Stay Calm and Hakuna Matata TR (9/21/13-9/29/13) - Completed!! - Page 2 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Great start!
Thanks!
I know it was a rough day before, but sometimes that's when you need Disney vacations the most.
That statement is so true
Can't wait to read more.
I'm going try to do another update this weekend.
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Originally Posted by JKnott17
Great start!
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Great start!
Thanks...I'll be sending update requests soon
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Originally Posted by buzzspal2
Great start.
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by bsblady01
great start
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by mcc0313
So sorry about your families loss right before you left...not easy to leave knowing so much has gone on at home
Glad that even with little sleep you made it on the road and sounds like the traveling for the first day was good, even with a time delay.
Traveling was great. Especially, when my friend from work told me about an alternate route that avoided the dread melting pot in VA.
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Originally Posted by tdhc
Great start!
Thanks
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Originally Posted by Tabitha34
Great start!
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by Pinkyt177
Can't wait to read more!
I'm waiting for my photopass to download, so I should be able to start the next segment this weekend.
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Originally Posted by taylan1
Great start! So sorry for the loss of your cat and your husband's cousin.
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by Cam22
Great start!
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by momabaarjo
Love the title of your TR...can't wait to read more!
I’m awoken by a good morning kiss from my son around 6 o’clock in the morning. I’m really looking forward to today…in a just few hours we’ll be at Disney! It doesn’t take me too long to get dressed and afterwards, I took a quick walk down to the lobby to check over their continental breakfast, which only consisted of some muffins, juice, and do it your-self waffles…nothing that really interesting or appetizing. When I got back to the room, Will was just waking up and getting dressed. We decided to opt for breakfast and Ice Coffee from the near-by McDonalds for us to consume back at the room. While Will went and pick up our breakfast he stops next door at the Shell station to fill up the gas tank. I ate my Egg White McDelight sandwich and a hash brown, while Will had their Sausage McMuffin with Egg sandwich and Joshua had the usual…pancakes. We decided to relax a little that morning, since we knew it would only take a few hours to get to our resort, so we finally head back out on to the open road around 9 o’clock. Even though we were on the road longer the previous day… it seemed like time really went by so slowly on the last leg of our trip to Disney and we were all getting pretty bored, especially during the last hour of our drive. In fact, I was starting to doze off, but I didn’t want to miss my opportunity to take a picture of the following….which of course quickly turned around everyone’s mood!
Within a few minutes passing under the sign and with the help of navigating directions to my DH, we arrived at our destination…Disney POR! Will and Joshua decided to wait in the car, while I went inside to gather our information for check in and even though it was only a little after 1’ clock, our room was ready for us and after getting our KTTW card as back up to our MB, we drove over to the AB section to park our car and make our way to our room 2618 in building twenty-six. I have to apologize, I didn’t take any pictures of the outside of the building, because I was really busy trying to lead the pack to the room and not get lost in the process. I did manage to take a few snap shots of the room we stayed in for the next six days, however.
By the time we got all of our luggage to our room, it was close to 3 o’clock and I wanted to rest a little before heading out, but I was afraid we would lose our fast past time for that evening’s activities, so I rallied the troop for our next destination …Magic Kingdom. At first, Joshua didn’t want to go, because he taught we were going to be taking the bus, which is something he strongly dislikes. However after watching his power point social story, “Visiting the Magic Kingdom”, on which we discuss using the car and monorail, he was more than willing to go and quickly put his shoes on and within a few minutes we were on our way. I have to admit their parking lot was little confusing at first, but we soon found a place to park our car. We walked over to the Ticket and Transportation Center, where we hopped on the express monorail. Joshua enjoyed riding the monorail and when we got to the Magic Kingdom, we decided to put our plans into action. Joshua and I went through the no bags line and waited for Will, who was our designated bag liner. I originally was going to head over to City Hall to inquire about the GAC for Joshua, but knowing that they were going to be discontinuing the program, we decided to just make use of the fast passes and the stand-by lines. We headed over to Frontier Land, where Will and Joshua rode Splash Mountain four times. Once with the fast pass the other three in the stand-by line, which that evening was pretty decent with only about a fifteen to twenty minute wait. They were going to go on a fifth time, but I told Will that their fast pass for BTMRR was ready, so they decided to ride that a few times instead. By the time they were done, Joshua was starting to become a little tired and cranky, so Will and I thought it would be a good idea to head back to our room. As we started to make our way to the exit, Joshua suddenly wanted to ride The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, so we made our way over to Fantasy Land and for our last ride of the evening we ventured off into the Hundred Acre Woods.
Once we got back to our room, it didn’t take long for Joshua to eat his supper and soon afterwards was fast asleep. Will and I headed over to the food court to get a bite for supper. That evening Will had the carved turkey with season vegetables, while I tried the carved ham with sweet potatoes and season vegetables. After we finished eating our dinner we headed back to the room, where we watched a little television, before calling it a night.
The weather was: 79 degrees and cloudy
The best thing today was: Arriving!
The worst thing today was…not remembering to turn in my Photo Pass redemption card, so I missed out on pictures that evening from both SM and BTMRR.
The most magical moment today was…everyone having a good time!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
I’m usually a pretty light sleeper, so I believe I woke up around five-thirty and decided to work on my trip report. Joshua, who is also an early riser woke up around a quarter to six. Just in case of any possibility of us over sleeping, my alarm was set to go off which it did… at six o’clock. One nice perk about staying in the moderate is that we had a coffee maker, which I promptly made use of and in few minutes was enjoying a nice cup of coffee. Will was still tired and wanted to rest a little longer, which was fine, so I told him he could have another half hour to snooze. My son’s food choices are extremely limited. He mostly eats breakfast type foods, so I decided I would go check out the food court to see about picking up a breakfast platter for Joshua to have later for his lunch, since we scheduled Tusker House that morning. I’m not sure why, but for some reason I thought the food area would be busy, but as I made my way to the food court, I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t too many people and the area was extremely quiet. I soon found out why as I approached the food court and found out to my surprise that they don't start serving breakfast until 7:00! Well, that’s going to throw my plans off a little, since I was hoping to make the rope drop for the EMH morning at Animal Kingdom. At this point it’s not even 6:30, so I went back to my room and started getting Joshua's backpack ready for our day out. I’m not sure why but Joshua was in rare form and didn't want to do anything and kept clapping very loud, which DH was not in the least bit happy about, since he was still trying to sleep. Joshua will do this sort of stemming when he’s not had enough sleep, but I’m not sure why he was doing it in this case, since he slept through the night. Finally 7:00 rolled around and Will volunteered to go back down to food court to get Josh some food for later. During that time Joshua kept playing with the door to the room and kept opening it to look out. Joshua can sometimes become fixated on watching these kinds of door hinges:
So for a few minutes, Joshua spent his time doing this, then I’m not sure what happened all of a sudden the door would not shut completely, which meant it couldn't lock and now I’m in a panic and Joshua is becoming worried too and doesn’t like this one bit. : He of course wants me to fix the door and I’m trying to explained to him this is beyond my capabilities. At this point Josh's attitude starts to turn sour about the door not working properly and of course this was starting to put me in a foul mood. Just then Will came back and of course I had to fill him in on why I was not in the best of moods at that point. I told will that I put a lot of effort into planning and that Joshua’s meltdown regarding the door and that it wasn’t going to help anyone. Will checked the door and noticed one of the screws had come out of the hinge which is why it was not closing correctly. With a little bit of coaxing Will managed to get the door to shut and lock. He then placed a call with the resort’s maintenance to have the door properly fixed. By now its 8:15. I told him we need to get going if we're going to make it to our ADR at tucker house at 8:30. I’m thinking to myself…So much for rope drop. As we are leaving the cast member from the maintenance department arrived to work on our door, which he insured us was not too difficult and told us to have a “Magical Day”! I have to admit having the car helps otherwise we would have been very late trying to get to ADR on time. We made our way to Animal Kingdom and after a brief stop to redeem my photo pass, so we would have it for our group photo at Tusker House. By this time Joshua was starting to calm down and we were soon on our way to meet Donald Duck and partake of some yummy breakfast.