Florida flowers and Caribbean cruising - the trip report! THIS SECTION COMPLETED 4/12 - Page 12 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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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.
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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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Now remind me... that is the April 2016 one, right? We'll have to talk about that when we see you in a couple of weeks' time so we can work out all the details...
Yes we are planning Easter 2016 but my boss won't sign off holidays until 3-4 months before so it will be a nail biter since we have the cruise booked and I'm gonna book my DVC. However since I'm avoiding holidays June July for him I'm just gonna fight him for it.
Well, I suppose it's good you liked that creepy movie. Muffin keeps asking to watch it now that it's on On Demand and I tell him, "Go ahead. Just make sure that I am far, far away!" . Glad your flight is going smoothly and I love your Florida coast pictures!
Yes we are planning Easter 2016 but my boss won't sign off holidays until 3-4 months before so it will be a nail biter since we have the cruise booked and I'm gonna book my DVC. However since I'm avoiding holidays June July for him I'm just gonna fight him for it.
Oh good grief, that's insane! Fingers crossed you have no issues. I hope to get the flights booked as soon as they're available, so hopefully we should all be booked by late May/early June time.
Awesome pictures as you fly over Florida!! I love how on the computer screen telling you where you were, it showed where the Titanic sank.
I know, that always makes us laugh... it's like "let's point out the highlights of where we're flying over" and then they pick a huge disaster in which thousands died... how cheery for the start of a vacation!
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Well, I suppose it's good you liked that creepy movie. Muffin keeps asking to watch it now that it's on On Demand and I tell him, "Go ahead. Just make sure that I am far, far away!" .
Friday 20 February – part five: look what was waiting for me on the edge of airport property!
We circled for a bit, and saw this plane, which was also preparing to land at the same time as us, which was neat to see.
There is yet more building work going on near the airport. They always seem to be building whenever we come out here. More of that later…
As we were coming into land, the map on the seatback in front of us gave us a very neat view.
We were soon on the ground, and it felt like we taxied forever, although we did see some neat sights on the way.
We were eventually at the gate, and headed off the plane. I was about the sixth off, and thought Mark was right behind me, but he ended up about 12 people behind. Finally we caught up, and this time we were able to use the Fast Track system at immigration. This is for anyone who’s visited the States more than once since 2008. Er, yep, me thinks we both fall into that category!
You basically use a touch screen machine to scan your passport, answer a few questions, then it takes your photo (mine was terrible, shows what a long day I’d had ) and then it scans your fingers on one hand. It struggled a bit with mine, and one of the immigration guys had to help me, as with my RSI (carpal tunnel), my fingers aren’t straight and I think that was the problem. However, it had a lot more issues with Mark…
He put his right fingers down, and the machine kept telling him he’d used the wrong hand. The same guy came to help, and stood there and looked and checked, and he was definitely using the right hand. Ok, what the? We carried on like this for a while, before it finally registered him on about the 10th attempt. That done, we headed up to see the immigration person – yes you still see a person, but it is a much quicker process. I think he literally asked what our relationship was, and that was about it…
We headed over to the luggage carousel, and as there were so few people on our plane, everything was coming out together. Usually you have Upper Class and Premium Economy separate, but I guess there’s no need today. Within a few minutes, we had all three bags, and headed off through customs with no issue.
We made our way up to the monorail, and boarded one. There were a few issues with the doors closing in the carriage behind us, which meant a delay before we got to the terminal. When we did, we made our way down to the car rental area, and found Dollar. We were called straight over, and there was no real pushing as far as anything like extra insurance went, which was nice. We were offered the pre-payment toll option because of the introduction of cashless toll roads in Florida, but having been reading Carolyn’s trip report, I knew that shouldn’t be anything for us to worry about.
Once we’d completed all the formalities, we were told that we just needed to cross the road to the parking lot, and Dollar would be on our left. That’s a definite plus over Avis, in that they’re on the ground floor, so no elevators to negotiate with luggage.
As soon as we headed outside the terminal, we could feel that it was a bit chillier than we’re used to here, but it was still pleasantly warm to us.
We headed inside to Dollar, and were pointed down an aisle and told to pick any car on the right hand side, which had its trunk open. I selected a dark colour one, as it had an easy to remember licence plate, and we loaded her up, and off we went.
We headed out, programming the GPS for Animal Kingdom Lodge, as that happened to be in its memory. I didn’t think programming any of the places we’d visited in Hawai’i would be a great plan.
Look what was waiting for me on the edge of airport property!
Obviously the word went out that I was coming, and they ensured a proper welcome for me!
We soon got caught up in traffic, and it became apparent why, as they’re doing yet more building work, this time road improvements.
Finally we were on the toll road, and although it was pretty quiet on our side, it was busy coming the other way. I made the comment to Mark that it was rush hour, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted that, given that most of the employment here is in the tourist industry in one way or another – hotels, restaurants etc. and they don’t have set 9 – 5 hours.
Finally we were seeing a familiar sight…
… and it wasn’t long before we turned off to be greeted by another familiar sight!
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Oh good grief, that's insane! Fingers crossed you have no issues. I hope to get the flights booked as soon as they're available, so hopefully we should all be booked by late May/early June time.
As I said I've booked my cruise and I'm gonna book my DVC but I'm gonna leave flights until January. I could still buy a flight today for the weeks I want this year at a reasonable price so see no need o risk money on flights. In my head we are going and If he doesn't let me go them I don't see when else I can take holidays so should be fine
That looked like a pretty slick trip through immigration even with the finger problems. i'll never forget waiting in line for 3.5 hours to be seen. Hopefully thats in th east.
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so we can work out all the details...
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Muffin keeps asking to watch it now that it's on On Demand and I tell him, "Go ahead. Just make sure that I am far, far away!" 
. Glad your flight is going smoothly and I love your Florida coast pictures!
Fingers crossed you have no issues. 
I hope to get the flights booked as soon as they're available, so hopefully we should all be booked by late May/early June time.
Finally we caught up, and this time we were able to use the Fast Track system at immigration. This is for anyone who’s visited the States more than once since 2008. Er, yep, me thinks we both fall into that category! 
he was definitely using the right hand. Ok, what the? 
We carried on like this for a while, before it finally registered him on about the 10th attempt. That done, we headed up to see the immigration person – yes you still see a person, but it is a much quicker process. I think he literally asked what our relationship was, and that was about it… 
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