A Christmas Ship Comes Sailing In (A Cam and Luke TR) Completed 2/16 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I still don’t have the suitcases out, but I have some of my clothes piled in the chair in our bedroom. I’m waiting until tomorrow to bring the suitcases in. With all our Christmas decorations out, the floor space is even more limited than usual. In fact, my scrapbook room floor space is very minimal as I’ve made up gift bags of Stefanie’s toys and stuffed animals for each of my great nieces and nephews. We’ve really tried to get as much Christmas stuff done before we leave as we’ll only have 5 days after we get back before the Matthews Family Christmas and only 10 days before Christmas itself. Another reason I haven’t started putting stuffed in the luggage is the dilemma of a two part vacation. We have four days prior to the cruise. We did decide today that we didn’t really want to haul all the suitcases to our OKW room, so I’ll pack all that we need for the WDW portion in one case that will stay behind in the Edge while we’re at sea. Suitcases will come in tomorrow night to be filled.
We completed our Target shopping this morning, picking up a few travel toiletries we needed and some snack food for the journey. Then we purchased another medium-sized spinner suitcase at TJ Maxx. Finally, we went to Macy’s to shop for a suit jacket for Luke. The first we found was $76 more than the one he had seen a couple of months ago. But then after a bit more searching, Luke found the exact one we’d seen before for the price we preferred. I’ve had it in my head that I wanted a red dress for this trip since it will have a Christmas theme, but I hadn’t been able to find one at our TJ Maxx. So we headed over to dresses where I found a Calvin Klein on clearance, but it was very thin and not quite as dressy as I wanted. More like a t-shirt dress I thought. Back out to the store floor, I discovered that Luke had found another Calvin Klein that was a Macy’s everyday special. Much dressier and the material was also classier. So back to the dressing room where I quickly figured out the size was too small. Luke did some checking and got an associate to get the right size for me off the mannequin. And it fit perfectly, so now I have a red dress along with my two really cute LBDs. I can’t wait to get a picture on the ship with a Christmasy backdrop. Luke has decided to use a few Batman ties he already owns, rather than buy any new ones. Once we got back home, I pulled all my dresses out of the scrapbook closet along with our pirate costumes and they are all laying on the back of the bedroom chair.
A little while ago, I vacuumed out the Edge so it is all nice and clean on the inside. I think we need to run it through a car wash, too, but it was damp and misty all day today. Maybe tomorrow, we can get this done.
Watching the nightly news, we’ve decided we picked a very good time to travel by car. The total cost of gas will be quite a bit less than two round-trip airfares. All that makes me think that we’ll need to top off the tank in the Edge tomorrow evening as well.
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Luke has decided to use a few Batman ties he already owns, rather than buy any new ones. Once we got back home, I pulled all my dresses out of the scrapbook closet along with our pirate costumes and they are all laying on the back of the bedroom chair.
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