Stay Calm and Hakuna Matata TR (9/21/13-9/29/13) - Completed!! - Page 6 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
Even with all the rain, we had a great time that whole week.
Quote:
Originally Posted by xwewhisper
Love the canada booth! So glad you were able to sample it between salty breakfast and rushed dinner!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
If I had known about breakfast and dinner beforehand, I would have had seconds at the Canada booth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Sounds like you had a great day at Epcot and then at HDR!
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
That was certainly another busy day!
It may have looked like it, but I seen other people, who stay the entire day at the park. One thing I like about going in September is the waits are very short.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melduckie
Sounds like a great day!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Sounds like a much better day with some great eats! Sorry about being rushed at dinner! Love the pictures!
Well lesson learned about eating at HDDR, show was wonderful!
Quote:
Originally Posted by disneydreamer33
Sounded like a great day. Sorry Joshua didn't get to see Crush, I am sure he would have liked it. Maybe next time.
Hopefully, he will want to do this, when we go back.
Sept 27-Morning:
This morning, I woke up at 7:00 and started packing our suitcases, since I knew we would not be getting back until real late tonight. We didn’t have any ADR schedule for this morning, so we were able to take our time. My husband wanted to spend our last park day at Animal Kingdom. So we headed down to the food court for breakfast, which happened to be packed and very noisy. Will wasn’t sure what he wanted to eat at this point, so he sat with Josh while I went up and got myself the bounty platter with French toast and an order of pancakes for Joshua. I came back to the table and went back up to get my coffee and utensils. As I sat down to eat, Will walked over to see what they had for breakfast. I was about to consume my food, but stopped as it was…cold! I can’t stand cold breakfast foods …unless it’s cereal and milk. So, now I had to wait for Will to get back to the table, which took about 10 minutes. After he sat down with his bounty platter, I decided to check his food and it was barely warm. At this point I told him I have to go back and have them redo our food, which they did and within a few minutes we were enjoying a hot delicious breakfast. With our food consumed, we made our way back to our room, where I made everyone put on their Hakuna Matata shirts; we headed over to the park.
It was a little later than I wanted but we finally made our way over to Animal Kingdom about 11 o’clock. Upon arriving, I had the troop take a few pictures before the Tree of Life, which we missed doing on Monday’s visit.
We then made our way over to Expedition Everest, where the standby wait was at 20 minutes, which was durable for Josh. So off Will and Josh went, while I went inside the bazaar to get out of the heat and wait. During that time, I also grabbed some paper fast passes, which would be good in a half hour. I also had scheduled on my Disney Experience a fast pass return time for 12:40 pm. So after they got through the ride the first time, I told them the fast pass wouldn’t be ready for another 25 minutes. I asked how Josh was doing at this time and so far he seemed to be fine with waiting in line. So, we decided to let him go again via standby and then he could twice via the fastpass side using the passes. During this time I took a stroll thru the MJ to spend a few minutes with the tigers and bats. Once we met back up and I got our photopass loaded with their pictures on EE, we made our way over to Dinoland. Will head this way, because he thought Joshua wanted to ride Triceratops…he was wrong. Joshua wanted to ride Primeval Whirl, which Will dislike due to its spinning. DH wasn’t looking so hot at this point so I asked him what was wrong and he tells me that his stomach was bothering him, so we decided to take a break and sit down for a few minutes. I think it had to do with not wanting to go on the ride, but I knew Will wouldn’t let Joshua down. We got some popcorn and some water, which Joshua quickly consumed, while Will rested and prepared himself for PW. I would have gone, but I’m a chicken exit person, not a rollercoaster person. After resting for about fifteen minutes, Will decided he could probably handle going on PW one time. The standby wait sign showed ten minutes, so I positioned by self to get their picture. After about ten minutes, I thought it was strange that I didn’t see them. So I looked up at the exit and there they were coming down the steps. I didn’t know they had two sides to the ride, so I missed getting a picture of them. Will didn’t look too pleased as he got off the ride with Joshua, and at first I thought it was because he wasn’t feeling well, however I was about to learn that isn’t what was causing that “I’m ready to leave the park now” look! During their wait in line, Joshua started to get more anxious as Will and Josh approached the boarding platform. As Joshua is watching the cars, He is estimating the third one will the one that he and daddy will be riding. However, he had no idea that there was another party from a different area that would be taking what he believed to be his car for the ride. Before Will could react, Joshua stepped out on to the track area to try to get to what he thought was his car. This activated their emergency override system, which made the ride come to a complete halt. With all the other noises in that area, I had no idea this was even happening. Poor Will! It took him about ten minutes to get Joshua to calm down and get back on to the loading area and into their respective car to finish out the ride. After this fiasco…which of course didn’t have any lasting effects on our son, Joshua then wanted to go and ride dinosaur next. The wait time was about 20 minutes, but it took them about 25 minutes to get through. At this point we decided to take our cue from Joshua, who was starting feel tired and since we had big plans for the evening decided to call it a day.
Coming up….Last Night at WDW.
Sorry about the cold breakfast. Glad they fixed you another one! Sounds like it was a great time at AK with the exception of the little bit of confusion on PW.
Sorry Josh activated the emergency stop! Sounds like a good time at AK otherwise! Can't wait to hear about your last night!
We'll at least we know there is a safety system in place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Sounded like a good morning, especially for the guys with several trips on EE. Sorry Josh activated the emergency shut down.
Animal Kingdom is alot of fun, so I'm glad this was where we spent our last park day, even with the emergeny shut down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chezp
Sorry about the emergency shutdown and the cold breakfasts. Apart from that, sounds like a good day.
I was actually surprised about breakfast, especially since they knew or should have known the crowd levels during the breakfast rush.
Quote:
Originally Posted by disneydreamer33
Cold breakfasts are not a way to start out your morning.
Sorry about the PW thing. How scary for Joshua.
Sometimes cold breakfast are ok.....as long as it's Cereal and milk
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tabitha34
Sorry about the cold breakfast. Glad they fixed you another one! Sounds like it was a great time at AK with the exception of the little bit of confusion on PW.
For dinner that evening, I had Will drive next door to PORQ for our final dinner that evening. During the week we had looked on line at their menu and they had some items on there that we were both interested in trying. Will wanted to try their fried chicken platter with mash potatoes and baked beans. For myself, was interested in trying out their pot roast with mash potatoes and rice. The fried chicken was moist and delicious. My husband was taken by surprise from the little bit of the kick that came from the Cajun seasoning. I told him that the theme was New Orlean…lol. For our dessert we finally got to try…the famous messy, but oh so good beignets. We turned on the television and watched Rapunzel giving time for our food to digest. During that time I present Joshua with a social story about our adventure for the night.
Now, with a whole week of driving under our belt, we started feeling pretty confident about getting around to most places. That evening, we were going over to the Contemporary Resort, so I programmed it into the GPS, and for some reason it couldn’t seem to locate it and kept coming up with other destinations that I knew was wrong, especially when they were twenty to thirty minutes away. I told Will not to worry and I would navigate, I knew after being over to the MK a few times that we just had to bear to the right after we entered the toll gate and then head straight onto morning. We arrived at the resort about 8:10. I had Will use their valet parking, so we wouldn’t waste time looking for a parking spot. We then headed inside and asked a cast member for directions to the Pirates and Pals Firework Party. We were informed to head up the escalator to the first landing and when we reached the top of the escalator we found ourselves in a long hallway we soon saw the welcome sign. We checked in and received our boat seat assignment and pirate gear, which we were required to wear. Captain Hook and Smee greeted us and briefly posed for pictures with DH and myself. Captain Hook kept eyeing my wedding band and engagement ring. Lol .
That evening our crew was assigned to the Smee’s boat, no sooner after we had filled our backpack with some pretzels and popcorn, we were escorted down to the dock to embark on our journey. We headed out onto the lagoon, where our Captain Patch started us off by doing roll call. As he called each family on the list, he wanted to know where they hailed from. We kept listening for ours, next thing we know Captain Patch asks if he got everyone. DH raises his hand to let him know that our names had not been called. At this point our Captain decides to have a little fun, by telling that the other boat is probably missing us by now. We had about six other couples besides my husband and I, who happened to be celebrating their anniversary, so we were all invited to dance, while the passengers sang “Kiss the Girl”. The children thought it was very funny seeing their parents dance. We then settled down and watched the electrical water pageant. Afterwards, we were led in a fun game of Disney Trivia and after everyone had a chance to win a pirate prize; it was time for the big show of the night to start…Hallowishes! I wish I had taken pictures, but I was so engrossed in watching, that I forgot. This is probably by far the best fireworks display that I have seen in a long time. The show ended, we all clapped and cheered and with big smiles on our face, the Captain steered up back to the docks, where we were greeted by… (spoiler alert)…..
Peter Pan!
Since, it was getting quite late and we had to get up early for our departure, we decided not to get a picture with him this time. So, we had our car retrieved, tipped the attendant and headed back over to our resort for our last night of rest inside the “bubble”.
That sounds like a very fun way to spend your final night.
Thanks! I was so happy to end the vacation on a high note!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
The Pirates cruise sounds like a whole lot of fun! Hallowishes is spectacular!
It was the highlight of our trip. I couldn't believe the difference...those fireworks were huge, especially the perimeter ones! I just got a nice little Nikon point and shoot, so hopefully I'll be able to take pictures on our next trip there.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
…unless it’s cereal and milk. So, now I had to wait for Will to get back to the table, which took about 10 minutes. After he sat down with his bounty platter, I decided to check his food and it was barely warm. At this point I told him I have to go back and have them redo our food, which they did and within a few minutes we were enjoying a hot delicious breakfast.
With our food consumed, we made our way back to our room, where I made everyone put on their Hakuna Matata shirts; we headed over to the park.
before the Tree of Life, which we missed doing on Monday’s visit. 
and some water, which Joshua quickly consumed, while Will rested and prepared himself for PW. I would have gone, but I’m a chicken exit person, not a rollercoaster person.
After resting for about fifteen minutes, Will decided he could probably handle going on PW one time. The standby wait sign showed ten minutes, so I positioned by self to get their picture. After about ten minutes, I thought it was strange that I didn’t see them. 
So I looked up at the exit and there they were coming down the steps. I didn’t know they had two sides to the ride, so I missed getting a picture of them. Will didn’t look too pleased as he got off the ride with Joshua, and at first I thought it was because he wasn’t feeling well, however I was about to learn that isn’t what was causing that “I’m ready to leave the park now” look! During their wait in line, Joshua started to get more anxious as Will and Josh approached the boarding platform. As Joshua is watching the cars, He is estimating the third one will the one that he and daddy will be riding. However, he had no idea that there was another party from a different area that would be taking what he believed to be his car for the ride. Before Will could react, Joshua stepped out on to the track area to try to get to what he thought was his car. This activated their emergency override system, which made the ride come to a complete halt.
With all the other noises in that area, I had no idea this was even happening. Poor Will! It took him about ten minutes to get Joshua to calm down and get back on to the loading area and into their respective car to finish out the ride. After this fiasco…which of course didn’t have any lasting effects on our son, Joshua then wanted to go and ride dinosaur next. The wait time was about 20 minutes, but it took them about 25 minutes to get through. At this point we decided to take our cue from Joshua, who was starting feel tired and since we had big plans for the evening decided to call it a day. 
PassPorter Guide Author
Apart from that, sounds like a good day. 
Liz 
Linear Mode
