny had another pretzel but today Abby and I had a couple of ice creams, which melted quick even though they were frozen solid. We rode Nemo again and saw Crush do a completely different show than before. I do have to mention even though Abby didn't get chosen this time to ask a question (no surprise there) another girl was picked and the question she asked? How old was Crush . After saying bye to Crush, I told Abby that although she never did ask her original question to Crush, the one she did ask was a good one as other kids also were asking it. We then stayed in the pavilion to explore a bit before leaving.
When Abby was done looking at the sea life, we went to the Land and rode Soarin again. This time Lenny kept his mouth shut about the height of it. It still wasn’t time for dinner so we rode Living with the land again. Even having done that, we still had about half an hour left so we went upstairs to wait until we could check in.
Once we were called, we were shown to a table (not a booth) where we had Fiorella as our server. She was so great - treated us just like we were family. Even though we didn’t have a child with us (according to Disney’s ages) she brought out the kids platter plus the adult platter. She interacted with us and joked with us and just made for an enjoyable meal just by herself. The fact that there were characters here just made it more memorable. As before we saw the characters several times each and teased them (asking Pluto if he’s been chasing the chipmunks, asking the chipmunks if they’ve behaving). The food as always was good too, we enjoyed it all and were even brought a second adult platter. When we finished what we could off that, Fio brought out the desserts - a berry filled cake topped with vanilla bean whipped cream and kids cone cupcakes. We walked out of there extremely happy and stuffed. I even stopped and asked for a manager because Fio (and Bev, the one who helped us at the podium) deserved the recognition. Plus like I told them, I know when I get home, I won’t think to send Disney an email in a timely manner so I’d rather praise the servers when I have the meal then days or weeks later.
After talking with the manager, I went and waited by the scooter for Lenny. There was a plug over by the elevator Lenny had plugged the scooter into so it was there that I waited for him. As I did, the elevator opened and I saw someone get off wearing a Passporter Pouch. It took me a minute to think but I finally said "Darren?" He stopped and said yes so I introduced myself to him. He was on his way to the GG for his dinner so we only talked for a few minutes. It really is nice to see Passporters in the parks IMO, even if all we do is talk for a few minutes. I told Darren he was in for a treat at dinner and that I hoped he enjoyed it.
After he left to go check in, we left the land to head to Canada for the first of our WS pennies. Abby didn’t want to watch the Canada movie so we went to the UK for the next penny.
When we got to France , we saw a Photopass photographer on the bridge so we stopped to get a photo taken but he snapped it really quickly as it was starting to drizzle. We then went to get our FONE to play the Agent P game. We had played this as Kim Possible to try it but this time, we were playing it to get a penny from France you can only get by playing the game.
Many of the effects were similar to Kim Possible so among the three of us, we remembered the locations to go to. When it came time for the penny, you actually approach the CM at the counter close to the door and say something to her (I forget what we said) and she gave us a penny to use. We like to use shiny wheat pennies so we kept the one she gave us (in case we’d eventually need it) and put in one of our pennies instead. Soon after, that adventure was done and we decided not to do any other countries. What we did do though was get in line to see Aurora as there weren’t that many people there.
After seeing Sleeping Beauty, we headed to the American Adventure to get the next penny. Since it was almost time for the next show, we made it there as quick as we could as Abby wanted to see this show. The last time we were in here, she slept through the whole thing. She managed to stay awake this time and then we found the next penny. Being in a show kind of mood apparently, Abby wanted to see Reflections of China next. We didn’t have too long to wait for it to start and once we were done seeing China, we finished our world tour by going to Mexico. We got the penny first here, then we went on the Mexico boat ride . We all like this one and I was surprised when Abby wanted to leave. Usually she asks to ride this one a second time.
This Service Dog area is on the Mexico Side of Norway over by the bathrooms.
It turns out she was getting very anxious about the fireworks and didn’t want to be in Epcot anymore. We needed to make one last stop first but I kept telling Abby we had plenty of time. At first she listened and kept it together so we went into Port of Entry for our last WS penny and I found a shirt that was perfect for me. After that, I told Lenny and Abby to head to the entrance but they wouldn’t do it - they only went outside to wait where Abby started to flip out. Even though we had plenty of time before the fireworks , she was starting to panic. I don’t know why as she’s gotten older, she’s having more problems with the parades/fireworks/crowds situations but she is. I gave Abby her headphones, asking if those would help her and she put them right on. We then made our way out of the park and the closer we got to the entrance (or the further we got away from the lagoon) the calmer Abby got. By the time we got to the car, she was fine again and when I asked if we should go back to the Boardwalk for the pennies from the ESPN club, she agreed. Just a note here - if anyone is looking for those pennies, they’re in the gift shop/arcade, not the restaurant like was listed in the Presscoins.com list. Both open at 11 or 11:30 though so go later in the day for them. I got the pennies, went back to the car and we finally made it back to ASMu and in bed by 11.
Glad yall got to spend some time in World Showcase! Glad Abby calmed down once yall were out of the park.... My oldest son wanted to be long gone from Disney before it even started to get dark out of fear of the fireworks also..... But he has done the opposite of Abby; as he's gotten older- he can tolerate them..... Even at 16, I wouldn't say he loves them, but he can tolerate them.... This past Christmas, for the first time ever we were able to see one of Disney's firework shows.....
Another great update- and as expected, I love all of your photos from GG with the characters- that really has to be one of the best meals in terms of character interactions (and the food is good too!)
I'm so impressed with your pressed penny dedication- your collection has got to be something pretty cool to see
Sounds like a wonderful day at Epcot. I'm another person who is impressed with your pressed penny collection. We've started one for Sean, but it isn't anything extensive yet.
I'm with Mel, very impressed with your hunt for the pennies. Stefanie did these for a couple of years and then lost interest. You all had another full day, too. I was thankful tonight that I was too full to feel hungry reading about GG. I love food and characters there. Great pictures today, too!
Great day at Epcot! Your meal at GG sounds great. Nice running into another PP too! We have started a pressed penny collection yet but it sounds like a great thing to do.
A sleep in morning is always a good thing Even with getting to the park around 11 you got tons done. Another great day and glad you had such a wonderful meal at GG. It has been too long since we have been there...it missed the list this year but I hoping we make our way back there sooner rather than later. We always enjoyed it.
Sorry that Abby got nervous about the fireworks, glad that she relaxed by the time you got to the car. It looked like you had a very productive evening before that though in the World Showcase....lots of new pennies
You were on a penny mission today and sounds like you were a success! I love GG too! The food is really good and, from what I remember, the service was good as well. Sounds like you all had a busy but fun day!
I'm loving your TR because you are doing quite a few things that we have planned for next week! We're trying GG for the first time (don't know why we've never eaten there before) and looking forward to it!
You're photopass pictures are great! I like the balloon trick shot!
Sometimes it does feel good not to have to leave so early in the morning to get to a Park. Enjoyed the reading at GG with the characters. We have never been, but next year when we take our DGS and DGD I plan on making this one of our TS. I have heard nothing but great reviews about the food. All the GG photos are awesome and you can tell all was having fun!!! Glad all worked out for Abby getting out the park in time. I must say, Abby with the rose boarder and pixie dust is a very sweet photo of Abby, I really like that 1. You have many great photopass memories in Epcot too!!!
About This Page: 
It was sooooo great to see you. Crazy how it's like seeing an old friend, isn't it? I would have talked longer, but my boys and my mom were ready to go 
I hope our paths cross again sometime!!!!
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
. After saying bye to Crush, I told Abby that although she never did ask her original question to Crush, the one she did ask was a good one as other kids also were asking it. We then stayed in the pavilion to explore a bit before leaving.
Stefanie did these for a couple of years and then lost interest. You all had another full day, too. I was thankful tonight that I was too full to feel hungry reading about GG. I love food and characters there. Great pictures today, too! 
Linear Mode
