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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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thing i see about this cruise is the amount of money they want for photos pre purchase and all photos....
WHY so much and can some one tell me how much like 1 -2 photos will be? Are they nice and they will take some with our camera?
Its been the biggest disappointment to me.... and I pay for the $150 preorder photopass plus now memory maker every trip and always will - but that covers 2 weeks!!!
Before we did our first cruise last year, I had the same thought as you, why so much for the photo package?? I went in thinking that I would not buy the full package, just one or two photos instead. After seeing the beautiful quality pictures that the Shutters photographers took, I ended up buying the whole thing and to me it was worth it, they are very nice pictures and all come with borders that match the theme of the location the photo was taken.
I'm not sure how individual pictures are priced, but I know that a 10 print package is $149. As far as I know, the Shutters photographers will not take your photo using your camera. If you are at a character location, the handlers will use your camera if you ask them though.
thing i see about this cruise is the amount of money they want for photos pre purchase and all photos....
WHY so much and can some one tell me how much like 1 -2 photos will be? Are they nice and they will take some with our camera?
Its been the biggest disappointment to me.... and I pay for the $150 preorder photopass plus now memory maker every trip and always will - but that covers 2 weeks!!!
$200 for 2.5 days seems ridiculous....
just venting
Yes they will take photos with the characters with your camera. I think it was 19.95 for two 5x7 or one 8 x 10 I think if my memory is correct. I only bought one photo on ship out of two cruises but have over 500 from two trips with personal camera between photos I took and character pics. Now at WDW it is hard to resist ride photos.
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It was roughly 20 for each photo depending on the size. When we went on our cruise a month ago, we only saw the photographers at dinner one night, and taking those posed pics each night in front of a backdrop. We chose not to even go to shutters to look at them so we weren't bummed that we couldn't buy them. Worked great! ;-)
Yes they will take photos with the characters with your camera. I think it was 19.95 for two 5x7 or one 8 x 10 I think if my memory is correct. I only bought one photo on ship out of two cruises but have over 500 from two trips with personal camera between photos I took and character pics. Now at WDW it is hard to resist ride photos.
The charter handlers will take your picture with your camera. Something else to keep in mind the shutters staff and photographers are not Disney cast Members they are employed by the company Disney has hired to do it for them, they pretty much want you to buy their products and not get anything for free. Personally I think Disney should switch them out for Photopass and even have it be albe to be licked to your accounts from WDW or DLR.
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- Walt Disney
We always end up getting the photo package whenever we cruise, as we find the photographers get such lovely photos. Yes, it's a lot of money, but we feel it's worth it.
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I really appreciate the advice and information. Its just $150-$200 that we werent planning on in a situation where money really tightened up on us.
The one photo I must have is my son with his hero captain america - but I dont know what kind of camera access to that area on the Magic we will have - anyone know?
I really appreciate the advice and information. Its just $150-$200 that we werent planning on in a situation where money really tightened up on us.
The one photo I must have is my son with his hero captain america - but I dont know what kind of camera access to that area on the Magic we will have - anyone know?
Captain America does meet n greets in the public areas so I am guessing he will have a CM that will take a pic with your camera.
I'm one for the photos and I always buy the whole darn package. Plus there are are certain times when I don't want to take my camera with me. I look at it as my big souvenir. It is a touch choice though and you don't need to make it prior to boarding. You can look at the packages/rices first, look at the photos as their taken and then decide if you want to purchase just a few, CD or what.
The only thing we regretted from our first cruise was not buying photos--that and not rebooking our next cruise. Since then, we have either purchased a photo package or the CD along with prints. And yes, it can be expensive. My theory (or rationale if that make it sound more official) is that photos don't end up in the garage sale or get outgrown like other souvenirs. And, it saves me agonizing over which photos to purchase which we have seen over and over on the last night of a cruise--yet no one agonizes over buying that $50 sweatshirt.
Good luck with your decision and have a great cruise!
My feeling is, pick the best of the best, and leave the rest. If I end a cruise with more than a couple of professional shots, it's a lot. There are plenty of other souvenirs that can be bought with the money saved.
And I stress the "professional." The cruise is a great place to have formals shot - they have the backdrops and lighting setups. But for the most part, you don't get nearly as many of those iconic shots you get in the parks, "Here's the family in front of Cinderella Castle. Here we are in front of Spaceship Earth. Here we are on Splash Mountain..." "Here we are outside of the theater, here we are at dinner Thursday night, here we are at dinner Friday night, here we are at dinner Saturday night..."
I know PhotoPass has gotten folks used to the idea of keeping every image, but it wasn't so long ago that we had to think a few times before having even one shot taken - who wanted to stand on line every evening at park closing to find out if the day's photos were even worth buying?
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Co-Author, PassPorter's Walt Disney World, PassPorter's Disney Cruise Line, and PassPorter's Disneyland and Southern California Attractions
My feeling is, pick the best of the best, and leave the rest. If I end a cruise with more than a couple of professional shots, it's a lot. There are plenty of other souvenirs that can be bought with the money saved.
And I stress the "professional." The cruise is a great place to have formals shot - they have the backdrops and lighting setups. But for the most part, you don't get nearly as many of those iconic shots you get in the parks, "Here's the family in front of Cinderella Castle. Here we are in front of Spaceship Earth. Here we are on Splash Mountain..." "Here we are outside of the theater, here we are at dinner Thursday night, here we are at dinner Friday night, here we are at dinner Saturday night..."
I know PhotoPass has gotten folks used to the idea of keeping every image, but it wasn't so long ago that we had to think a few times before having even one shot taken - who wanted to stand on line every evening at park closing to find out if the day's photos were even worth buying?
That makes sense to me and I know I am totally spoiled by Photopass. I think the DVC parties could be better if they used photopass and we didn't have to pay for pics - I don't.
Photopass is all Ive ever known and now that its photopass plus memory maker I can't imagine having to pay for ride photos and meal photos - so I understand the spoil factor.
One thing I noticed when taking my own pictures in the atrium the first cruise we did was that the color was horrible. We were using a regular digital camera. When we used the flash the color was off and when we didn't use the flash the pictures were too dark. For our next disney cruise I asked for a new camera for my birthday that was a month before the cruise. I got a nikon 1 and the picture quality greatly improved but I still had a few pictures that were funky on the color when using it in the atrium. There is a reason that the professionals have the big flashes on stands. My recommendation is to get pictures taken with your own camera and with their cameras too . If your picture on your camera turns out great then you are all set, if not you always have the option of buying a few individual pictures if they are poses you particularly want. Other than in the atrium I had no problems with the quality of pictures I took on my personal camera. I found that people are very willing to take pictures of you in various locations on the ship cast members included but just be willing to repay the favor.
We usually pick the best ones and leave the others - there are always a couple that are really good and worth the cost....others are more like candid pics that we might get for our own cameras. The pirate night is one of them I usually get! It is fun and remind me the ship/vacation. We usually do not line up to formal night pics, but they would be also an option...
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
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