A Spring Adventure: Wilderness, Flowers, and the Force (with Cam and Luke) PTR Updated 5/22 - Page 13 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Very nice job on bathroom redo. If Luke gets bred he can come to my house as we need to repaint
Very disappointed with you however. I saw lots of Mirror Pics and closed I can find to a Hidden Cam is one flashed washed camera
All caught up! That was a lovely first retirement project. You guys did an excellent job! The wall color is just gorgeous! I agree with Laurie about the fact that booking flights makes it real.
I stayed at WL one, not the villas, but the lodge itself and it was goreous. If the monorail were connected to it, I think I would deem it the perfect resort I've never been to the F&GF - so I'm looking forward to reading all about it
__________________
~ Jenn **Disney is REAL LIFE Magic, so much more than optical illusions **
I'm planning on doing this w/ my mirror. Instead of doing all the different molding pieces, I bet you could find some cool looking carved picture frame molding, sorta African looking to go along w/ the giraffe theme.
Congrats on the credit with SW! I've gotten 2 sets of 4 free drink coupons so far this year. I gave a set to a friend who will visit WDW in July (that set didn't have my name or SW rewards # on it). I'm holding on to the others just in case, but sadly I don't think I'll get to use them because our vacations this year include a road trip to Mid Coast Maine and a long weekend in DC (we'll fly JetBlue....they had a fare deal I couldn't pass up!)
Bummer that you'll not get to use the free drinks.
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Originally Posted by lfredsbo
I just love how Southwest credit works
Darn, you have credit that HAS to be used
Technically, we've already used them, but that's for a whole other PTR.
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Originally Posted by JKnott17
Luke did an amazing job with the bathroom, it looks beautiful! I love that shade of brown on the walls, it's very warm and inviting. Congrats on getting the flights booked, and a credit to boot!
Luke did an amazing job with the bathroom, it looks beautiful! I love that shade of brown on the walls, it's very warm and inviting. Congrats on getting the flights booked, and a credit to boot!
I love warm and inviting colors, and we're neither one into pastels.
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Originally Posted by Linnynad
I'm just joining in now and I'm super happy, but a bit jealous, you are going o F&GF.............We just LOVE that and now with the new food booths it has us loving that festival even more than we did before. So happy you get to see that all PLUS your SWW too!!!
Something about WL has me so wanting to stay there, Arnaud isn't to keen on it but I just love the theming and not to mention the boat ride to MK. Oh, I hope you make time for the HDDR!!!
LOVE the bathroom makeover!! I so adore your relationship with Luke and how you both work on such amazing projects together!!! We have sooooo many projects to work on here I wonder when they will ever get done............one day I'm sure. Until then.....I love reading about yours!!!!
It seems every day I get an e-mail or see something else online about the F&GF, which just gets me more and more excited. A lot of our projects are just now getting done because we have time at this point in our lives. completely yours!
Quote:
Originally Posted by xwewhisper
Just signing in! Love the plans so far, so excited to hear how you like the festival! The bathroom looks absolutely beautiful, such a great idea and it came together so nicely
Great score on the flights! Booking the flights is what makes it all seem real to me.
Me, too! Once I've got a way to get there, I know we're going to do it.
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Originally Posted by chezp
Southwest credits are great - shame we can't fly with them more regularly...
I think they are pretty smart using the credits as even though we save money, they know will be flying again if we don't want to lose that saved money.
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Originally Posted by rhinohunter
Great tickets and with a credit. That is what I call a good deal.
Very nice job on bathroom redo. If Luke gets bred he can come to my house as we need to repaint
Very disappointed with you however. I saw lots of Mirror Pics and closed I can find to a Hidden Cam is one flashed washed camera
I'm getting better at hiding.
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Congrats on the flights and the savings for your next trip!
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Originally Posted by guerns17
Love the new bathroom!! The shower curtain is so cute!! I'm looking forward to hearing more about your trip! WL is my favorite resort
It was that shower curtain that started this whole project.
As we know, the 60 day mark means online check in and now also FastPass+ scheduling. Every other Thursday is my manicure appointment. Today was that day, so right before I left at 9:30, Luke asked if we were having a FP+ party when I got home. I made it back home about 11:10, and sitting together on the couch with Luke’s laptop logged into my Disney Experience, we began our selections.
First, we checked in for our stay at the Wilderness Lodge. Since we won’t arrive until after 4:00, we’re assuming our room will probably be ready, so the only room options we chose were upper floor and woods view. Honestly, the options here were pretty mundane: ground floor, lower floor, upper floor, woods view, near elevator. We both just kind of stared at the choices for a moment, shrugged our shoulders and picked two. I think we’d be happy wherever based on those options. On May 12, we’ll know what kind of room that gets us.
Then we moved on to choosing FastPass + selections for each park day, starting with Day 1 (Monday, May 12). Our dinner reservation is for 8:00 PM so we thought we might get a couple of rides in before dinner if we headed to the Magic Kingdom. With just a little tweaking we got Peter Pan and Haunted Mansion before dinner. MK is open late this night so we even chose a ride for after dinner, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. (BTW – I’ll give exact times later when I do each park days plans.)
For Day 2 (Tuesday, May 13), we are back at Magic Kingdom. For today we opted for Under the Sea, Space Mountain, and Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin in that order.
For Day 3 (Wednesday, May 14) finds us at Epcot for our first day of the F&GF. Our picks for today are Test Track, Mission Space, and Spaceship Earth.
On Day 4 (Thursday, May 15), we’ll be visiting my favorite, Animal Kingdom. Of course, my first choice was Kilimanjaro Safaris. Then we also added Dinosaur and Finding Nemo: The Musical. None of the options for these three worked quite the way we wanted so we chose one, and then tweaked it. That allowed us to keep from running back and forth across this massive park and even got the rides in the order we wanted.
Day 5 (Friday, May 16) will be our Star Wars Weekends day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Our first choice was easy, Toy Story Midway Mania. Our second choice was easy, too, Hollywood Tower of Terror. Our final choice befits SWW as it is Star Tours. The Best Option choice had us arriving before 8:10, which I know I could do, but Luke is a bit slower on vacation. That could be different now that he is retired, but we chose to tweak all three times here for a 50 minute later start to guarantee we’d be to the park on time.
Day 6 (Saturday, May 17), we return to AK. Luke asked if I would like to start with the safari again. please! Then we picked It’s Tough to Be a Bug. I made Luke pretty happy when I told him that I was thinking we’d leave the park sometime early afternoon so if he wanted to ride Kali River Rapids last, I wouldn’t mind. He clicked very quickly on that FastPass selection. Dinner is late this evening at DTD, so we can clean up before heading out for shopping and dinner.
The last day of the Flower & Garden Festival falls on Sunday, May 18, so we’ll head back there. Our first choice was Soarin’ because with the tiers here we had to choose between it and Test Track, which are doing on our first Epcot day. The Seas with Nemo and Friends and Living with the Land are the other two for this day. Once again we had to shuffle times as we wanted the two attractions in The Land back to back. Easy fix!
Monday, May 19 my sister Pam will be joining us for the entire day. With her in mind we chose her favorite rides there: Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise, and Monster Inc. Laugh Floor.
Then comes the dreaded last day on Tuesday, May 20. We’ve decided to spend the morning at DHS as it’s the only park we will not have visited twice at this point. We decided to repeat some earlier attractions here: TSMM and ToT. Luke made our final choice with The Voyage of the Little Mermaid.
All in all, we both found the FastPass + selection process very easy and the website caused us no problems at all. We haven’t planned a trip down to the minutes and hours in years so that may factor in to why we found this whole process simple. We look forward to not having to race walk our way to the most popular attractions on arrival. It also means that we are guaranteed a ride on TSMM, which is always a hard one for late risers to get without a long standby wait. We did notice that on all three of our MK days, the FP+ for the two princess meet and greets were completely out. Not a problem for us as we aren’t planning on doing a lot of character meets this trip, but something to be aware of if you have children who’d like to meet their favorite princess. We had learned over the past month or so that it is possible to begin booking FP+ at midnight (EDT) or 11:00 PM our time. I don’t know if that would have made a difference on the princess FP+ or not.
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I made it back home about 11:10, and sitting together on the couch with Luke’s laptop logged into my Disney Experience, we began our selections.
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