Our Great Disneyland Birthday/Graduation Adventure 2014 - 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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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.
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Our Great Disneyland Birthday/Graduation Adventure 2014
Prologue: The Back Story
So, there I was, way back in 2002, just back from our first trip as a family to Walt Disney World, a treat for my DS finishing kindergarten and my DSD, who as I told my DH, needed to go to WDW before she grew up. She was 14, and I thought her childhood would be incomplete without a visit to the Mecca of Central Florida. We had a great trip. We visited every park, took some days to swim and do DTD, and just generally had good family time. We were scarcely back home when my little man started talking about wanting to visit Walt's original creation, the original Magic Kingdom itself. That's right, Disneyland! Now, mind you, we live 2,100+ miles from Anaheim, so I said no way could we make that trip. It was too expensive. My sweet boy, recently diagnosed with Autism, would just have to research and YouTube Disneyland. Of course, he did, and that only added to his desire to visit it.
Fast forward 18 months, and my husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore. In fact, he told me he would never be married again. He changed his mind about 15 months ago, but that's another story for another time. He had a motorcycle and a burning desire to stay out all hours of the night. I am a homebody, and everybody knows it, so we had really come to live two separate lives. He didn't like mine, and I didn't like his. So, strange as it sounds, we were both broken-hearted to end our marriage. After all, we were splitting up our family. Well, let's just say any thought I ever had of trying to make the Disneyland trip went right out the window. I knew it would never happen. Single parent school teacher...can't do it...no way. Life got in the way. Still, my DS was a Disney nut, just like me, and I resolved to try to take us back to WDW. By the summer of 2007 we did just that. The cast of characters had changed some, eliminating two and adding my DM, and it was a nice trip, but DS Joel would just not stop asking for Disneyland! How could I get through to him that I just couldn't afford that trip? WDW was doable, especially with my mom along to split expenses, but I cannot make Disneyland happen, son! You need to stop asking. It's too expensive. Do you realize that trip costs twice as much as WDW? We made a combination of long and short trips to WDW over the years, for various events, but there could be no Disneyland.
After years, literally years, of him asking, he sort of stopped. I guess I convinced him we couldn't afford it. But something funny happened. About the time he stopped asking, I began to really want to make it happen for him. How could I do it? I had a mortgage, a car payment, a kid in school, and a teacher's salary! How? How? How? I decided the only plausible way was to get a second job.
So, back in the fall of 2013, I hired on at the local "major retailer" in our area as a cashier, just for the holidays, right? At the end of December, they decided I was one of the good holiday hires and asked me to stay on as "permanent part-time." After a very easy negotiation over work hours (they agreed to everything I asked for!), I agreed to stay on, knowing that this would help pay for our Disneyland trip, and I could make my son's life-long dream come true for his high school graduation. Would I be perpetually tired? Sure. Would it be worth it? Absolutely! So, by February 2014 I was ready to book our trip. I had done extensive research, including asking lots of questions right here on PassPorter, and I decided to book through Orbitz. The only down side was that I had to pay in full upfront. But, I had been saving since November, and I had a little savings, so in late February, I bit the bullet and booked the trip.
Oh, if we could've stayed on DLR property, that would have been beyond fantastic, but I am still a single mom school teacher. So, it would be the Tropicana Inn, right across the street, but we were going to Disneyland. I am a terrible secret keeper, so I told Joel to bear down and finish his senior year in style, and I would take him to Disneyland. He did just that, graduating with all As and Bs for his senior year. School is tough for him, but he works hard, and I am very proud. He graduated on May 16, and I ironed out all the final details before the trip. We would fly out of Knoxville on June 18.
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