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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Today is Tuesday August 4th and it is National Night Out! Try to get out and enjoy your community.
Evan and I will be taking place in the events in our home town. I really hope to remember to bring my camera and then be able to post some photos. Some of you may remember he won a bike last Fall by collecting Police cards. This is where it all began for him.
Our town has the local businesses and Fire and Police Departments on display. Several emergency vehicles. Tours of the Police Station, including the jail. K9 Demos. They are getting a new Police dog in a few weeks so we can meet the new handler and new this year is supposed to be a helicopter. Not sure if landing or just doing a fly over.
So it looks like Photo Bucket is working a little better for me now.
This sort of thing is SOOOOOO right up Evan's alley. He just loves Police/Fire fighting stuff.
The little boy in the cart with Evan is Justin. He is 4 1/2, his mom is in the striped shirt. We are becoming friends. The boys have had several play dates and Evan gave Justin all his old Thomas trains. We belong to the same church, live in the same town and are both single Moms.
Evan loves this little house the kids go through and learn about safety hazards in the home. The end of the tour a little smoke alarm goes off and some smoke flows into the room and the kids crawl out and then get to climb down the ladder.
No zoom - the flag is huge and fills the whole screen on my camera I think it is about the same size as the Flag we got to see over Fort McHenry.
New this year - they just did a fly by but it was from our town - didn't know they OWNED a helicopter
Our favorite part. We have 4 K9'S. One retired in December and in about 2 weeks we are getting his replacement. Every time we get a new dog they have a contest where the school kids can send in an entry to name the dog. Last time Evan entered the name scout but it wasn't selected. They chose Spike. The child did some research and found that our sister town, Evesham England, has a K-9 named Spike. Evan again submitted the name Scout for this new dog but the name will not be announced until the September Town Council Meeting - maybe we will go to meet the new dog.
sorry this one is blurry but those dogs are fast - you can see him biting the "bad guy"
Evan's Swag Plus he got free water ice, cotton candy, water, pizza, hot dog and a soft pretzel.
you can see in the lower right corner some Police trading cards. these are what he collected to win the bike. (80 of them)
the other day there was a fund raiser at the local McDonald's for the k9's. we went to it. It was a much smaller demo then the one at National Night Out but the dogs were so funny. They would bite the arm of the "bad guy" and then eventually pull the bite sleeve off and then they would prance around with this giant arm in their mouths and this look of glee like "I got your arm - ha ha - got your arm"
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TR Part 9: Friday 6/19, Magic Kingdom here we come
Friday morning stated off bright and early. I don’t need to tell you I was tired but there was fun to be had so no sleeping in today.
We had a quick breakfast in the room and were off for our fun filled day. We drove over to Animation Hall parked the car and got in line for the Magic Kingdom bus. We were not that close to the front so I wasn’t sure we would get on the next bus. We waited about 15 minutes and then a double long (articulated) bus arrived.
At this time 2 scooter families were loaded onto the bus and then the rest of us were let on. We got on this bus but we had to stand. Not really a big deal it was early in the day, early in the trip, we are both healthy so not problems right? Wrong!
Evan and I, along with about 4 other people stood in the section that joins the 2 buses together. The problem with this is the floor moves. The floor is like 2 swivel plates that bend and glide as the bus goes over bumps and makes turns. It was hard enough just standing but standing on a moving, bouncing floor…what a challenge. More than once I lost my balance and had to grab, hard, onto the hand rail. Evan of course LOVED it. I think it was one of his favorite parts of the trip. (Figures)
After our 20 minute adventure we arrived at the main gate. We breezed through bag check and only had about a 5 minute wait for the opening show. Perfect timing. However it was already hot.
After the rope drop we hustled our butts back to Peter Pan. It was a walk on. I was happy about that but we really didn’t get to see anything in the new queue line. Returning from Neverland we checked the line again but it was now up over 30 minutes and it never got below that the rest of the time we were there, so just one trip for us. We next journeyed on a little boat cruise with a bunch of singing dolls. I was going to try right for 7DMT but when your 8 year old son says he wants to ride it’s a small world you do it.
After small world we saw the Mine Train had an hour wait. It was probably 9:30 at this time. I had FP+ for later so we just skipped it for now. I wanted to do Enchanted Tales with Belle, Evan did not. I convinced him to go with me (that will come back to haunt me later) and we got in almost right away. We got to wait in the queue line that was inside the cottage so we had AC and only a few minutes to wait. Evan was chosen to be Phillippe.
I enjoyed the Belle show but it was really a major time suck. Evan doesn’t really care about it so probably won’t be heading back or at least only heading back when I have time to kill.
We made our way over to Tomorrowland for our first FP+, the Tomorrowland Speedway. This has to be one of Evan’s favorite, if not most favorite rides. I also think as a cast member this has to be one of the worst jobs. I mean noisy, smelly, hot – no thank you. On our last trip Evan rode this ride about 15 times he loved it that much. He is not big enough to go by himself but he can drive so that is nice. I did end up working the pedal for him as it was just easier for him. I have to say I think we were behind the worst driver ever. The person in front of us couldn’t steer and was so slow. Now I know these cars don’t go very fast but we actually had to stop on the track, several times, because we kept catching up to them. I could see a woman, a grown adult, in the car and I asked Evan if there was a child driving and he was like NO!!! She was THAT bad. I thought a child was driving. The 2 of us just got to laughing; I mean what else can you do?
After our ride on the “slow”way we took a ride on the wedway. I am the only one that still calls it that? I suppose old habits die hard. Besides wedway is so much easier to say than the Tomorrowland Transit Authority. I just adore this ride. I don’t know why but just one of my favorites. Evan enjoys it too so that is just a bonus. The words “there ought to be a place where adults and kids can fun together” ring through my ears at times like this.
From the Wedway we could see that Buzz didn’t have too long of a wait so that was our next destination. I did horribly this time but still managed to beat Evan but we were both the same level I think Ranger First Class – whatever the 2nd level is.
Carousel of Progress was running so we hopped on for a look back in time. I still miss the song “Now Is The Time”, but “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” is great too. I don’t know I felt disappointed in the ride this time. Not sure why. I guess it really needs an updated chapter maybe. They just go from like the 50’s to 2000’s. too big a gap for me.
FP+ number 2 was ready and it was for Space Mountain.
I love when you're so in sync with your traveling companion that you can turn a frustration into a shared joke, like your time on the "speedway"! I still call it the WEDway, too, only I have to say the full name every time. WEDway People Mover!
Great morning! It's nice that you were able to walk on quite a few rides early on. It pays to get there early! Though it sounds like your first attraction was the crazy bus ride! Hope you took your Dramamine!
I've heard about the double buses, but I don't know if I've ever seen one. I can't believe the bus driver let you stand in that in between area.
Great day, so far! And yes, I still call it the Wedway! I can never remember its new name!
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First trip DW--Nov. 1975; Senior Class Trip DW--Oct. 1979; First trip w/kids--Oct. 1995; Halloween at DW--Oct. 2002; Spring Break at DW--April 2004; Christmas/Pop Warner Nationals-POR--Dec. 2005;Cruisin'--April 2008; Mom/Son trip-POP--March 2010;Taggin' along w/DD on DH's conference-BWI--Oct. 2011; 50th birthday with the Gartner Geeks--Adults only!--BWI--Oct. 2012; The Trip That Almost Wasn't--BWI--Oct. 2013; We climbed The Summit (National Cheer Competition)--ASMovies--May 2014
You two are managing quite a few rides ticked off already. I love CoP, but I've always thought there needed to be some additional rooms that fill in the time gaps.